Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer Eddie Floyd. Enjoy!

You’re really earning those million dollar paychecks, fellas. “The press! The press! He’s attacking the press! Won’t someone please think of the press?” Personally I’m a little curious about what’s happening in Syria and if we’re all about to be drawn into a world war with a nuclear superpower and its allies, but fuck me, right? We need to worry about Trump retweeting a shopped video about “the press.”

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Disbelief as Trump Posts a Video of Him ‘Wrestling’ CNN

President Trump posted a short video to his Twitter account on Sunday in which he is portrayed wrestling and punching a figure whose head has been replaced by the logo for CNN. ...

The wrestling video, which was also posted to the official @POTUS Twitter account, stirred criticism, disbelief and dumbfoundedness. Some journalists denounced its portrayal of violence as dangerous, saying it could incite attacks or threats against news media employees.

“I think it is unseemly that the president would attack journalists for doing their jobs, and encourage such anger at the media,” said Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times.

#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017

Scott Ritter analyses the evidence of a sarin gas attack at Khan Sheikhun and finds it wanting. It's well worth reading in full. Here's an excerpt:

Pursuing Hard Truths in Syria

The odd thing about both the Khan Sheikhun attack and the current White House statements ... is that no one has produced any physical evidence of there actually having been a chemical weapon, let alone what kind of weapon was allegedly employed. Like a prosecutor trying a murder case without producing the actual murder weapon, Syria’s accusers have assembled a case that is purely circumstantial — plenty of dead and dying victims, but nothing that links these victims to an actual physical object.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), drawing upon analysis of images brought to them by the volunteer rescue organization White Helmets, of fragments allegedly recovered from the scene of the attack, has claimed that the material cause of the Khan Sheikhun event is a Soviet-made KhAB-250 chemical bomb, purpose-built to deliver Sarin nerve agent. There are several issues with the HRW assessment. First and foremost, there is no independent verification that the objects in question are what HRW claims, or that they were even physically present at Khan Sheikhun, let alone deposited there as a result of an air attack by the Syrian government. Moreover, the KhAB-250 bomb was never exported by either the Soviet or Russian governments, thereby making the provenance of any such ordinance in the Syrian inventory highly suspect.

In combat, the aircraft delivering Sarin munitions would be expected to minimize its exposure to hostile fire, flying low to the target at high speed. In order to have any semblance of military utility, weapons delivered in this fashion would require an inherent braking mechanism, such as deployable fins or a parachute, which would retard the speed of the weapon, allowing for a more concentrated application of the nerve agent on the intended target. Chemical ordnance is not intended for precise strikes against point targets, but rather delivery of the agent to an area. For this reason, they are not dropped singly, but rather in large numbers. (The ab-250, for instance was designed to be delivered by a TU-22 bomber dropping 24 weapons on the same target.)

The weapon itself is not complex — a steel bomb casing with a small high explosive tube — the burster charge — running down its middle, equipped with a nose fuse designed to detonate on contact with the ground or at a pre-determined altitude. Once detonated, the burster charge causes the casing to break apart, disseminating fine droplets of agent over the target. The resulting explosion is very low order, a pop more than a bang — virtually none of the actual weapon would be destroyed as a result, and its component parts, readily identifiable as such, would be deposited in the immediate environs. In short, if a KhAB-250, or any other air delivered chemical bomb, had been used at Khan Sheikhun, there would be significant physical evidence of that fact, including the totality of the bomb casing, the burster tube, the tail fin assembly, and parachute. The fact that none of this exists belies the notion that an air-delivered chemical bomb was employed by the Syrian government against Khan Sheikhun.

Some interesting speculation about the meaning of some recent events in the Middle East:

How Israeli/Saudi ‘Alliance’ Plays Trump

The Israeli web site Debka, though not always reliable in some respects, nonetheless, occasionally, can give useful glimpses into the Israeli calculus: Here it is expressing somewhat unusual enthusiasm, even open rapture, about a recent political event:

“The Saudi king’s decision to elevate his son Mohammed bin Salman … is not merely the internal affair of the royal hierarchy, but a game-changing international event. The king’s son is ready to step into his allotted place in a new US-Arab-Israeli alliance established by President Trump in May, along with the UAE, Egyptian and Israeli leaders that will seek to dominate Middle East affairs. Israel will be accepted in a regional lineup for the first time alongside the strongest Sunni Arab nations who all share similar objectives, especially the aim to stop Iran” [emphasis added].

