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This evening's music features Chicago blues singer and drummer Willie Nix. Enjoy!

“Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”

-- Rosa Luxemburg

News and Opinion

The North Korea Standoff, Like the Cuban Missile Crisis, Exposes the Reckless U.S. Worldview

Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, recently said, “This is analogous to the Cuban missile crisis.” According to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., “It represents the greatest crisis … undoubtedly since the Cuban missile crisis.” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts calls it a “modern-day Cuban missile crisis.” Former CIA director Leon Panetta believes it’s “the most serious crisis involving a potential nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis.”

Gorka, Issa, Markey, and Panetta are, in fact, all correct: This is quite a lot like the Cuban missile crisis. However, it’s not for the reason they appear to think, which is something like “we again face a crazy adversary that is willing to blow up the world and we should all be terrified.” Here’s the real similarity:

The “crisis” then and now was created by the refusal of the U.S. to live under the same threat to which we subject others. ...

Khrushchev’s son Sergei recently explained that he believes the American worldview paradoxically grows out of the fact we’ve faced so few genuine threats. “The enemy at the gate, missiles on your borders … is part of [Russian] historical experience,” according to the younger Khrushchev, who is now a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. “When Americans placed missile bases in Turkey or any other European country [it] didn’t create any panic … Americans were lucky. They lived all the time protected by two oceans. So they’re scared at everything as a nation. … In 1962 [Americans] found they could be killed just the same as any others because of the crisis. … Here it appears they are vulnerable, they can be killed also. This created the panic.”

And that brings us to our conflict today with North Korea. The U.S. of course has possessed the ability to instantly destroy North Korea with nuclear weapons for 60 years. Moreover, we already leveled the country once with conventional weapons during the 1950s, killing perhaps one-fifth of its population. ... That, however, has never been a “crisis,” just as it was not a crisis when the Kennedy administration put nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey. It has become a crisis because it appears North Korea may be close to being able to put nuclear weapons on ICBMs that can reach the continental U.S.

US foreign policy blamed for heating world turmoil

Don't Be Fooled. Airstrikes Are War.

It is a bizarre and dangerous quirk of American politics that U.S. airstrikes are accepted as a moderate step between diplomacy and war. Take a look at the Philippines, where Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday the United States may begin airstrikes against local Islamic State-linked militants. Does this mean we're at war in the South Pacific? I suspect most Americans would say no. It's "just" airstrikes, after all. It is by that same calculation we are not "at war" in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, or Libya—all countries that have been subject to U.S. airstrikes this year. ...

What we ignore at our peril is that airstrikes are war, as is evident with a moment's reflection. Dropping bombs on foreign territory is warfare whether we talk about it in those terms or not.

This defining statement is not as pedantic as it may seem. Washington has a well-established history of using sloppy language in civic conversation to pull fast ones on the public. Former President Obama was a master where airstrikes were concerned: By prioritizing air war over ground troops, Obama was able to pay lip service to his campaign-era promises of reform and restraint while, in reality, maintaining and in some cases escalating the very interventionist foreign policy he was elected to repudiate.

During Obama's final year in office, the United States dropped more than 26,000 bombs in seven nations (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and the four listed above), though for only for three of them (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan) did the executive branch have anything even remotely resembling congressional authorization for war required by the Constitution. There are many reasons for that failure of basic procedural accountability—congressional fecklessness and presidential overreach not least among them—but the inaccurate way we think of airstrikes as War Junior is surely one of them.

Wilkerson: Under Trump, Al Qaeda is Flourishing

Trump's war powers go before federal appeals court

A federal appeals court has scheduled oral arguments for later this year on a soldier's lawsuit that claims the war against Islamic State is illegal. The lawsuit seeks to blaze a path for judicial review of presidential war-making where many previous efforts have failed, and the granting of oral arguments was not guaranteed.

