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"Rest your little thumbs, Donald."

-- Mika Brzezinski

News and Opinion

#UnfollowTrump: why we should stop engaging with the US president on Twitter

Every single day, the president of the US tweets bigoted and factually incorrect nonsense, and every single day, his tweets seem to constitute 50% of the news; we are stuck in a hellish groundhog day that rotates around Trump’s verbal diarrhoea. Important issues get shoved to the sidelines as we argue about whether Trump’s latest racist comment means he is a racist (spoiler: yes), hypothesise about what “covfefe” signifies or cackle over typos such as “Prince of Whales”. ...

On Sunday, Chris Murphy, a senator from Connecticut, tweeted that he was unfollowing the president “because his feed is the most hate-filled, racist, and demeaning of the 200+ I follow and it regularly ruins my day to read it. So I’m just going to stop.” His announcement started a small movement; Twitter users began urging the president’s 62.4 million followers to emulate Murphy and #unfollowTrump. ...

I also think it is worth remembering that there is nothing positive to be gained by following or engaging with Trump on Twitter. The only reason I’m spelling it out is that a large number of people appear to labour under the delusion that retweeting the president and attaching a snarky comment constitutes an act of #resistance. It doesn’t. All publicity is good publicity for a guy like Trump. ... Most of the world isn’t on Twitter, and when Trump’s tweets are elevated into mainstream news, we are helping spread his vile statements. We’re doing his work for him. We’re complicit.

Trump continues racist diatribes

Trump is operating with a definite political strategy. His social media broadsides against socialism, immigrants and impoverished majority-black urban areas are aimed at inciting violence from his right-wing base (who will no doubt respond in particular to Trump’s claim that Sharpton “hates whites and cops”). He is adding fuel to an already explosive political environment in order to legitimize dictatorial methods. This political logic has already been demonstrated by his threat to have Antifa declared a terrorist organization, effectively making it illegal.

The use of such abusive and crude language against political opponents has no precedent in the history of the American presidency. Such rhetoric will undoubtedly find an audience among layers willing to employ violence within the right-wing milieu that Trump has drawn around himself. This was exposed by the recent mass shooting in Gilroy, California, where gunman Santino Legan praised Might Is Right, a 19th century tract popular among neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

This danger was touched on in an MSNBC interview with Karine Jean-Pierre, chief public affairs officer for the liberal Democratic activist group MoveOn.org. “I don’t know where Donald Trump wants to take this, but wherever it is, it’s going to be dangerous,” she said. “It could lead to some sort of horrible civil war. He is testing us. He’s testing the democracy. He’s shredding the Constitution.”

One possible reason for Trump’s decision to single out Baltimore for his racist diatribes is the fact that the House Republican Conference is planning to hold its annual retreat next month in downtown Baltimore. If Trump’s tweets provoke angry protests against the gathering, he could use this to justify a police state crackdown. ...

Trump is able to take the political initiative because of the fecklessness of the Democratic Party, which has responded to Trump’s right-wing incitement by voting for everything he demands. Their support last week for Trump’s budget bill, which passed in spite of Republican opposition, demonstrates that Trump is now effectively running the country in a de-facto coalition with the Democratic Party. In spite of his anti-communist diatribes against the four “democratic socialist” congresswomen, they played a key role in bringing funding for Trump’s immigration policies to a vote in the House of Representatives.

Democrats Use Trump’s Tweets to Hide Neoliberal Policy Failures

Saudi Arabia Edited a Trump “America First” Campaign Speech. Manafort Helped Them Do It.

A Trump campaign aide and Paul Manafort let Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates edit a stump speech delivered by Trump in May 2016. With the help of Thomas Barrack Jr., a longtime Trump friend and a major Republican campaign donor who led the inaugural committee, the campaign sent a draft of the energy-policy speech to officials from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Barrack then worked with campaign manager Manafort to make sure some of the changes were made — all in what appears to be an attempt to allow nuclear-tech sharing that could have led to a lucrative deal for Barrack, to finance the construction of nuclear power plants in the Middle East.