“A game-changing international event”? Why exactly are these Israelis so excited; why should the elevation of bin Salman, known by the initials MbS, be such a game-changer? Is there here something new? And how come the dismissal of Prince Nayef, whom MbS replaced as crown prince and who was a Western favorite, barely ruffled a leaf in protest? On the face of it, not much has changed. ... Clearly however, Debka does espy something new in the strategic situation. And they may be right. Ostensibly, on the surface, things may look the same, but two dynamics seem to be conflating that may account for official Israel’s high excitement. (It is not just Debka that is on a high – several senior intelligence and security officials at the recent Herzaliyia security conference, were also selling the imminent strategic change meme.)

One of the two conflating dynamics which might help us understand the enigma of Israeli satisfaction is this: a well-known Arab journalist wrote recently of a dinner held some months ago in the Gulf (with prominent Gulf guests), at which an unnamed former Arab Prime Minister was quizzed about MbS’ prospects of becoming king. What he said shocked the gathering. Some expressed their incredulity. He said bluntly: if MbS wanted to come to the throne, he would need America’s blessings. He would need to offer them something that no one had offered before – that no one had dared to offer before. And what was that, the journalist asked the former PM that MbS must offer: “He must recognize Israel. If he does that, the U.S. will support him. They’ll even crown him themselves.” ...

This is the combination that may be provoking such Israeli excitement: The ambition and opportunism of two young crown princes, coupled by their desire to restore Sunni authority (and the obedience of subordinate states) by mobilizing the Sunni world in a “jihad” against Iran and “terrorism,” must be music to some Israeli ears. And this is the rabbit hole down which President Trump has fallen. It matters little whether the primary motive for Trump’s Riyadh fiesta was pecuniary, or whether it was triggered by son-in-law Jared Kushner’s ambitions. Either way, Trump has embraced pushback against Iran (and seemingly, regime change, as Rex Tillerson has implied). In fact, Trump seems to be surrounding himself more and more with anti-Iranian advisers. He seems to like the notion of leading an alliance of the U.S., Israel and the two Crown Princes pushing back against Iran and its “terrorism.”

Qatar Crisis: "Washington sent mixed signals"

Qatar responds to Gulf neighbours' demands

Qatar has responded to a list of demands from Saudi Arabia and its allies after they agreed to give it another 48 hours to address their grievances. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut off ties with Qatar on 5 June, accusing it of supporting terrorism. On 22 June they issued a 13-point list of demands to end the standoff and gave Qatar 10 days to comply.

Details of the response were not immediately available, but a Gulf official told the news agency AFP that the Qatari foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, had delivered it during a short visit to Kuwait, which is acting as a mediator in the crisis.

Qatar has previously said the stiff demands – including closing the broadcast channel al-Jazeera and ejecting Turkish troops based in Qatar – are so draconian that they appeared designed to be rejected.

According to a joint statement on the Saudi state news agency SPA, the four countries agreed to a request by Kuwait to extend by 48 hours Sunday’s deadline for compliance. Foreign ministers from the four countries would meet in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss Qatar, Egypt said.

Hacked Email Shows UAE Ambassador Lobbying the Obama White House on Yemen War

Part of keeping close relationships with serial human rights violators, as the U.S. does, is the constant pressure from those governments to ignore their reported abuses. That dynamic was on full display in a hacked email exchange between the United Arab Emirates’ influential ambassador to the U.S. and a top Obama national security official. The sometimes testy back-and-forth between allies, which was obtained by The Intercept, shows how friendly foreign governments lobby the White House on human rights, and how the White House sometimes pushes back.

During the exchange, which took place in June 2016, the UAE’s Ambassador Yousef Al-Otaiba tries to convince Robert Malley, then a top Middle East advisor to President Barack Obama, that human rights reporting critical of the U.S.-backed bombing coalition in Yemen was unfairly biased. The UAE is a key member of the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war, which has killed thousands of people, destroyed hospitals, food sources, and water infrastructure, and left 7 million people on the brink of starvation.