Courts historically have been reluctant to rule on the legality of military campaigns, but attorneys for Army Capt. Nathan Michael Smith believe that as a member of the military he can establish standing, a major hurdle, and the facts are on his side. "A decision in Smith's favor would re-establish that war power cases are appropriate issues for the courts," said Louis Fisher, a Constitution Project scholar and former senior specialist in separation of powers at the Library of Congress.

Fisher said the granting this week of oral arguments for Oct. 27 was an "interesting development," and said "the issues were not well handled by the district court," which dismissed Smith's case last year. "Frankly, I am not surprised," said Yale Law School professor Bruce Ackerman, who represents Smith alongside attorney David Remes. "Our briefs argued that the district court failed to cite, let alone discuss, key Supreme Court precedents, and that oral argument was necessary to fully assess the fundamental constitutional and statutory issues raised by this case," he said. ...

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled in November Smith lacked standing, that his claims dealt with a matter traditionally handled by the political branches of government and that Congress had implied approval by providing funding.

Pace of airstrikes, clashes in Yemen sharply higher in 2017

Yemen suffered more airstrikes in the first half of this year than in the whole of 2016, increasing the number of civilian deaths and forcing more people to flee their homes, according to a report by international aid agencies.

The pace of clashes on the ground has also intensified this year, especially around Yemen's third largest city, Taiz, which is besieged by the Iran-aligned Houthis, said the report.

The number of airstrikes in the first six months of 2017 totaled 5,676, according to the report by the Protection Cluster in Yemen, which is led by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), up from 3,936 for all 2016.

Average monthly clashes between the warring sides have increased by 56 percent from last year, the figures also showed.

The conflict shows no sign of ending and U.N.-sponsored peace efforts remain deadlocked.

Israel struck Syrian and Hezbollah arms convoys nearly 100 times in five years, top general says

Israel has attacked convoys bringing arms to Hezbollah and groups on several Israeli fronts dozens of times over the last five years, a top Israeli military commander has confirmed for the first time. The number of Israeli attacks on such convoys since 2012 is approaching triple digits, said Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, the outgoing commander of the Israel Air Force. ...

“An action could be an isolated thing, small and pinpointed, or it could be an intense week involving a great many elements. Happily, this goes on under the radar,” Eshel said. Aside from the direct achievement of destroying weapons designated for attacks on Israel, “there is another thing that I believe is very significant,” he says: “We had the good sense not to drag the State of Israel into wars.”

Assad turns sights on ISIS in effort to tighten grip on power

In the past, the US criticized the Syrian government and its backers -- namely Russia, Iran and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah -- for evading confrontations with ISIS. Instead of targeting the extremist group, US officials argued, the army was going after moderate rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But recent months have seen a major escalation of hostilities between pro-Assad forces and ISIS, with the Syrian military making a major push to oust the group from the ISIS stronghold of Deir Ezzor.

Deir Ezzor is a strategic town in the southeastern Syrian desert, widely expected to become ISIS' final battlefront after the group's imminent defeat by US-backed forces in Raqqa.

The Syrian military's shift of focus has come partly as a result of a ceasefire agreement in southwest Syria, brokered by the US and Russia. This has freed up resources in a military that, two years ago, was stretched thin as it battled various anti-government groups across the country.

Is the Trump Administration Censoring a New Book on Government Torture?

Three years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the summary of its torture report, replete with shocking details about the way the CIA once waged the war on terror. Yet it was only part of the story. Of the full 6,000-page report, only 525 pages were released to the public, and those were heavily redacted.

Today, there is much we still don’t know about the George W. Bush administration’s fateful decision to use torture as a weapon of war, including how the agencies applying the policy interacted with one another. But a new book could offer some insight—if the Trump administration ever permits it to be released.