The revelation comes from a report, based on 6,000 pages of new documents obtained by the House Oversight Committee, that suggests Trump could be susceptible to the influence of a foreign interest when convenient for his biggest supporters. “With regard to Saudi Arabia, the Trump Administration has virtually obliterated the lines normally separating government policy-making from corporate and foreign interests,” said the report, commissioned by the committee’s chair, Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland who’s been the subject of racist ire from Trump in the last few days. ...

It wasn’t clear, as the report states, whether Trump himself had any knowledge that his aides were circulating the speech. What is clear is that in the weeks leading up to Trump’s speech, Barrack, a billionaire who runs a private equity firm, sent the prepared remarks to a contact who shared them with the Emiratis and the Saudis. He then made sure that the changes they wanted were incorporated into the speech, with Manafort’s help. ...

Barrack stood to gain from a close energy relationship with the Saudis. ... And Barrack’s already raking in cash from the UAE and the Saudis. Between Trump’s nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the end of June of this year, Barrack’s taken in $1.5 billion from Saudis and the Emiratis through investments or other transactions like asset sales, according to the Times.

Brazilians Fight Far-Right Campaign to Silence Greenwald & Intercept Leaks

Worth a full read:

How Joe Biden’s privatization plans helped doom Latin America and fuel the migration crisis

While campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination this year, former Senator and Vice President Joseph Biden has touted the crucial role he played in designing US mega-development and drug war campaigns that transformed the socio-political landscape of large swaths of Latin America. “I was one of the architects of Plan Colombia,” Biden boasted in a July 5 interview with CNN, referring to the multi-billion dollar US effort to end Colombia’s civil war with a massive surge of support for the country’s military. According to Biden, the plan was a panacea for Colombia’s problems, from “crooked cops” to civil strife.

But Biden’s plan for Colombia has contributed directly to the country’s transformation into a hyper-militarized bastion of right-wing rule, enhancing the power and presence of the notoriously brutal armed forces while failing miserably in its anti-narcotic and reformist objectives. This year alone, more than 50 human rights defenders were killed in Colombia in the first four months of 2019, while coca production is close to record levels. And as Colombian peace activists lamented in interviews with The Grayzone, the US is still in complete control of Bogotá’s failed anti-drug policy, thanks largely to Plan Colombia.

Biden has also pumped up his role in an initiative called the Alliance for Prosperity, which was applied to the Northern Triangle of Central America. The former vice president was so central to the program’s genesis that it was informally known as “Plan Biden.” Marketed as an answer to the crisis of child migration, Biden’s brainchild channeled $750 million through a right-wing government installed by a US-orchestrated military coup to spur mega-development projects and privatize social services.

The Grayzone visited Honduras in July and documented, through interviews with human rights defenders, students, indigenous activists, and citizens from all walks of life, how the Alliance for Prosperity helped set the stage for a national rebellion. In recent months, teachers, doctors, students, and rural campesinos have been in the streets protesting the privatization plans imposed on their country under the watch of Biden and his successors. The gutting of public health services, teacher layoffs, staggering hikes in electricity prices, and environmentally destructive mega-development projects are critical factors in mass migration from Honduras. And indeed, they are immediate byproducts of the so-called “Biden plan.”

“Biden is taking credit for doing something constructive to stop the migration crisis and blaming the concentration camps [on the US-Mexico border] on Trump. But it’s Biden’s policies that are driving more people out of Central America and making human rights defenders lives more precarious by defending entities that have no interest in human rights,” explained Adrienne Pine, a professor of anthropology at American University and leading researcher of the social crisis in Honduras, in an interview with The Grayzone. “So $750 million US taxpayer dollars that were allocated to supposedly address child migration are actually making things worse,” Pine added. “It started with unaccompanied minors and now you have children in cages. Largely thanks to Biden.”