In the exchange, Otaiba tried to persuade Malley that reporting by the British-based news agency Reuters was unfairly biased. Otaiba focused on a Reuters report that said Arab monarchies had pressured then-U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon into removing the Yemen coalition from a U.N. list that shames countries for killing children. The Reuters story claimed that Persian Gulf state foreign ministers had threatened to withhold millions of dollars of from U.N. humanitarian programs. In an extraordinary press conference two days later, Ban all but confirmed the report.

An excellent article, worth a full read, from Gareth Porter. Here are some snippets:

Foisting Blame for Cyber-hacking on Russia

Recent hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking hysteria and contributed further to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared to share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who testified did nothing to discourage the politicians. On June 21, Samuel Liles, acting director of the Intelligence and Analysis Office’s Cyber Division at the Department of Homeland Security, and Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy under secretary for cyber-security and communications, provided the main story line for the day  in testimony before the Senate committee — that efforts to hack into election databases had been found in 21 states. ...

But none of those who testified offered any evidence to support this suspicion nor were they pushed to do so. And beneath the seemingly unanimous embrace of that narrative lies a very different story.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a record of spreading false stories about alleged Russian hacking into U.S. infrastructure, such as the tale of a Russian intrusion into the Burlington, Vermont electrical utility in December 2016 that DHS later admitted was untrue. There was another bogus DHS story about Russia hacking into a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011. So, there’s a pattern here. Plus, investigators, assessing the notion that Russia hacked into state electoral databases, rejected that suspicion as false months ago. Last September, Assistant Secretary of DHS for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment and state officials explained that the intrusions were not carried out by Russian intelligence but by criminal hackers seeking personal information to sell on the Internet. Both Ozment and state officials responsible for the state databases revealed that those databases have been the object of attempted intrusions for years. ...

The sequence of events indicates that the main person behind the narrative of Russian hacking state election databases from the beginning was former FBI Director James Comey. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, Comey suggested that the Russian government was behind efforts to penetrate voter databases, but never said so directly. ... The media then suddenly found unnamed sources ready to accuse Russia of hacking election data even while admitting that they lacked evidence. ... It didn’t take long for Democrats to turn the Comey teaser — and these anonymously sourced stories with misleading headlines about Russian database hacking — into an established fact. A few days later, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff declared that there was “no doubt” Russia was behind the hacks on state electoral databases.

Playing Chicken with Nuclear Annihilation

Any truthful way to say it will sound worse than ghastly: We live in a world where one person could decide to begin a nuclear war — quickly killing several hundred million people and condemning vast numbers of others to slower painful deaths. ... If the presidents of the United States and Russia spiral into escalating conflicts between the two countries, the world is much more likely to blow up. Yet many American critics of Trump have gotten into baiting him as Putin’s flunky while goading him to prove otherwise. A new barrage of that baiting and goading is now about to begin — taking aim at any wisps of possible détente — in connection with the announced meeting between Trump and Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany at the end of this week.

Big picture: This moment in human history is not about Trump. It’s not about Putin. It’s not about whether you despise either or neither or both. What’s at stake in the dynamics between them is life on this planet.

Over the weekend, more than 10,000 people signed a petition under the heading “Tell Trump and Putin: Negotiate, Don’t Escalate.” The petition was written by RootsAction to be concise and to the point: “We vehemently urge you to take a constructive approach to your planned meeting at the G-20 summit. Whatever our differences, we must reduce rather than increase the risks of nuclear war. The future of humanity is at stake.” ...

In that overall context, stoking hostility toward Russia is, uh, rather short-sighted. Wouldn’t it be much better for the meeting between Trump and Putin to bring Washington and Moscow closer to détente rather than bringing us closer to nuclear annihilation?

South China Sea: China angered by US presence, seen as a 'serious military provocation'

'Serious military provocation': China angered by US presence in South China Sea

The passage of a US warship close to a disputed island in the South China Sea was a “serious political and military provocation”, Beijing said, one that could further strain relations between the superpowers.

The destroyer, the USS Stethem, sailed less than 12 nautical miles from tiny Triton Island in the Paracel Islands archipelago, which is claimed by China as well as Taiwan and Vietnam, a US official said. The distance is commonly accepted as constituting the territorial waters of a landmass.