The book, Unjustifiable Means, is a forthcoming memoir by Mark Fallon, a former official for the Defense Department and Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Fallon retired in 2010 after a distinguished 31-year career—much of it on the front lines in the fight against Al-Qaeda. Before 9/11, Fallon worked with the task force that investigated the first World Trade Center attack and was the leader of the NCIS team that probed the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. After 9/11, he was NCIS chief of counterintelligence for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, and later served as the deputy commander and chief investigator of the DOD Criminal Investigation Task Force, which gathered evidence to prosecute terrorism suspects by military commissions at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay. Given Fallon’s insider background, his book may be an incredibly important account of the policy failures that damaged our national security by helping boost jihadi recruitment, among other things.

Yet the book may never be released—or, if it is, may appear only in a heavily redacted, bowdlerized form. Fallon’s story is currently undergoing a pre-publication security clearance review. Ten agencies, including the Departments of Defense and Justice and the CIA, the three agencies most responsible for the torture fiasco, are combing through it. And some, myself included, worry that the censors may be more concerned about protecting individual reputations than improper disclosures. Fallon was initially promised this process would take no longer than six weeks; it has now dragged on for more than seven months, with no end in sight.

Sinclair, 'the most dangerous US company you've never heard of'

Most Americans don’t know it exists. Primetime US news refers to it as an “under-the-radar company”. Unlike Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, virtually no one outside of business circles could name its CEO. And yet, Sinclair Media Group is the owner of the largest number of TV stations in America. “Sinclair’s probably the most dangerous company most people have never heard of,” said Michael Copps, the George W Bush-appointed former chairman of Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the top US broadcast regulator. ...

But that is beginning to change. Sinclair’s size, rightwing politics and close connections to Donald Trump’s White House are starting to attract attention. Democrats are wading in to the fray and demanding answers over Sinclair’s close ties to the Trump administration, which, they say, could mean the group is getting preferential treatment.

The New York Times refers to the group as a “conservative giant” that, since the Bush presidency, has used its 173 television stations “to advance a mostly right-leaning agenda”. The Washington Post describes it as a “company with a long history of favoring conservative causes and candidates on its stations’ newscasts”.

More recently, Sinclair has added a website, Circa, to its portfolio. But not any old website. Circa has been described as “the new Breitbart” and a favorite among White House aides who wish to platform news to a friendly source (a process otherwise known as “leaking”). ... The growing anxiety in America over the rise of Sinclair stems from the belief the company’s close connections to Trump have allowed it to skirt market regulations. Already the biggest broadcaster in the country, Sinclair is poised to make its biggest move yet. If the FCC approves Sinclair’s $3.9bn purchase of an additional 42 stations, it would reach into the homes of almost three-quarters of Americans.

Hospitals in Trump Country Suffer as Muslim Doctors Denied Visas to U.S.

Every March, doctors across the United States and the world eagerly await “Match Day” — the day they find out what residency, internship, or fellowship program they’ve been matched with. By that point, residency candidates have completed medical school and passed a series of rigorous qualifying exams. For those who are not American — about a quarter of all doctors in the U.S. are foreign-born — there’s one additional step: securing a J-1 visa, a nonimmigrant exchange visa conditioned on an individual’s return to their home country for at least two years at the conclusion of the program.

In the weeks following the March 17 match, dozens of Pakistani physicians had their J-1 applications denied in Islamabad and Karachi, said Shahzad Iqbal, a Pakistani-American physician in New York.

Jan Pederson has spent the last 30 years of her legal career representing foreign-born physicians coming to the U.S. for residency or fellowship programs. It’s an unheralded but essential line of work, because without foreign doctors, the U.S. healthcare system would simply collapse, with the pain felt most acutely in rural areas. U.S. medical schools don’t produce anywhere near enough graduates to meet the needs of the country, particularly in places where people are reluctant to move to. ...

What happened to the Pakistani doctors is likely an indirect consequence of the White House’s immigration policies, such as increased vetting, said Matthew Shick, director of government relations and regulatory affairs at the Association of American Medical Colleges. ...

