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This evening's music features folk-blues singer Odetta, "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement." Enjoy!

“Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood."

-- Jimmy Carter

News and Opinion

A Congressman Campaigns to “Stop the Madness” of U.S. Support for Saudi Bombing in Yemen

For months, a California congressman has been trying to get Obama administration officials to reconsider U.S. backing for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. And for months, he has been given the runaround.

Ted Lieu, a Democrat representing Los Angeles County, served in the Air Force and is a colonel in the Air Force Reserves. The brutal bombing of civilian areas with U.S.-supplied planes and weapons has led him to act when most of his colleagues have stayed silent.

“I taught the law of war when I was on active duty,” he told The Intercept. “You can’t kill children, newlyweds, doctors and patients — those are exempt targets under the law of war, and the coalition has been repeatedly striking civilians,” he said. “So it is very disturbing to me. It is even worse that the U.S. is aiding this coalition.” ...

The matter has gotten ever more urgent since August 7, when the Saudi-led coalition relaunched an aggressive campaign of attacks after Houthi rebels in Yemen rejected a one-sided peace deal. ...

“By assisting Saudi Arabia, the United States is aiding and abetting what appears to be war crimes in Yemen,” Lieu added. “The administration must stop enabling this madness now.” ...

Lieu plans “to continue working with a bipartisan group of members to raise the alarm in light of continued Saudi airstrikes on civilians and the newly announced U.S. arms sales,” he said. “We should not be selling Saudi Arabia even more weapons as a result of the carnage that is happening in Yemen.”

“The fact that the administration is even proposing another arms sale suggests to me that the administration is, at best, callously indifferent to the mass amount of civilians dying as a result of the Saudi-led coalition’s bombing.”

Saudi Arabia Bombing Yemen To Quell Demonstrations for Democracy

Congress Must Take Action To Block Weapon Sales To Saudi Arabia

Last week, the Pentagon announced the approval of the sale of an additional $1.15 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. The callousness of this announcement – just days after Saudi Arabia rebooted its devastating bombing campaign in Yemen – is breathtaking. The Saudi-led coalition has used American-made fighter jets, bombs and other munitions in a relentless onslaught against Yemen that has left thousands of innocent civilians dead and created a humanitarian crisis that the United Nations characterizes as a "catastrophe." In just the last few days, the Saudi-led coalition has killed at least 35 people – most of them women and children – in three airstrikes against a school, a residential neighborhood and a hospital in northern Yemen.

Congress has thirty days to block the sale of these weapons. It is a moral imperative that they do so.

The internal crisis in Yemen spiraled out of control when the Saudis intervened in March 2015. The BBC has reported that nearly all of the more than 3,000 civilian deaths reported in the conflict have been caused by airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition. Saudi air strikes have also decimated Yemen’s infrastructure, leaving more than 21 million people desperately in need of humanitarian assistance.

The Saudi aggression is only possible with U.S. weapons and logistical support. The US government has authorized the sale of $20 billion of American-made weapons to the Saudis since their offensive began 18 months ago. ... In approving the sale of these weapons, the Obama Administration has abdicated responsibility for ensuring that the United States is not complicit in war crimes. Now it is up to Congress to stop this ill-conceived arms deal from going through.

Pentagon: ‘Exclusion Zone’ in North Syria Not Technically a No Fly Zone

After warning Syria not to fly planes in the Hasakeh Province or risk getting them shot down by US planes in the area, the Pentagon is struggling to convince reporters that there is some sort of distinction between this zone you can’t fly in and a “no-fly zone.”

Fighting erupted between Syrian Army and Kurdish YPG forces in the city of Hasakeh late last week, with the YPG attempting to take the rest of the city, which had long been jointly held and jointly defended, As the fighting escalated, Syrian warplanes bombed Kurdish forces. ...

Every indication is that the Kurds started this fight over Hasakeh, and that the military was more than content to leave the city jointly-held. Russia has been trying to get the two sides to stop fighting, with the only condition being that the Kurds return seized checkpoints to the military. The US, by contrast, seems more than eager to keep the fighting going, and to expand the war.