The operation, meant to demonstrate freedom of navigation in disputed waters, came just hours before a scheduled phone call between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. State media reported that Xi told US Trump bilateral relations were “affected by some negative factors”, following a series of US actions that angered Beijing.

China had dispatched military vessels and fighter planes in response to USS Stethem, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a statement late on Sunday, according to state news agency Xinhua. “The Chinese side strongly urges the US side to immediately stop such kind of provocative operations that violate China’s sovereignty and threaten China’s security,” the spokesman said.

Security Flaw in Israeli Propaganda App Exposed User Emails

A propaganda app connected to the Israeli government failed to include basic privacy and security protections, putting the email addresses of at least 1,900 of the Israeli government’s most ardent supporters at risk. The vulnerabilities in the app, called Act.il, were discovered by an independent security researcher, who disclosed the flaws to the Intercept.

Act.il has been touted for months by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. It was funded by three non-profit partners — Maccabee Task Force, a pro-Israel campus group; the Israeli-American Council, a non-profit that promotes ties between the U.S. and Israel; and IDC Herzliya, an Israeli research institution. All three organizations receive substantial funding from the billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who has poured money into right-wing pro-Israel causes and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. ...

Available in both Hebrew and English, Act.il awards users badges and points for completing “missions” — tasks or assignments — that involve spreading news stories and other messages through social media. Most promote positions taken by right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and focus on pushing back against the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (or BDS) movement. BDS seeks to leverage non-violent tactics to punish Israel economically for its ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories.

Protesters plan to 'kettle' leaders at G20 summit in Hamburg

Protesters plan to take advantage of the decision to hold this week’s G20 summit in a crowded inner-city area of Hamburg and copy police crowd control tactics to “kettle Trump, Putin and Erdogan”.

Authorities in Germany’s second-largest city are preparing for the arrival of an unprecedented line-up of controversial world leaders, as well as protest groups eager to voice dissent on 7 and 8 July. ... The chancellor, Angela Merkel, has argued that her birthplace, a wealthy port city and a “beacon of free trade”, was “almost predestined” to host the gathering of the world’s leading industrialised and developing economies. But the decision to hold it at a congress centre in a densely populated part of the inner city, bordering a district with a long-running history of anti-establishment protests and annual May Day riots, has put police services on high alert.

On Sunday night, the first of a series of protest marches culminated in clashes with police over a disputed campsite in one of the city’s park areas. Several people were reportedly injured and one person was arrested. ... A “G20 not welcome” march on Saturday is expected to attract between 50,000 and 100,000 members of anti-fascist, feminist and Kurdish groups, as well as climate activists. A separate protest march, “Hamburg Shows Attitude”, has been organised by a range of cultural and social institutions in the city. Police have expressed particular concern about Thursday afternoon’s “Welcome to Hell” march, expected to draw up to 8,000 anarchists and leftwing radicals.

'Not One Day More': Massive London Rally Says No to Austerity, Privatization

Tens of thousands marched through central London on Saturday to protest privatization and austerity that has led to cuts in spending for education and public services. Many carried signs reading: "Austerity Kills," "Cuts Cost Lives," "Not One Day More," and "Tories Out."

After holding a minute's silence in honor of the victims of the deadly Grenfell Tower fire in London, which killed at least 80 people, those in the crowd also staged a round of applause for the emergency services. Protesters then headed towards a packed Parliament Square to hear Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and other politicians and union leaders speak.

Corbyn told the crowd: “We are the people, we are united and we are determined, we are not going to be divided or let austerity divide us. We are increasing in support and we are determined to force another election as soon as we can.” Corbyn continued: "The Tories are in retreat, austerity is in retreat, the economic arguments of austerity are in retreat. It's those of social justice, of unity, of people coming together to oppose racism and all those that would divide us, that are the ones that are moving forward. This is the age of imagination, this is the age in which we will achieve that decency and social justice that we all crave."

On Contact: Noam Chomsky discusses his latest book 'Requiem for the American Dream'

Portland Republicans to use militia for security as far-right rallies continue

Brawls and verbal confrontations punctuated the latest in a series of far-right “patriot movement” events in Portland, Oregon, on Friday, as around 100 attendees clashed verbally and occasionally physically with “anti-fascist” protesters. In such an atmosphere of tension and violence, Portland Republicans voted this week to invite heavily armed militia groups to provide security at public events.

