Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b and soul singer Tina Turner. Enjoy!

"Please stop saying I was lying."

-- Tony Blair, the polite terrorist

News and Opinion

The US needs its own Chilcot report

As the UK parliament released its long-awaited Chilcot report on the country’s role in the Iraq war on Wednesday, there have been renewed calls all over Britain to try former prime minister Tony Blair for war crimes. This brings up another question: what about George W Bush?

The former US president most responsible for the foreign policy catastrophe has led a peaceful existence since he left office. Not only has he avoided any post-administration inquiries into his conduct, he has inexplicably seen his approval ratings rise (despite the carnage left in his wake only getting worse). He is an in-demand fundraiser for Republicans not named Donald Trump, and he gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak at corporate events. The chances of him ever saying in public, “I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you can ever believe,” as Blair did on Wednesday, are virtually non-existent. ...

Beyond Bush, the political elite in the US has faced almost no punishment for supporting the invasion of Iraq. Dick Cheney and company are also living comfortably in retirement, and both political parties have nominated people who supported the invasion in 2003.

It’s unlikely that anything will ever actually happen to Tony Blair or any of the other war architects in the UK despite the report’s damning conclusions. And he’ll continue to spend much of his time doing PR work for some of the world’s worst dictators, helping them avoid the same fate that he will almost certainly miss himself.

Blair's 'Weapons of Mass Deception'

Chilcot Report and 7/7 London Bombing Anniversary Converge to Highlight Terrorism’s Causes

Eleven years ago today, three suicide bombers attacked the London subway and a bus and killed 51 people. Almost immediately, it was obvious that retaliation for Britain’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a major motive for the attackers.

Two of them said exactly that in videotapes they left behind: the attacks “will continue and pick up strengths till you pull your soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq . . . . until we feel security, you will be targets.” Then, less than a year later, a secret report from British military and intelligence chiefs concluded that “the war in Iraq contributed to the radicalisation of the July 7 London bombers and is likely to continue to provoke extremism among British Muslims.” The secret report, leaked to the Observer, added: “Iraq is likely to be an important motivating factor for some time to come in the radicalisation of British Muslims and for those extremists who view attacks against the UK as legitimate.”

The release on Tuesday of the massive Chilcot report – which the New York Times called a “devastating critique of Tony Blair” – not only offers more proof of this causal link, but also reveals that Blair was expressly warned before the invasion that his actions would provoke Al Qaeda attacks on the UK. As my colleague Jon Schwarz reported yesterday, the report’s Executive Summary explicitly states that “Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would ‘increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.'” ...

Despite how clear this causal connection is, it is still necessary to document because acknowledging it remains one of the west’s most harshly enforced taboos. In the UK, those who point out that the Iraq War provoked this attack were – and still are – vilified. Tariq Ali recounts the vicious public repudiation he received when he raised the issue in a Guardian article the day after the attack. Tony Blair and his allies – acting out of self-absolution – continue to vehemently deny any causal connection. Last year, Ken Livingston was denounced in the harshest terms – accused of “siding with suicide bombers” – for highlighting how the attack on Iraq helped provoke the 7/7 attack. And then earlier this year, various Labour MPs denounced Jeremy Corbyn for the crime of linking these two events.

What we have here is an indisputable truth that has been turned into a harshly enforced taboo. No matter how much evidence mounts proving that western aggression, violence and domination fuels and provokes terror attacks, many influential factions still try to suppress this fact by decreeing it unspeakable. It’s obviously more comforting and pleasing to believe that one is purely the innocent victim of hideous violence rather than a participant in it, a perpetrator of it. But while that’s what motivates this refusal to acknowledge reality, it does not excuse it.

The war in Iraq was not a blunder or a mistake. It was a crime

Tony Blair is damned. We have seen establishment whitewashes in the past: from Bloody Sunday to Hillsborough, officialdom has repeatedly conspired to smother truth in the interests of the powerful. But not this time. The Chilcot inquiry was becoming a satirical byword for taking farcically long to execute a task; but Sir John will surely go down in history for delivering the most comprehensively devastating verdict on any modern prime minister.