Boris Johnson: EU must scrap the backstop to avoid a no-deal Brexit

Boris Johnson has said it is up to the EU to compromise to avoid a no-deal Brexit, after his demands for the backstop to be scrapped were met with a flat refusal from the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.

In comments that showed he is preparing to blame the EU if the UK ends up leaving without a deal, Johnson said he was not aiming for a no-deal Brexit but the situation was “very much up to our friends and partners across the Channel”.

“They know that three times the House of Commons has thrown out that backstop, there’s no way that we can get it through, we have to have that backstop out of the deal, we cannot go on with the withdrawal agreement as it currently is,” he said. “If they understand that then I think we are going to be at the races. If they can’t compromise, if they really can’t do it, then clearly we have to get ready for a no-deal exit.”

He said it was “up to the EU, this is their call if they want us to do this” but “unless we are determined to do it they won’t take us seriously in the course of the negotiations”.

We'll block trade deal if Brexit imperils open Irish border, say US politicians

Any future US-UK trade deal would almost certainly be blocked by the US Congress if Brexit affects the Irish border and jeopardises peace in Northern Ireland, congressional leaders and diplomats have warned.

Boris Johnson has presented a trade deal with the US as a way of offsetting the economic costs of leaving the EU, and Donald Trump promised the two countries could strike “a very substantial trade agreement” that would increase trade “four or five times”.

Trump, however, would not be able to push an agreement through a hostile Congress, where there would be strong bipartisan opposition to any UK trade deal in the event of a threat to the 1998 Good Friday agreement, and to the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. ...

“The American dimension to the Good Friday agreement is indispensable,” said Richard Neal, who is co-chair of the 54-strong Friends of Ireland caucus in Congress, and also chairs the powerful House ways and means committee, with the power to hold up a trade deal indefinitely. ... “I would have little enthusiasm for entertaining a bilateral trade agreement with the UK, if they were to jeopardise the agreement.”

Pete King, the Republican co-chair of the Friends of Ireland group, said the threat to abandon the backstop and endanger the open border was a “needless provocation”, adding that his party would have no compunction about defying Trump over the issue.

McConnell Rushes to Confirm 19 Right-Wing Judges Before Recess

Democrats are facing pressure to do everything in their power to fight back as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moves to ram through 19 of President Donald Trump's right-wing judicial nominees before the chamber breaks for recess at the end of the week. The Republican-controlled Senate on Tuesday confirmed two of Trump's lifetime appointees—Michael Liburdi and Peter Welte—without much difficulty. Welte, Trump's pick for the U.S. District Court of North Dakota, was confirmed with the support of 18 Democratic senators.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Doug Jones (D-Ala.), and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) were the only Democrats to vote yes on Liburdi, a member of the right-wing Federalist Society. ...

"The Senate has set an aggressive pace for fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise to appoint conservative judges," Bloomberg Law reported Monday, "so far clearing 43 appeals court judges, 86 district court judges, and Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court."

Kristine Lucius, executive vice president for policy and government affairs at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement Tuesday that "McConnell's flagrant move to clear the deck before the Senate leaves for recess would bring Trump's total to 150 judicial appointments."

5 European countries agree to share responsibility for boat migrants

Trump Regime Spurns Court Order to Stop Separating Families

Court documents from the ACLU revealed Tuesday that President Donald Trump's war on immigrants continues unabated—the administration has for a year been flouting a court order to stop separating children from their parents at the border, resulting in the wrenching apart of at least 900 families.

The ACLU filed suit in San Diego Tuesday to stop the government from continuing the practice, which was meant to be kept only in cases of neglect or danger to the child. ...

The Trump administration has continued to separate families for relatively minor infractions like traffic tickets, according to the ACLU.

In court documents, the civil liberties organization alleges that Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) reasoning for separating families included that a father was HIV+; that a parent didn't immediately change the diaper of his sick and sleeping child; and multiple unsubstantiated allegations of abuse.

Stephen Miller Is Trying to Stop Migrants from Getting Past the First Step in the Asylum Process, Report Says

White House adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, thinks citizenship officials are too easy on migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He’d rather Border Patrol agents asses if they’re really in enough danger to apply for asylum.