US General Doubts Cooperation With Russia on Syria Is Possible - Insists US Can Win Syria Militarily Without Russia

In an interview today with the Associated Press, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend downplayed the chances of a joint US-Russia military operation in Syria, saying he is “fairly skeptical of the Russians” and doesn’t believe that it’s even possible to cooperate with them.

Townsend went on to say that while the decision to cooperate would be up to the Obama Administration and not the Pentagon, he was confident that the military could finish their mission of wiping out ISIS inside Syria without Russian help.

Iran Ends Russia’s Use of Air Base for Syria Strikes

Iranian officials have announced that Russia has stopped using the Hamedan Air Base, in western Iran, to conduct airstrikes in Syria, saying the deployment was only ever meant to be temporary. Russia confirmed their planes had all left Iran. ...

Indications are that this is at least in part the result of Iranian annoyance at Russia for publicizing the use of the air base. Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan had slammed Russia for its “showing-off and inconsiderate attitude” in making the announcement.

Turkey shells positions in northern Syria

Turkey’s leaders sat back as Isis took hold. Now its people are paying the price

Gaziantep has become a safe haven for Isis, to which Saturday’s attack is attributed and the terror group is reported to have significant supporters and resources in the city. This infrastructure would not exist were it not for Turkey’s careless indifference to jihadi groups, using their territory as a launching pad for attacks against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, which Turkey has sought to topple for more than five years. ...

Although Turkey’s foreign minister called for a “cleansing” of Isis fighters by the Syrian border region, many doubt the government’s words will be translated into action. It will be next to impossible to “cleanse” a group as firmly entrenched as Isis and other jihadi groups, at least in the foreseeable future. The government’s words will ring hollow for Turkey’s 15-20 million Kurds, many of whom blame the government for either acquiescing to or providing direct support for Isis and others like it, which have repeatedly targeted Kurdish crowds and celebrations over the past year, such as this weekend’s wedding.

Isis is one part of the problem. Turkey currently has a political and social environment that is conducive to violent instability and terrorist atrocities. Over the years, President Erdoğan has deployed divisive and inflammatory rhetoric against the Kurds (and other ethnic and religious groups), as part of his efforts to consolidate his rule and push for greater constitutional powers. ...

Isis will continue to focus its attention on Turkey and invest its resources there as it makes losses in Syria and Iraq, but Erdoğan’s energy is heavily invested in securing his authority in Turkey’s post-coup environment. Reconciling with the Kurds and going after Isis within and outside of Turkey will not be his immediate priority, particularly if targeting Isis emboldens the Kurds.

Turkey may be unwilling or incapable of uprooting jihadi networks on its soil. But that does not mean Europe and the US cannot attempt to mediate the conflict between the government and the Kurds or, alternatively, pressure Turkey into accepting the emerging political and security framework in the region, of which the Kurds are now a major component.

Turkish Artillery Attacks ISIS, Kurdish Targets in Northern Syria

In a move that was linked to the major suicide bombing against a wedding in southern Turkey over the weekend, Turkish forces attacked ISIS targeted in and around Jarabulus today, along the Syrian border. In a move that perhaps surprised no one, Turkey’s attacks on northern Syria centered primarily not on ISIS, but on the Kurds.

While Jarabulus was hit a bit, nominally to “open a corridor” for the Islamist rebels preparing to attack the city from Turkish soil, the Turkish military also heavily bombarded Manbij, a city which last week was captured by US-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops. ...

It remains to be seen if the US reacts to this attack. Though the US has generally looked the other way when Turkey attacked its allies in Syria, Manbij is a very recent gain, and US troops are almost certainly embedded therein, having played a role in the offensive. The US has threatened attacks on Syrian planes recently for bombing Kurdish troops just a bit further to the east, and it will be tough for them to justify looking the other way on Turkey’s attacks.

Turkey: Ankara sees the Kurds as the real enemy

Vote of No Confidence Against Libya’s ‘Unity Government’

Libya’s UN-backed “unity government,” which controls a small portion of Tripoli, has lost a no-confidence vote today in Libya’s UN-backed parliament, which controls most of the smallish city of Tobruk, further to the east. The vote was 61-39, with a quorum present.