Those of us who marched against the Iraq calamity can feel no vindication, only misery that we failed to prevent a disaster that robbed hundreds of thousands of lives – those of 179 British soldiers among them – and which injured, traumatised and displaced millions of people: a disaster that bred extremism on a catastrophic scale.

One legacy of Chilcot should be to encourage us to be bolder in challenging authority, in being sceptical of official claims, in standing firm against an aggressive agenda spun by the media. Lessons must be learned, the war’s supporters will now declare. Don’t let them get away with it. The lessons were obvious to many of us before the bombs started falling.

For what Chilcot has done is illustrate that assertions from the anti-war movement were not conspiracy theories, or far-fetched, wild-eyed claims. “Increasingly, we appear to have a government who are looking for a pretext for war rather than its avoidance,” declared the anti-war Labour MP Alan Simpson weeks before the invasion. And indeed, as Chilcot revealed, Blair had told George W Bush in July 2002: “I will be with you, whatever.” ...

And the horror continues, the 250 Iraqis killed by car bombings this weekend a devastating reminder of the chaos for which Blair must take responsibility. This was not a blunder, not an error, not a mistake: whatever the law decides, this was – from any moral standpoint – one of the gravest crimes of our time. Those responsible will be for ever damned. After today, we can single them out – and call them by name.

The UK's Iraq War inquiry vindicates a whistleblower who took his own life

In July of 2003, four months after the fall of Baghdad, David Kelly walked a mile from his Oxfordshire home to a wooded area called Harrowdown Hill, and stabbed a pruning knife into his left wrist, severing a major artery. He was found dead the next morning.

On Wednesday, a long-anticipated report on the decisions that brought a 'coalition of the willing' to war in Iraq was released, and laid waste to the intelligence relied upon by the United Kingdom and the United States to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein.

In doing so, the Iraq War Inquiry, led by Sir John Chilcot, offered vindication for Kelly — the scientist who first went to the media, highlighting that the claims made by the British government about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction were at best misleading and at worst lies.

Kelly, a biological warfare expert, had been provided a copy of a classified dossier, written by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and released in September of 2002. The report was to be released to the public in order to make the case for war in Iraq and, more importantly for then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to sway Parliament to approve the deployment of British troops. ...

Kelly was meeting with BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan at the Charing Cross Hotel in London. Gilligan, the next morning, went on the national broadcaster to allege that, in conversations with one source, the UK government "sexed up" the dossier in order to fabricate a case for war.

The allegation, spun out in a series of reports over the weeks that followed, was that Blair's office had directly involved itself in re-writing the JIC dossier in order to bolster evidence for war.

Families speaks out after Chilcot report: 'my son died in vain'

Heh, "How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You When You Know I've Been a Bliar All My Life?"

Tony Blair: 'with you, whatever' pledge was not commitment to war

Tony Blair has insisted that a secret 2002 pledge, revealed in the Chilcot report, to stand by George Bush “whatever” over Iraq was not an irrevocable commitment to war.

Sir John Chilcot’s critical report on Iraq revealed that Blair wrote to George W Bush eight months before the invasion to offer his apparently unqualified backing for war well before UN weapons inspectors had completed their work, saying: “I will be with you, whatever.” ...

Blair pointed out that the next word in the memo after “whatever” was “but”, and that it argued for going back to the UN for approval for military action. He said: “What I meant was: ‘I’m right alongside you in dealing with this, but let’s do it the right way, and it has to be done through the United Nations.’”

Blair added: “I wanted to make sure that America did not feel alone, that it did not feel compelled to go it alone. I wanted to build as big a coalition as possible. And frankly I did want the UK to be their partner of choice, to be the first telephone call they made on these issues.

US diplomat in charge of Iraq occupation backs key Chilcot inquiry findings

The American diplomat tasked with leading the occupation of Iraq in 2003 has backed several key criticisms made by Britain’s Chilcot inquiry despite a defiant response to its report from former president George W Bush and other Republicans.

Writing in the Guardian, Paul Bremer – who administered the coalition provisional authority (CPA) in the months after the war – agreed that prewar planning by both US and UK governments was “inadequate” and accused political leaders of ignoring internal warnings.

“The [Chilcot] commission noted that that ‘bad tidings’ tended not to be heard in London,” he said. “The same was true in Washington. Before the war, a few American military officers suggested the need for a substantial post-conflict military presence. They were not heard.”