Miller is looking for ways to reduce the number of migrants who pass their initial “credible fear” interviews, the first step in the asylum process, according to emails obtained by NBC News between an official with the National Security Council and Customs and Border Protection. Most migrants pass those interviews, which are conducted by officials at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). But Miller sees Border Patrol officers as less soft, current and former Homeland Security officials told NBC.

“My mantra has persistently been presenting aliens with multiple unsolvable dilemmas to impact their calculus for choosing to make the arduous journey to begin with,” the National Security official said in an email, according to NBC.

Democrats Propose Constitutional Amendment to 'Wipe Clean the Dark Stain' of Citizens United

Supporters of Senate Democrats' proposed Democracy for All constitutional amendment, aimed at reversing the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, said Tuesday that the proposal represents a much-needed step in ending the outsize influence wealthy corporations have on U.S. elections. Lead sponsors Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) spoke on the steps outside the high court, calling for an amendment that would affirm that "corporations are not people and your net worth shouldn't determine your right to free speech."

"Ever since the Supreme Court ruled to open the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending in our elections, secret special interest money has poured in—and drowned out the voices of the American people," said Udall. "And the door has opened even wider for the ultra-wealthy and well-connected to root themselves in our government and pull the levers of our democracy."

As the government watchdog group Public Citizen said, "Winning the progressive agenda is predicated on winning" the fight for legislation like the Democracy for All Amendment. The amendment would overturn what the lawmakers called "disastrous" Supreme Court decisions including Citizens United, which ended (pdf) state and federal limits on campaign spending and unleashed unprecedented corporate PAC spending on elections, with a record-breaking $5.2 billion spent in 2018.

The bill to pass the amendment has the support of 40 senators, while the House version has 130 co-sponsors.

Kamala Harris Receives Donations From Big Pharma Executives Despite Claim She Rejects Them

Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, while releasing a new health care proposal yesterday, balked at criticism that private industry interests would seek to influence her election effort. Ian Sams, the national press secretary for the Harris campaign, told CNN on Monday that Harris “is not taking any money from pharmaceutical executives.”

Federal Election Commission campaign finance records, however, show that the California senator has received thousands of dollars from executives at drug companies this year, most of which has not been returned.

Donors include Therese Meaney, a vice president at Endo Pharmaceuticals, a company that manufacturers opioid painkillers, who has given $1,250 to the Harris campaign; Ted Love, the president and chief executive of Global Blood Therapeutics, a startup biopharmaceutical company, who gave $2,800; J. Dana Hughes, a vice president at Pfizer, gave $250; Damian Wilmot, an executive at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, gave $1,000; and Jeffrey Stein, the chief executive of Cidara Therapeutics, another drug startup, who gave $1,000.

There has been some effort by the Harris campaign to return drug company money. Records show the campaign returned a $2,700 donation from John Guthrie, an executive at Pharmaceutics International Inc., in March, for example. Why some drug company donations were accepted and returned, while others were not, is not immediately clear.

Pramila Jayapal Frustrated by Democrats Using Medicare for All Label to Push Plans 'That Are Not Medicare for All'

Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday voiced her frustration with fellow Democrats who are attaching the Medicare for All label to proposals that fall well short of the core principles and goals of single-payer healthcare. "I appreciate the robust healthcare debate my Democratic colleagues have brought to the table," Jayapal tweeted. "But as lead sponsor of Medicare for All [in the House], I find it misleading when my fellow Democrats use the M4A name to describe proposals that are not Medicare for All."

Though Jayapal did not mention Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) by name, the Washington Democrat's criticism appears to have been directed at Harris's newly released healthcare plan, which single-payer advocates have criticized as Medicare for All in name only.

#MedicareForAll means:

Guaranteed, comprehensive benefits for EVERYONE
No private insurance premiums, co-pays, deductibles or out-of-network doctors
For-profit industry does NOT have a role in determining one’s right to healthcare

Anything less is NOT Medicare for All.

— Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal) July 30, 2019

"The Medicare for All movement is powerful because grassroots members have fought for years to achieve true universal healthcare and remove the profit-motive from the system," wrote the Washington Democrat. "Any policy that uses the M4ALL name must embody these principles, not undermine them."

Sanders and Warren Tout Progressive Vision for 2020 as Second Democratic Debate Kicks Off

Score a soundbite win for Sanders.

“You’re wrong”: Sen. Bernie Sanders defends himself against John Delaney’s criticism of “Medicare For All.” https://t.co/jh9Xk24ZCC pic.twitter.com/UZVCgFDLu7

— CNN (@CNN) July 31, 2019

Bernie Sanders responds to Tim Ryan: "I do know; I wrote the damn bill" #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/jFGjthUbe3

— Variety (@Variety) July 31, 2019

Warren and Sanders face fierce challenges by moderates over healthcare

Progressive Democratic 2020 frontrunners Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren faced fierce challenges from moderate candidates on Tuesday night in the second round of televised presidential debates. Few have wielded as much influence in shaping the Democratic party’s progressive agenda as Sanders and Warren, but critics contend they are too “far-left” to wrench the White House from Donald Trump’s grasp. Former Maryland congressman John Delaney came out swinging by accusing Warren and Sanders of promising “bad policies like Medicare for All, free everything and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get Trump reelected.”

Warren countered the Democrats cannot win the White House with “small ideas and spinelessness”.

Warren slips the knife in:

Extremely rude of Elizabeth Warren to murder John Delaney on national television like this.#DemDebate pic.twitter.com/9OO6F6T0Mw

— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) July 31, 2019

'Moral Courage and Conviction' Behind Primary Challenge to Rep. Josh Gottheimer—One of the Most Conservative House Democrats

One of the most conservative members of the Democratic House caucus won't be running unopposed for re-election in the 2020 primary.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) will face off against political newcomer Arati Kreibich in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. In a statement announcing her run, Kreibich said that she was ready to take on Gottheimer, who, she pointed out, is one of the members of the caucus most friendly to President Donald Trump.

"He's got one of the most pro-Trump records of any House Democrat in Washington," said Kreibich of Gottheimer, "and when he comes home he refuses to explain his votes, hiding behind his position as a leader of the so-called Problem Solvers Caucus." Gottheimer regularly stands in the way of progress, Kreibich said in her statement, another sign that he's not in tune with his constituents.

"He seems more interested in creating roadblocks for big solutions than solving the problems that make life so tough for families in New Jersey," said Kreibich. "But you don't get a nickname like 'the Human Fundraising Machine' without losing touch with the people."

Deserving to be "primaried" is JOSH GOTTHEIMER (NJ-5)
Aligned w/ the GOP, his goals are “lowering taxes” and “cutting burdensome and unnecessary regulation,” good for Wall Street patrons. Hostile toward Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar while tight w/ Saudia Arabia and Israel lobbies.

— RootsAction (@Roots_Action) July 2, 2019

New BLM Appointee Brings Conflicts of Interest and Plans to Sell Off Public Lands to Agency Charged With Protecting Them

Control over nearly 250 million acres of public lands was placed Monday in the hands of a former Reagan administration official who has argued that all federal lands should be sold to fossil fuel and other corporate interests in accordance with the goals of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt appointed attorney William Perry Pendley as acting head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), sending fears throughout conservation groups that many of the country's minerals and resources will soon be handed over to oil and gas companies.

Pendley wrote in 2016 that "the Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be sold," and as recently as this month he lauded fossil fuel extraction as an "energy, economic, and environmental miracle."

"This appointment shows Trump and Bernhardt are only interested in selling off public lands to the highest bidder," said Chris Saeger, executive director of the Western Values Project, in a statement. "Pendley is an outspoken advocate for the transfer of public lands to the state. Anything they've ever said about not selling off public lands has just been a political smokescreen to distract from their real intentions: handing over public lands to their special interest allies."