Small-town America has relied on foreign-born doctors for years, but, like the rest of the country, the demand for doctors exceeds the supply. By 2025, the U.S. will have a physician shortfall of between 61,700 and 94,700 physicians, according to a 2016 AAMC report. The dearth of doctors is one reason to be concerned about the Pakistani doctors’ visa denials, Shick said. “As we face shortages, denying any physician that is accepted into a residency program is a bit shortsighted,” he said.

KKK denied permit to burn cross atop symbolic mountain in Georgia

Georgia’s Stone Mountain park has denied the Ku Klux Klan’s request to burn a cross at the top of the mountain, where the second KKK was founded in 1915.

Joey Hobbs, of the Sacred Knights’ Ku Klux Klan, submitted a permit application request for 20 people to attend a cross-burning on top of the mountain, which is notorious for being tied to the KKK. “We will light our cross and 20 minutes later we will be gone,” Hobbs wrote on the permit.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association this week denied the request for a 21 October cross-burning and said in a statement that it “condemns the beliefs and actions of the Ku Klux Klan and believes the denial of this Public Assembly request is in the best interest of all parties”.

Wow, there's a surprise. The New Republic calls out the centrist liberal morons for allying with the right-wing.

Liberals Helped Create Trump’s New Bogeyman, the “Alt-Left”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday introduced a new nemesis to join the “fake news” media, Crooked Hillary, and Mexican rapists: the alt-left. ... We shouldn’t be surprised that Trump is unwilling to blame white supremacists for the fatal violence that struck Charlottesville on August 12. ... Nor should we be surprised by his use of the term “alt-left.” The only way he can excuse the actions of violent racists is to create a false equivalence.

But we should be at least partly surprised by the origins of this misleading and corrosive term. It is beloved by the likes of Sean Hannity and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who have used it to denigrate Trump’s opponents. And it has also been popularized—and legitimized—by red-baiting liberals who fear the rise of a progressive populist movement.

Unlike the term “alt-right,” which was coined by white supremacists to give their age-old movement a modern edge, the “alt-left” is an insult. ... It should go without saying, but the left does not promote hate crimes or commit them. It does not strive for an ethno-state. It is explicitly anti-racist and feminist. It demands the redistribution of wealth. You may find that terrifying, but it’s not actually terrorism. And when a horde of white supremacists overran Charlottesville with their tiki torches and Confederate flags, the left was at the front lines, defending everyone else’s right to freedom. A member of the left died for those rights.

[See the article for callouts of the usual suspects: Neera Tanden, Joy Ann Reid, Joan Walsh, Tom Watson, Eric Boehlert and of course, right-wing flunky Markos Moulitsas. - js]

The function of the term “alt-left” is to collapse the distinction between the activist left and the racist right. That’s why reactionaries like Sean Hannity use it. That’s why Donald Trump has taken it up. We are likely to hear a lot more about the alt-left in the coming months and years—and if liberals continue to use it, they will be doing the right-wing’s work.

So it is time for the entire left to permanently retire the term. It insults the dead and the work the left is doing to stop the rise of fascism in our country. It serves the cause of the right wing, amplifying its noxious tactics of delegitimization. These liberals have invested a lot of energy in an effort to discredit anyone sitting to their left. They are so furious, so disturbed by the emergence of this invigorated movement, that they paint them with the brush of fascism—even while the very people they vilify are on the streets fighting the Ku Klux Klan. In so doing, they have served the purposes of Donald Trump and no one else.

Stonewall Jackson's Great-Great-Grandsons Call for Removal of Confederate Monuments

Trump: Confederate statue removals 'rip apart' American history

Donald Trump on Thursday lamented the removal of “beautiful statues and monuments” commemorating the Confederacy, saying that he was sad to see the nation’s history and culture “ripped apart” by efforts to move the memorials. Trump’s comments followed days after a white supremacist demonstration protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate military general Robert E Lee turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump is under attack from all sides after he defended the white nationalist marchers, who carried signs with Swastikas and chanted racial and antiSemitic slurs.