Bremer also sharply criticised the failure of western forces to prevent looting in Iraq after the invasion and unrealistic troop commitments made by political leaders in Washington and London.

“As David Richmond, one of the able British CPA colleagues, told the commission, the coalition ‘never got on top of security’,” he added. “So the coalition gave the impression to Iraqis that we were not serious in this most important goal of any government. No doubt this failure encouraged some members of what became the resistance.”

The comments contrast with a defiant response from George W Bush, who was celebrating his 70th birthday by cycling with wounded veterans at his ranch in Texas when the long-awaited UK report by Sir John Chilcot was published on Wednesday.

Syria, Rebels Agree to Eid al-Fitr Ceasefire, But Fighting Continues

Early today, the Syrian government announced a 72-hour ceasefire to cover the Eid al-Fitr holiday, with a rebel alliance agreeing to abide by the same ceasefire, marking the first nationwide ceasefire announced in Syria since the February pact.

As is so often the case, the implementing the ceasefire was a lot harder than announcing it, with rebels claiming shelling against rebel targets around metro Damascus continued even after the ceasefire was announced.

Turkey Tightens Key ISIS Border Crossing Into Northern Syria

After years of denying that they were allowing any movement of ISIS forces through their country, Turkey is finally shifting their policy, constructing a new concrete wall south of Gaziantep to try to seal off one of the most important crossings for ISIS between Turkey and their territory in northern Syria.

The shift from tacit support for the influx of Islamist fighters to blanket denials to actually trying to get a handle on the crossing was a long, winding road, with a growing number of ISIS attacks in Turkey eventually forcing the Erdogan government’s hand.

Presidential Candidates Push American Supremacy, Not National Defense

After Brexit, US Hopes to Get NATO Focus Back on Russia

A major NATO summit is set to begin later this week in Warsaw, and while the plan was to spend the whole time harping on about “Russian aggression” and making more plans to add more ground troops to the Baltic states.

Then the Brexit happened, and as with everyone else, that’s all a lot of summit goers want to talk about these days. Britain’s referendum was on leaving the EU, and not NATO, but that doesn’t mean a lot of officials aren’t predicting the move weakening the alliance, at least so far as joint NATO-EU operations go.

But with constant predictions from US officials of an imminent Russian invasion of Eastern Europe never panning out, the Obama Administration and other hawks on the Russia issue are looking to shift the focus of the summit back.

Congress Buys the Navy a $400 Million Pork Ship

In the nearly eight years since the first Littoral Combat Ship was delivered to the Navy, it hasn’t won many ardent fans beyond the Navy, its home-state lawmakers or the employees of the two shipbuilders producing dueling models. The ships’ maiden voyages have been marked by cracked hulls, engine failures, unexpected rusting, software snafus, weapons glitches and persistent criticism of how vulnerable they are to an attack. ...

Defense Secretary Ash Carter expressed his concern last December by ordering the overall number of new ships trimmed from 52 to 40, saving billions of dollars. The department's leaders also ordered production scaled back from three to two ships in 2017 and said all the work should eventually go to just one of the two shipyards.

But lawmakers on Capitol Hill—provoked or perhaps inspired by a steady stream of contractor donations and unusually determined Navy lobbying—are now on the verge of ordering the Pentagon to build more than Carter wanted.

A defense appropriations bill moving toward Senate approval in coming days or weeks directs that $475 million be spent by the Navy to procure an extra Littoral Combat Ship next year. The House of Representatives has already passed legislation ordering that $384 million be spent on the extra ship. So it’s virtually certain to happen, a prospect that cheers the Navy greatly but has evoked dismay among the ships’ many critics.

Fox News boss fired anchor for refusing sexual advances, lawsuit alleges

A former Fox News anchor has accused network boss Roger Ailes of sexual harassment in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, claiming the cable channel chairman fired her after she refused his advances.

The suit, which former Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson filed in New Jersey court, claims Ailes “sabotaged her career because she refused his sexual advances and [she] complained about severe and pervasive sexual harassment”.

Murderers With Badges, Licensed to Kill: Nation Reels from Alton Sterling’s Death at Hands of Police

Alton Sterling shooting: new footage appears to show police taking gun from body

New footage of the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling in Louisiana shows that a police officer pulled what appears to be a gun out of the 37-year-old’s right pocket after he had been fatally shot.