Pendley's appointment comes on the heels of the Interior Department's decision to spread the BLM's Washington, D.C.-based headquarters across a number of western states, a move which critics say is aimed at giving the agency less control over federal decision-making about federal lands. ...

During his tenure in the Interior Department during the Reagan administration, the Western Values Project noted in a statement, Pendley frequently called for a repeal of the Antiquities Act, while preserves archeological sites, historic structures, and cultural landscapes across the country.

Fewer than 19 vaquita porpoises left

There are fewer than 19 vaquita porpoises thought to be left, according to a study. In 2016, estimates of the vaquita population stood at just 30, but research published in Royal Society Open Science suggests the figure has fallen further. “Based on the uncertainty inherent in the models, the number could be as few as six,” said Prof Len Thomas, a statistician at the University of St Andrews and an author on the study.

The vaquita population lives in an area at the upper corner of the Gulf of California in Mexico. To estimate their numbers, the researchers recorded the vaquitas’ echolocation clicks using a large grid of acoustic sensors stationed over their habitat. Combined with visual sightings, the data shows a decline of 98.6% since monitoring started in 2011.

The critically endangered species get caught and drowned as a bycatch in gillnets. These nets are vertically suspended in water and the spacing of the mesh is supposed to allow only fish of certain size to be caught, but in practice marine mammals and sea turtles can quickly become entangled and drown.

Although the Mexican government banned gillnets in 2015, illegal fishing with them has continued and 10 dead vaquitas have been found caught in them since the ban. Those using gillnets are aiming to catch totoaba, a large marine fish whose swim bladder – an inflatable organ that helps to maintain buoyancy in the water – is highly prized in China for use in traditional medicine.

White House ‘undercutting evidence' of climate crisis, says analyst who resigned

A former senior government analyst has accused the Trump administration of “undercutting evidence” of the threat to national security from the climate crisis after his report on the issue was blocked by the White House.

Rod Schoonover, who worked as an intelligence analyst for the federal government for 10 years before resigning earlier this month, submitted a written testimony on the “wide-ranging implications” of global heating over the next 20 years, for submission to the House intelligence committee last month.

But he said on Tuesday that the report was stopped by the White House because his findings “did not comport with administration’s position on climate change”. ...

“The decision to block the written testimony is another example of a well-established pattern in the Trump administration of undercutting evidence that contradicts its policy positions,” Schoonover wrote in an opinion article for the New York Times, published on Tuesday. “Beyond obstructing science, this action also undermined the analytic independence of a major element of the intelligence community.”

Also of Interest

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

A Trump-Loving Gun Store Is Now Targeting the Squad

Media Downplay Climate Disruption’s Ever-Growing Role in Driving Migration

Living without water: the crisis pushing people out of El Salvador

More Than 160 Environmental Defenders Were Killed in 2018, and Many Others Labeled Terrorists and Criminals

‘We are the vaccine against unilateralism’: Non-Aligned Movement gathers in Venezuela to resist dictatorship of dollar

Bernie Sanders, Julián Castro Among 2020 Candidates Set to Attend First-Ever Presidential Forum on Native American Issues

Do Debate Questions Reflect Concerns of Democratic Voters?

Hospitals Squeal Like Stuck Pigs Over Trump Proposal to Force Disclosure of Insurance Company Discounts

A Little Night Music

Henry Townsend - Henry's Worry Blues

Henry Townsend - Too Pretty for Me

Henry Townsend - The Train Is Coming

Henry Townsend - Poor man blues

Henry Townsend - Buzz Buzz Buzz

Henry Townsend - She's Got A Mean Disposition

Henry Townsend, Sick With The Blues

Pinetop Sparks & Henry Townsend - Everyday I have the Blues

Henry Townsend - My Home Ain't Here

Henry Townsend - I Asked Her If She Loved Me

Henry Townsend - The Cut Back Blues

Henry Townsend - Sloppy Drunk Again