In a string of morning tweets, Trump compared the statues of Confederate leaders like Lee and Stonewall Jackson to monuments of US founding fathers, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!” Trump tweeted.

Asked during a press conference on Tuesday whether the monument should come down, Trump said: “This week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

While all four men were slaveholders, neither Washington nor Jefferson rebelled against the US in an attempt to protect the institution of slavery from federal interference.

Trump and America’s Fascist Forefathers

Donald Trump was even more agitated and combative than usual at Tuesday’s press conference. ... “So this week, it is Robert E. Lee,” warned Trump. “I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

There is nothing wrong with Trump’s logic. If the legacy of slavery is to be excised root and branch, then nothing less than the most profound social transformation is in order. Why stop with statues of long dead men? If you rightly condemn Washington and Jefferson as loathsome oppressors of humanity, you are then obligated to purge the nation and world of the poisoned fruit of their racist perversion. ...

U.S. imperialism is rooted in the rapacious expansionism of the slave system. George Washington envisioned the new nation as a “rising empire.” Jefferson spoke of an “empire of liberty” -- meaning, the liberties he enjoyed from the labor (and sexual exploitation) of the slaves. White supremacy legitimized every avarice of the new nation. The Monroe Doctrine staked the exclusive U.S. claim to dominate the Western Hemisphere -- regarded as populated by inferior and “mongrel” races -- an “exceptionalism” Washington now insists extends to the entire planet.

Fascism, including the Nazi variety, is not some strange European social disease. After crushing Black Reconstruction, the southern states invented, from the bottom up, the world’s first totally racially regimented society. U.S. “Jim Crow” inspired Adolph Hitler’s vision for nation-building under Aryan supremacy, as documented in James Q. Whitman’s recent book, Hitler’s American Model. American fascism predated -- and has long outlived -- the European variety.

Part 2—Antifa: A Look at the Anti-Fascist Movement Confronting White Supremacists in the Streets

President Trump’s false claim that counter-demonstrators lacked a permit

In blaming both sides for the violence in Charlottesville that left one person dead, President Trump twice asserted that the people protesting white supremacists and neo-Nazis lacked a permit, unlike the groups that gathered to protest the possible removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. But that’s turned out to be false, according to documents and interviews obtained by our Washington Post colleague Justin Moyer.

Walt Heinecke, a professor at the University of Virginia, told Moyer that he received a “special events certificate of approval” for events at McGuffey Park and Justice Park — sites blocks from Emancipation Park, where white nationalists had a permit for a Saturday rally. [See link for image of permit. -js] ...

Charlottesville spokeswoman Miriam I. Dickler told Moyer that only one permit was issued for Emancipation Park — the one received by white nationalists staging the “Unite the Right” rally. However, counter-protesters did not need permits to protest that rally, she said. “Please bear in mind that people do not need a permit to enter a public park, even when another event is scheduled to take place there, nor are they required to have one to be on streets or sidewalks adjacent to or outside the park,” Dickler said in an email.

... U-Va. allows access to open spaces and so permits were not required for such marches, according to a statement by U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan condemning the “intimidating and abhorrent behavior displayed by the alt-right protestors.”

Dashcam video shows police sexually assaulted Texas woman, lawyer says

The attorney for a black woman subjected to an invasive and lengthy roadside strip search by Texas police has released a dashcam video of the incident that he says shows her treatment was a form of rape. “When you stick your fingers in somebody without their effective consent, that’s rape in any state that I know of,” said Sam Cammack, an attorney for Charnesia Corley. ...

Cammack made the video public after two Harris County deputies, Ronaldine Pierre and William Strong, were cleared of official oppression by a grand jury earlier this month. They are still with the sheriff’s department. Cammack wants an independent prosecutor to look into the case; a federal civil rights trial is set for January.