Under the UN design, the three largest extent governments would be unified under this “unity” government, with the Tobruk parliament as the national parliament, and the Tripoli parliament serving in a consulting position. None of the groups has endorsed the others, however, which has left the UN and the US threatening everyone else, demanding they endorse the “unity” government’s positions.

The Tobruk parliament, however, said that the unity government lacked qualifications to lead, had achieved nothing of note in its brief existence, and was overtly fighting against the Libyan Army, which is mostly loyal to Tobruk.

GOP mega-donor funds group calling pro-Palestine US students 'Jew haters'

Sheldon Adelson, the Nevada casino mogul and conservative mega-donor, is leading a campaign against pro-Palestine groups on US college campuses and has funded posters that accuse individual students of supporting terrorism and promoting “Jew Hatred”.

The multimillion-dollar effort, which has launched at six campuses in California, is targeting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that has become increasingly popular among American university students protesting the Israeli government.

At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), recent Adelson-funded posters named 16 students and professors, saying they “have allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetuate BDS and Jew Hatred on this campus”. It further claimed BDS was a “Hamas-inspired genocidal campaign to destroy Israel”.

Robert Gardner, a 25-year-old UCLA senior, saw his name on one of the posters outside a grocery market. “I was really shocked and felt really disturbed,” he said.

“They are trying to cast us as antisemitic, that we are somehow a discriminatory group,” said the political science student, who is a member of the college’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization. “That is a completely spurious accusation. One of our core principles is anti-oppression and anti-racism.”

Tensions surrounding Israel-Palestine campus activism have escalated in recent years, but SJP leaders said the posters identifying specific students were particularly aggressive and had led some of them to face online harassment and death threats.

‘My husband may die’ in a Colorado prison, says wife of CIA whistleblower

The wife of former CIA officer and whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling says she’s concerned about the health of her husband, who was sentenced last year to serve three years in a Colorado prison. ...

In the past few months, Jeffrey Sterling, 49, who says he has a history of atrial fibrillation, has been “subjected to unresponsive and dismissive medical care” at the Colorado federal correctional institution known as FCI Englewood, according to an Aug. 11 complaint he filed. Holly Sterling provided a copy of the complaint to The Independent.

The complaint says Sterling continually suffers chest pressure, shortness of breath, sweating and an uneven heartbeat, but isn’t receiving adequate care, and instead is being told to drink more water. Sterling says he wants outside medical attention. He is asking for his medical records to be transferred from the prison to his wife so she can have them reviewed by a specialist.

FCI Englewood didn’t respond to an email from The Independent, but an executive assistant at the prison told Holly Sterling in writing that all medical problems for which her husband has sought care “have been appropriately addressed and treated.” Holly Sterling says the prison’s response to her inquiries have contained inaccurate information, such as dates for incidents.

With Voting Rights at Risk Across US, International Monitors Called to Help

With the right to vote "more vulnerable now than at any time in the past 50 years," an American civil rights coalition is calling for an increase in international election monitors during the 2016 election.

In a letter sent this weekend, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, comprised of more than 200 national organizations, urged the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to expand its election monitoring mission in the United States this November.

The body has sent observers to every U.S. presidential election since 2002 and intends to send 500 observers for 2016.

However, citing the 2013 gutting of the Voting Rights Act (VRA)—as well as recent news that as a result of the decision in Shelby County v. Holder, the U.S. Justice Department is scaling back its deployment of election observers in 2016—the group wrote "to emphasize that the OSCE's plans to monitor the upcoming U.S. presidential election will be more essential than ever before and to encourage the OSCE to greatly expand its election monitoring mission in the United States for this election."

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights calls on the OSCE specifically "to target its resources to states that have adopted discriminatory restrictions or will likely see enhanced voter intimidation efforts, including places like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Texas."

Emails reveal how foundation donors got access to Clinton and her close aides at State Dept.

A sports executive who was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation and whose firm paid Bill Clinton millions of dollars in consulting fees wanted help getting a visa for a British soccer player with a criminal past.