The Portland Mercury reported the controversial move, after the text of a party resolution was leaked. In May, the Guardian reported that Multnomah County GOP chairman James Buchal was considering such a move as a result of perceived danger from anti-fascist protesters. Buchal then used a major rightwing rally in the city, on 4 June and in the tense aftermath of a racially motivated double murder on city transportation, as a recruiting platform.

The Mercury reported that Multnomah Republicans had resolved in a meeting on Monday to “utilize volunteers from the Oregon Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, and other security groups” to protect their events. It was previously reported that the party was asking for donations to combat “threats of leftist violence”.

The groups that Republicans are proposing to employ are controversial. Following the Guardian’s initial report, the Anti Defamation League wrote an open letter to Buchal which said groups such as the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters “are not benign ‘security forces’. They are, in our judgment, militia-style, anti-government extremist groups”.

Here's an interesting trend:

Texas liberals and California conservatives swap states

Paul Chabot is a native Californian who stood for Congress last year as a Republican, in a district near Los Angeles. After his defeat, he decided the only option was to move to Texas. ... “I lost to a very liberal Democrat that the people elected and I came to the conclusion that you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. That really was the end of it for us in California. We realised then that the majority of the people around us no longer shared the same values that my wife and I believe in.” ...

“In California we always jokingly said, ‘If this state goes to hell we’ll end up moving to Texas.’ And a lot of people say it and some people actually do it,” Chabot said. ... In May he launched Conservative Move – slogan: Helping Families Move Right – a company to help fellow sufferers flee their liberal hellscapes and find asylum in the warm, red glow of suburban north Texas. The 43-year-old said the response “has been fast and furious”: about a thousand expressions of interest, three-quarters of them from Californians. ...

According to a Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) analysis of American Community Survey data, 502,978 people older than 25 moved from California to Texas between 2005 and 2015. Some 290,214 people went the other way. Texas was the top destination for Californians, and vice-versa.

Democratic Superdelegate, in Room Full of Health Insurance Executives, Laughs Off Prospect of Single Payer

Activists accross the country have provided real momentum to the idea of a single-payer health care system, pressing the issue in California and among leading figures in the Democratic Party. The mere prospect of single payer, however, has elicited swift derision from some corners of the party, with Dick Gephardt, the former Democratic House minority leader, laughing off the idea at a health insurance conference earlier this month. “Not in my lifetime,” scoffed Gephardt, when asked if the United States will ever adopt such a system.

Gephardt, who serves as a Democratic “superdelegate” responsible for choosing the party’s presidential nominee, was asked about the possibility of single payer at the Centene Corporation annual investor day conference at The Pierre, a ritzy five-star hotel in New York City. ... “There is no way you could pass single payer in any intermediate future,” Gephardt declared. America, he added, has the “greatest health care system in the world, bar none.” And while single payer would provide universal coverage, there would be less quality and innovation without the “involvement of the private sector.”

Haley Barbour, the former Republican National Committee chair, another speaker at the event, chimed in to agree. “Hear, hear. Put me down as agreeing with Leader Gephardt as usual,” Barbour chuckled.

Senate ‘close’ to final health bill

As Donald Trump’s health secretary fended off questions about whether the president is too distracted by Twitter to focus on healthcare reform, the White House’s top legislative liaison official said the Senate was “getting close” to agreement on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, told Fox News Sunday Trump was spending the weekend making calls to lawmakers to “get the Senate package across the finish line”. As Short spoke, Trump sparked a war of words in the media by tweeting a video, apparently taken from Reddit, of himself body-slamming a man with a CNN logo for a head, with the message: “#FraudNewsCNN #FNN”. ...

The Senate healthcare bill did not reach a vote this week, after conservative and moderate senators signalled their opposition, in the face of intense pressure from constituents and after a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score that said 22m Americans would be without health insurance by 2026 if the bill was passed. ...

Short told Fox News Sunday the CBO now has two versions of the bill to score. The Texas senator Ted Cruz is pushing a conservative version that aims to aggressively reduce costs while the other version of the bill could bolster healthcare subsidies for lower-income people.