Corley was pulled over for allegedly running a stop sign and failing to use turn signals. In the video, she is made to stand, handcuffed, outside her car while two officers look inside. She is then searched with the rear passenger-side door open, partially obscuring the camera’s view of her body. ... The federal lawsuit against Harris County alleges: “When one of the Deputies tried to insert her fingers into Ms Corley’s vagina, Ms Corley protested. At that point, the Deputies forcibly threw Ms Corley to the ground, while she was still handcuffed, pinned her down with her legs spread apart, threatened to break her legs and without consent penetrated her vagina in a purported search for marijuana.”

Corley was arrested and charged with possession of 0.02 ounces of marijuana and resisting arrest; the charges were dropped by the Harris County district attorney’s office.

Phoenix mayor to Trump: Please don’t come here

The president announced the Phoenix rally on Wednesday evening, and Mayor Greg Stanton, a Democrat, promptly asked the president to postpone the visit.

“I am disappointed that President Trump has chosen to hold a campaign rally as our nation is still healing from the tragic events in Charlottesville,” Stanton said in a statement released on Twitter. “If President Trump is coming to Phoenix to announce a pardon for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, then it will be clear that his true intent is to enflame emotions and further divide our nation.” ...

Arpaio, 84, is a notorious former Arizona law-enforcement official who was found guilty late last month of criminal contempt charges linked to his controversial “immigration sweeps” in Maricopa County. The man who once called himself “America’s toughest sheriff” and held inmates in a sweltering  outdoor “tent city” could face six months behind bars. Though Trump’s intentions for the Arizona visit haven’t been explained, Arpaio was a prominent Trump campaign surrogate — and Trump has already said he is “seriously considering” a pardon for Arpaio.

Ukraine hacker cooperating with FBI in Russia probe

A hacker in Ukraine who goes by the online alias “Profexer” is cooperating with the FBI in its investigation of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, The New York Times is reporting.

Profexer, whose real identity is unknown, wrote and sold malware on the dark web. The intelligence community publicly identified code he had written as a tool used in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee ahead of last year’s presidential election.

The hacker’s activity on the web came to a halt shortly after the malware was identified.

The Times, citing Ukrainian police, reported Wednesday that the individual turned himself into the FBI earlier this year and became a witness for the bureau in its investigation.

Brooklyn's social housing microgrid rewrites relationships with utility companies

In June, the 625-unit Marcus Garvey Village cut the ribbon on its very own microgrid, a localised network of electricity production and control. Rooftop solar panels produce clean power when the sun is up; a fuel cell takes in natural gas and churns out a steady current all day; when it’s more valuable to save the electricity for later, the largest lithium-ion battery system on New York City’s grid does just that.

These contraptions – which cost $4m (£3m) to install – reduce the community’s monthly power bill by 10% to 20%. ...

Microgrids have been around for a long time, often featuring diesel generators hooked up to lead-acid batteries. But clean power microgrids are gaining popularity as they become more affordable. Falling costs for solar panels and batteries are making them more economically compelling, and they have the potential to rewrite relationships between people and the big utility companies. Microgrids offer something that rooftop solar alone cannot: the ability to leave the grid entirely.

Just a few miles from Marcus Garvey, the experimental Brooklyn Microgrid – designed by tech company LO3 Energy – aims to let households with rooftop solar panels trade power among themselves, cutting out the middleman. “We need to make energy a product and a service that people can purchase on their own and not rely on a large centralised entity,” one participant told the New York Times in March.

That sort of rhetoric has prompted consternation among utilities, which for a century have controlled electricity access. If customers make and store electricity, they won’t need to buy as much from the utility. That could mean utilities don’t recover the costs of their investments and have to raise their rates, which hits customers who don’t have the wherewithal to install their own generating capacity. ... Those irreparable damages have not yet arisen, largely because staying connected to the grid is almost always more convenient than switching to full self-reliance.