The crown prince of Bahrain, whose government gave more than $50,000 to the Clintons’ charity and who participated in its glitzy annual conference, wanted a last-minute meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

U2 rocker and philanthropist Bono, also a regular at foundation events, wanted high-level help broadcasting a live link to the International Space Station during concerts.

In each case, according to emails released Monday from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state, the requests were directed to Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and confidante, Huma Abedin, who engaged with other top aides and sometimes Clinton herself about how to respond.

The emails show that, in these and similar cases, the donors did not always get what they wanted, particularly when they sought anything more than a meeting.

But the exchanges, among 725 pages of correspondence from Abedin disclosed as part of a lawsuit by the conservative group Judicial Watch, illustrate the way the Clintons’ international network of friends and donors was able to get access to Hillary Clinton and her inner circle during her tenure running the State Department.

The release of the correspondence follows previous disclosures of internal emails showing a similar pattern of access for foundation contributors, and it comes as Republicans allege that Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, used her perch in the Obama administration to trade favors for donations. Clinton and the foundation have vigorously denied the charge.

FBI uncovers 15000 new Hillary Clinton's emails

Judge orders State Department to review 14,900 Clinton emails

A judge ordered the U.S. State Department on Monday to review for possible release 14,900 of Hillary Clinton's emails and attachments that the FBI found when investigating her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

The judge also scheduled a Sept. 23 hearing on when to release the emails, a deadline that raises the possibility some will become public before the Nov. 8 presidential election between Democrat Clinton and her Republican rival, Donald Trump. ...

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed reports over the weekend that Clinton told federal investigators that it was at his suggestion that she used a personal email account, according to a media report.

Powell, who served as the nation's top diplomat from 2001 to 2005 under Republican President George W. Bush, told People magazine that while he did send Clinton a memo about his own email practices, Clinton had already chosen to use personal email rather than a government account while she had the job.

"Her people have been trying to pin it on me. ... The truth is, she was using (the private email server) for a year before I sent her a memo telling her what I did," Powell told People on Saturday.

Former CIA head Michael Hayden on why he won't endorse Trump or Clinton

Trump: inner cities run by Democrats are more dangerous than war zones

Donald Trump veered off script on Monday night to claim that “inner cities run by the Democrats” were more dangerous than countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Republican nominee was meant to be delivering a speech calling for Hillary Clinton be investigated by a special prosecutor. However, once again he veered off message in an attempt to appeal to minority voters in apocalyptic terms.

“You can go to war zones in countries that we are fighting and it is safer than living in some of our inner cities that are run by the Democrats,” Trump said. The Republican nominee also promised if elected, “we’ll get rid of the crime. You’ll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Now, you walk down the street, you get shot.”

Trump has made increased appeals for support from African Americans in recent days. Despite that, a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed Trump receiving the support of only 1% of African American voters, a historically low total. The poll did have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%. The Republican nominee has repeatedly argued that African American voters should support him in the past week, saying: “What have you got to lose?” In contrast, the New York real estate developer has railed against what he called “the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees people of color only as votes and not as human beings worthy of a better future.”

Consultant Raised Cash for Hillary Clinton, Used Access to Seek Meeting for Coal Giant, Emails Reveal

In 2009, when St. Louis-based coal company Peabody Energy was aiming for rapid expansion into Mongolia, China, and other international markets, it sought an audience with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss its global vision.

In April of that year, an official with Peabody reached out to the State Department to request a formal meeting. The request was denied, so Peabody leaned on its lobbying team to intervene on the issue. In June, two months after Peabody’s formal request, Joyce Aboussie, a political consultant working for Peabody, wrote to Clinton aide Huma Abedin to ask that Clinton meet with Peabody executives as a personal favor.

“Huma, I need your help now to intervene please. We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months,” Aboussie wrote. “It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick [Gephardt] and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s,” she added. ...

Aboussie, a former Democratic staffer, has served as a fundraiser for Clinton’s campaigns, raising at least $100,000 for Clinton’s 2008 campaign and at least $100,000 for Clinton’s current bid for the White House. Aboussie also donated between $100,000 – $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

“We are working on it and I hope we can make something work,” Abedin replied, noting “we have to work through the beauracracy [sic] here.”