Cory Booker Will “Pause” Fundraising from Big Pharma Because It “Arouses So Much Criticism”

During an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition on Friday, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker announced that he will be pausing fundraising from pharmaceutical companies, a move that comes after months of activist criticism for his vote against allowing drug reimportation to the United States.

NPR’s Rachel Martin prompted the news by asking about his funding from the industry. “You’re in politics so you know that optics matter. You yourself have faced some criticism for taking donations from drug companies. Last month, you suggested you might give some of those back. Have you done that?”

“We’ve put a pause on even receiving contributions from pharma companies, because it arouses so much criticism, and just stop taking it,” he replied, adding that he would prefer to focus on pulling in small donations from regular people.

As Booker noted, he received “much criticism” specifically for his January vote against drug reimportation and his heavy fundraising from the industry alongside it. ... Booker first faced a backlash on social media, where he repeatedly defended his vote, saying that he supported the issue in concept but had issues with the particular amendment; he also was confronted by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman days later at an inaugural event where he continued to defend his vote against the bill. ...

A month later, Booker surprisingly announced that he would be co-sponsoring a drug reimportation bill with Sanders — a major turnaround from the position he held in January. Booker’s latest move is a sign that the pressure from activists is working. Not only did he reverse his position on the issue, but he also has backed off of fundraising from the industry — although it remains to be seen how long this “pause” will last.

Jimmy Dore Joins Lee Camp To Discuss Why They’re Both Attacked By The Media

The mere presence of your smartphone reduces brain power, study shows

Your cognitive capacity is significantly reduced when your smartphone is within reach -- even if it's off. That's the takeaway finding from a new study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. McCombs Assistant Professor Adrian Ward and co-authors conducted experiments with nearly 800 smartphone users in an attempt to measure, for the first time, how well people can complete tasks when they have their smartphones nearby even when they're not using them.

In one experiment, the researchers asked study participants to sit at a computer and take a series of tests that required full concentration in order to score well. The tests were geared to measure participants' available cognitive capacity -- that is, the brain's ability to hold and process data at any given time. Before beginning, participants were randomly instructed to place their smartphones either on the desk face down, in their pocket or personal bag, or in another room. All participants were instructed to turn their phones to silent.

The researchers found that participants with their phones in another room significantly outperformed those with their phones on the desk, and they also slightly outperformed those participants who had kept their phones in a pocket or bag.

The findings suggest that the mere presence of one's smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity and impairs cognitive functioning, even though people feel they're giving their full attention and focus to the task at hand. "We see a linear trend that suggests that as the smartphone becomes more noticeable, participants' available cognitive capacity decreases," Ward said. "Your conscious mind isn't thinking about your smartphone, but that process -- the process of requiring yourself to not think about something -- uses up some of your limited cognitive resources. It's a brain drain."

Cyber expert says GOP operative wanted to expose hacked Clinton emails

A former British government intelligence official has said he was approached last summer by a veteran Republican operative to help verify hacked Hillary Clinton emails offered by a mysterious and most likely Russian source. The incident, recounted by Matt Tait, who was an information security specialist for GCHQ and now runs a private internet security consultancy in the UK, may cast new light on one of the pathways the Russians used to influence the 2016 presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour.

Tait’s account, published on the Lawfare national security blog, demonstrates a willingness to collude with the Russians on the part of the Republican operative, Peter Smith, who had a long history of hunting down damaging material about the Clinton family on behalf of the GOP leadership. It also points towards possible collusion by Trump aides.

According to Tait, Smith claimed to be working with Trump’s then foreign policy adviser, Michael Flynn, and showed documentation suggesting he was also associated with close Trump aides including Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.

They have denied having had contact with Smith, who died in May at the age of 81, about 10 days after talking to the Wall Street Journal about his pursuit of the emails. Smith told the paper he had operated independently of the Trump campaign.

Bernie Sanders on Resisting Trump, Why the Democratic Party is an "Absolute Failure" & More

Want To Resist Trump Without Being A Corporate Tool? Focus On War Crimes

The bold warriors of the McResistance are bound and determined to get Trump impeached at any cost, come what may. I mean, so long as it doesn’t inconvenience America’s oligarchs or interfere with the profit margins of the military-industrial complex.