The 35-second video clip, shot by a witness, is filmed from directly behind Sterling’s body and shows the short struggle between him and Baton Rouge officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake.

The clip cuts away just before Sterling, who is struggling on the ground, is shot, but the audio reveals what appear to be two bursts of shots. As the video focuses back on Sterling, he is seen with a large pool of blood on his chest. One officer then appears to reach into Sterling’s pocket and pull out a firearm as Sterling slowly moves his arm towards his head. The video then cuts off.

These excerpts jumped out at me from this article:

Alton Sterling death: 'I’ve been sick ever since they murdered him'

Abdullah Muflahi [owner of the TripleS convenience store in whose lot Sterling sold CDs and movies] stepped out of his store just as police arrived. He pulled his phone from his pocket and started recording. The officers kneeled on top of Sterling. There was a cluster of two or three shots, and the officers rolled off.

The police yelled: “Get on the ground,” Muflahi said. “Why were they telling him to get on the ground? He was already on the ground. They had shot him three times.”

There was a second burst of three shots, and as Sterling lay with blood pooling on his chest, an officer appeared to reach into Sterling’s pocket and pull out what Muflahi said was a gun.

“As soon as I finished the video, I put my phone in my pocket,” Muflahi said. “I knew they would take it from me, if they knew I had it.”

In short order, he said, police confiscated the security camera footage from his store. So he kept his mobile phone video a secret. “Otherwise, what proof do I have?” ...

Both officers say their body cameras fell off before Tuesday’s shooting.

Alton Sterling didn't have to die. It's time to address police violence

Another black man killed by police. On video. And at point blank range while he lay on the ground. By our count – I work with other activists to collect data on police violence – Alton Sterling was the 184th black person killed by police this year, a rate which has persisted at a near constant pace over the past several years. (According to the Guardian’s own count, Sterling is the 135th.) We know Alton should be alive, at home with his five children. And yet, here we are again.

Already, those with power and platform are working to justify his death, erase his humanity and exonerate his killers. Alton’s criminal history was reported just hours after his death, while the records of the two officers who killed him have yet to be released. And, due to Louisiana’s law enforcement officer’s bill of rights, the officers who killed Alton have up to 30 days to craft their version of events before being questioned in an administrative investigation – often the only path to holding officers accountable in a country where 99.9% of officers face no criminal punishment for killing civilians.

The system, in no uncertain terms, enables levels of police violence against our communities at rates unheard of in the developed world. Based on data reported by Mapping Police Violence, the rate of police homicides of black men in America last year – 15.7 per million population – surpasses the total homicide rates of England, France, Germany and even China.

Public Ed Advocates Wary of Democratic Establishment—And Here's Why

Amid fights over trade deals, climate policy, and the minimum wage, the battle to save U.S. public education from the forces of corporatization and privatization has gotten minimal attention during the Democratic presidential primary.

Diane Ravitch wants to change that.

The education historian, professor, and blogger has requested a face-to-face meeting with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, to discuss—among other things—"the depth of antagonism towards charter schools among teachers."

Ravitch has the backing of more than 2,000 supporters, who have signed a petition requesting that Clinton respond to Ravitch's request "and meet with her so you may gain a better understanding of the educational issues in America." ...

Clinton's longstanding support for charter schools—for which she caught flak at Tuesday's National Education Association (NEA) annual meeting—is but one cause for concern among progressive educators.

The draft Democratic Party platform, for example, "contains a lot of reformer lingo," Ravitch wrote over the weekend.

Rape lawsuits against Donald Trump linked to former TV producer

Lawsuits accusing Donald Trump of sexually assaulting a child in the 1990s appear to have been orchestrated by an eccentric anti-Trump campaigner with a record of making outlandish claims about celebrities.

Norm Lubow, a former producer on the Jerry Springer TV show, has previously been involved with disputed allegations that OJ Simpson bought illegal drugs on the day Simpson’s wife was murdered, and that Kurt Cobain’s widow had the Nirvana frontman killed.