Brazilian supreme court upholds land rights of indigenous people

The Brazilian supreme court has ruled in favour of two tribes in a case that is being hailed as a significant victory for indigenous land rights. The unanimous decision – which went against the state of Mato Grosso do Sul – settled a dispute over land traditionally occupied by indigenous people and ordered the authorities to respect the demarcation of land. Amid increasing conflict over land and diminishing rights for indigenous people in the country, the south-western Brazilian state had sought compensation of about 2bn reais (£493m) from the Brazilian government after land was declared as the territory of the Nambikwara and Pareci tribes. A third case, involving Rio Grande do Sul state, was adjourned for 15 days.

“This is an important step towards achieving justice for indigenous people in Brazil,” said Tonico Benites, a Guarani leader. “This gives us hope the judiciary will protect our rights, which are guaranteed by the constitution and international law.” ctivists had feared judges would uphold a recommendation from the attorney general’s office that any tribe not occupying its ancestral land when Brazil’s new constitution came into force on 5 October 1988 would lose its right to live there – a time limit that had been called the worst blow to indigenous rights since the military dictatorship ended in 1985.

But Sarah Shenker, a campaigner with Survival International, said feelings were running high in Brazil against indigenous rights: “If the judges apply the same thinking in the third ruling, in theory [indigenous] land rights should be protected. But there is such a strong anti-indigenous campaign in Brazil at the moment that we have to be very careful.” Benites said indigenous leaders would now work to overturn the 1988 cut-off date – a plan signed by President Michel Temer last month and which critics claim is to win favour with the powerful agribusiness lobby, known as the ruralistas.

Rare butterfly spotted in Scotland for the first time since 1884

Scotland has a new species of butterfly: the elusive and endangered white-letter hairstreak has been discovered in a field in Berwickshire, 100 metres from the English border.

It is the first time since 1884 that the butterfly has been sighted in Scotland, raising hopes that climate change has helped it become the 34th butterfly species to live and breed in the country. “Climate change is a double-edged sword but it’s an exciting time to be in the Scottish borders,” said Paul Kirkland of Butterfly Conservation Scotland. “It’s not just butterflies but moths and dragonflies are moving north quite quickly.”

More than a quarter of Britain’s 59 butterfly species are spreading north, with insects such as the comma moving about six miles each year. In recent years, butterflies that were once only found in southern Britain have crossed the border in Scotland, including the comma and the small and Essex skippers. Within Scotland, species such as the ringlet, orange tip and peacock have moved rapidly north and into the Highlands. ...

The white-letter hairstreak suffered its worst year on record in 2016, according to the UK butterfly monitoring survey, and although widespread across England and Wales, has suffered a 72% decline over the last decade. Its numbers are down by 96% over the last 40 years.

Also of Interest

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

The Nation is reviewing a story casting doubt on Russian hack of DNC

Taking Nuclear War Seriously

The Agony of ‘Regime Change’ Refugees

Refusing to Learn Lessons from Libya

Sorry Clintonists — Trump And His Base Have Officially Killed “Alt-Left”

White nationalists in Europe loved Trump’s Charlottesville response

The United States was never immune to fascism. Not then, not now

The Story of Charlottesville Was Written in Blood in the Ukraine

Johnny Cash’s children condemn Charlottesville far-right protester in Cash T-shirt

Oppressive Precedents Used Against Nazis Will Be Used Against the Left

Did you visit this anti-Trump site? The US government wants your IP address

Hat tip to do for this excellent article:

The Tempest of American Power

A Little Night Music

Willie Nix - Take A Little Walk With Me

Willie Nix - Baker Shop Boogie

Willie Nix - Just One Mistake

Willie Nix - Truckin' Little Woman

Willie Nix - All by Yourself

Earl Hooker w/Willie Nix (drums) - Mexicali Shake

Willie Nix - Just Can't Stay

Willie Nix - Seems Like A Million Years

Joe Hill Louis w/Willie Nix (drums) - She May Be Yours But She Comes To See Me Sometime

Willie Nix - Nervous Wreck

Willie Nix - Lonesome Bedroom Blues