According to Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, Trump has already committed impeachable war crimes in Syria. Boyle calls the case for impeachment due to war crimes a “slam dunk”. If Democrats were serious about their determination to give the world President Pence at all costs, they wouldn’t be banging on about the crumbling Russiagate conspiracy theory or Trump’s obnoxious tweets, they’d be focusing on the actual, tangible, provable things that this administration has done in Syria.

They will not do this, though. Trump has dropped his right hand and is currently circling into an opening for a crushing left hook knockout, but Democrats will not throw that punch. Ever. ... These things will never happen because the Democratic party, as we have discussed before, has become an overwhelmingly neoconservative party, and because the corporate media never misses an opportunity to advocate in favor of US military aggression. ...

This is precisely why I’ve been writing with such venom about the so-called “Resistance”, a title not organically arising from the people but one manufactured in a DC think tank to harness and exploit the healthy inclination toward progressive activism which arose on an organic grassroots level in the Occupy and Bernie Sanders movements. People with more or less healthy impulses, people who claim to want peace, economic justice and social justice, have had those good intentions harnessed by America’s unelected power establishment and geared toward manufacturing support for escalations with Russia and unforgivable corporatist bloodbaths in the Middle East. These deep state parasites have taken something good and healthy in their fellow humans and used the deceit and manipulations of their corporate media propaganda arm to twist those healthy impulses in on themselves and turn them into something sick and evil.

Trump Takes Aim at Energy R&D Funds

In case you didn’t get the memo, the White House dubbed this “Energy Week.” Though devoid of substance, President Trump took the opportunity to tout his administration’s commitment not just to energy security — how passé — but to “a golden age of American energy dominance.” Apparently the White House budget office didn’t get the memo, either, because it still wants crippling cuts to very Department of Energy programs that help Americans get more bang for their energy bucks and fund breakthrough technology research to sustain U.S. energy leadership for decades to come.

The Trump administration proposes about $3 billion in cuts to basic and applied research on energy. It would slash over half the funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and wipe out altogether the much-acclaimed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Those priorities are reflected in legislation now being crafted by the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee. EERE works with industry and federal laboratories to promote cutting-edge, marketable technology related to energy efficiency; solar, wind, bioenergy and geothermal energy production; and advanced manufacturing programs. ...

The Trump administration’s sabotage of such R&D programs comes at an especially critical time, when vital considerations of climate, national security, and economics all cry out for more, not less, attention to clean energy. On the climate front, time is fast running out for a global response to the threat of disruptive warming. An international group of prominent climate scientists, writing in the journal Nature, have just warned that without substantial reductions in carbon emissions starting in 2020, the chances are low of limiting our planet’s temperature increase to a high but manageable 2 degrees Celsius.

On the national security front, the increasingly anarchic state of the Middle East, the shakiness of the Saudi monarchy, and saber-rattling by Sunni oil producing powers against Iran and Qatar, provide a convincing rationale for weaning the U.S. economy off fossil fuels as quickly as possible, so our industry and transportation sectors become less vulnerable to price shocks induced by war or political instability. And on the economic front, the Trump administration’s energy sector cuts would amount to unilateral industrial disarmament against rising foreign competitors like China.

Trump Places Drinking Water on the Deregulation Block

Also of Interest

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

UK's Jeremy Corbyn: Halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Ruthless Crown Prince Threatens Neighbors, Unsettles Middle East

Behind the Scenes at the Saudi-Qatari Pissing Contest

Leaked Trump Tape Could Raise Diplomatic, Political Problems

How power operates in modern Britain: with absolute contempt

Waving From the Rooftops

Corporate Media Aren’t “The Press”, And They Don’t Deserve Your Sympathy

New York Times Runs Editorial Today on the Mega Banks: You Need to Pay Attention

When Trying to Increase Your Pay Was Dangerous

California Single-Payer Organizers Are Deceiving Their Supporters. It’s Time to Stop.

The new west: why Republicans blocked public land management

The Arctic Melt: a disappearing landscape – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Eddie Floyd - Raise -Your Hand

Eddie Floyd - Slip Away

Eddie Floyd - Hush Hush

Eddie Floyd - Big Bird

Eddie Floyd - 634-5789

Eddie Floyd - Something You Got

Eddie Floyd - Things get better

Eddie Floyd - Water

Eddie Floyd + Mavis Staples - Piece of my heart