Court filings in California and New York against Trump, purportedly on behalf of a woman using the name Katie Johnson, have in recent weeks alleged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee raped Johnson when she was 13. Trump vehemently denies the allegations.

A publicist using the pseudonym “Al Taylor” is acting as a representative for Johnson, and has been shopping around to media outlets a video of a woman who wears a disguise while recounting the allegations against Trump. “Taylor” said in telephone calls last month that he was seeking $1m for the tape. Jezebel has published a segment of the video along with a detailed account of how the allegations against Trump were being pushed to reporters. ...

“Taylor” told the Guardian that he helped the alleged victim Johnson put together her first lawsuit against Trump, which was filed in California earlier this year. “She is a friend of mine,” he said, declining to make her available for interview.

He then became threatening when asked more about his motivations in seeking the money for the video and about his true identity. “Just be warned: we’ll sue you if we don’t like what you write,” he said. “We’ll sue your ass, own your ass and own your newspaper’s ass as well, punk.”

Thanks again, Hillary Clinton for backing the coup against Manuel Zelaya. It has done so much for Honduras.

'Horrific Human Rights Crime': Another Environmental Activist Slain in Honduras

Another Indigenous environmental activist has been killed in Honduras, teleSUR reports.

The activist, identified as Lesbia Yaneth Urquía Urquía, was abducted and found dead near a municipal dump with severe head trauma on Wednesday.

Urquía was a member of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the Indigenous rights group founded by slain activist Berta Cáceres. Urquía "fought against the building of hydroelectric power plants on Indigenous land," according to teleSUR.

Urquía's death also follows that of Nelson García, another COPINH activist who had fought against a mega-dam project alongside Cáceres before he was also shot and killed in March.

In June, a whistleblower revealed that Cáceres had been on a secret "kill list" that U.S.-trained Honduran special forces use to target environmental and Indigenous activists in the country.

Since a U.S.-backed military coup that overthrew a democratically elected president in 2009, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for environmental and land defenders, according to U.K.-based human rights group Global Witness.

Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low for June Amid Escalating Warnings

Arctic sea ice plummeted to a record low in June, shrinking 56,900 square kilometers (22,000 square miles) per day last month, according to new figures from the National Snow & Ice Data Center.

June's "sea ice extent" was 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square miles) below the previous record low for the month, set in 2010—even dropping beneath the 1981-2010 long-term average. ...

Scientists have also warned that the skyrocketing global temperatures mean Arctic ice will only continue to disappear. In early June, Cambridge University scientist Peter Wadhams told the Independent that the area could become virtually ice-free—that is, shrink to an expanse of less than one million square kilometers—by 2017 for the first time in 100,000 years.

Current US Mining Leases Will Produce Dirty Fuels 'Far Beyond' Paris Climate Target

U.S. public lands and ocean regions already under lease for fossil fuel extraction will be producing coal, oil, and gas decades beyond the point at which scientists predict the world will surpass the temperature targets set out in the Paris climate agreement.

This means that even without the additional fossil fuel leases still on the auction block, the U.S. is already on course to drastically renege on its climate promises.

That's the conclusion of a recent analysis of federal data (pdf) done by EcoShift Consulting for conservation groups Friends of the Earth and Center for Biological Diversity, which bolsters arguments that say the U.S. must keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Their report, Over-Leased: How Production Horizons of Already Leased Federal Fossil Fuels Outlast Global Carbon Budgets, supports "the growing call to President Obama by hundreds of organizations to immediately halt new federal fossil fuel leasing—a step that will keep up to 450 billion tons of potential carbon pollution from reaching the atmosphere," the Center for Biological Diversity notes in a statement.

Also of Interest

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

'Blair is world's worst terrorist': families of Iraq war victims react to Chilcot report

GOP foreign policy elites flock to Clinton

Confessions of a War Propagandist

A Little Night Music

Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep Mountain High

Ike & Tina Turner - I Smell Trouble

Ike & Tina Turner - My Babe

Ike and Tina Turner - Two Is A Couple

Ike & Tina Turner - The Hunter

Ike & Tina Turner - Nutbush City Limits

Ike & Tina Turner - Proud Mary

Tina Turner - Shake a Tail Feather

Marc Bolan + Tina Turner - Baby Get It On

Tina Turner & Chuck Berry - Rock n roll music