The political crusades targeting national parks for drilling and exploitation

“It’s easy to feel besieged here,” said Wendy Ross, superintendent of the Theodore Roosevelt national park. Ross’s park, named after the “conservationist president” who helped to keep America’s natural treasures unspoiled, is surrounded by oil and gas drilling that has transformed the landscape.

The boom in cheap natural gas has led to drilling and flame flaring just outside the boundaries of the 110 square mile national park, located in North Dakota’s badlands. There is virtually nowhere in the park in which its 600,000 annual visitors cannot see a drilling rig, an oil pump, a highway or a cellphone tower in what was once a sleepy rural area.

Ross said she is bombarded by letters and messages on Facebook from tourists over these eyesores. She frets that the park’s special status for clean air will be ruined by pollution and that a new oil refinery, planned for an area just two miles east of the protected area, will heighten this clash between nature and mining. ...

The challenges facing Theodore Roosevelt national park are emblematic of a fresh struggle for the soul of national parks. The parks, “America’s best idea”, have to define what they are for and whom they serve. Once-simmering tensions are starting to pop.

“The attacks on public land have become more visible and increasingly agitated, it’s got more muscle in recent years,” said Lynn Scarlett, chief operating officer of the Department of the Interior through George W Bush’s presidency.

“My discussions with Congress used to be about practical things, whether funding was enough,” she said. “It wasn’t like this. I didn’t find this general tenor of discussion that was anti-federal land and certainly not sentiments that were anti-national parks.”

There is a new crusade by some lawmakers, dubbed the “anti-parks caucus”, to unlock more public land to drilling and other development. This is a sharp divergence from the broad consensus forged since Roosevelt, a Republican, spurred the expansion of America’s network of national parks almost 110 years ago.

Gulf Residents Arrested Telling Obama: More Drilling Equals More Floods

A group of Gulf residents were arrested after occupying the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM) office in New Orleans on Tuesday, where they were demanding that President Barack Obama cancel an imminent lease sale for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The BOEM auction scheduled for Wednesday would sell off an area the size of Virginia for fossil fuel drilling and exploration. It is set to take place in the Superdome "behind locked doors," according to a press statement from protest organizers.

Obama will tour Baton Rouge on Tuesday, in the wake of catastrophic flooding that hit Louisiana last week.

Tuesday's demonstration was made more urgent not only by those deadly floods, but also by the release of a new report which warns that burning the fossil fuels under unleased federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico would release the equivalent of up to 32.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere—the pollution equivalent of running 9,500 coal-fired power plants for a year.

Message to @POTUS: more drilling = more floods. Cancel tomorrow's fossil fuel auction in the Gulf. #NoNewLeases pic.twitter.com/7Q9JqXovT5

— 350 dot org (@350) August 23, 2016

Officials Pull Water Supply as Dakota Access Protest Swells in Number and Spirit

Growing in number and spirit, the Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline is swiftly gaining strength ahead of a federal hearing on the controversial project. Support has spread across the country, and thousands have descended on the peaceful "prayer camps" in recent days, prompting state officials on Monday to remove the demonstrators' drinking water supply.

North Dakota homeland security director Greg Wilz ordered the removal of state-owned trailers and water tanks from the protest encampment, despite the sweltering heat, because of alleged disorderly conduct, according to the Bismarck Tribune, including reports of laser pointers aimed at surveillance aircraft.

"People are getting overheated now already," said Johnelle Leingang, the tribe's emergency response coordinator, as temperatures hovered around 90º F on Monday. "It's very hurtful." ...

Standing Rock spokesman Steven Sitting Bear said he's received "notifications from tribes all over the country that have caravans in route, so it’s continuing to grow."

On Wednesday, high profile activists and supporters are rallying in Washington D.C. outside the U.S. District Court, where members of the Standing Rock Sioux will argue that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers granted Energy Transfer Corporation approval for the 1,172-mile pipeline without tribal consent.

The tribe says that the pipeline—which will carry up to 570,000 barrels of fracked Bakken oil daily across four states to a market hub in Illinois—puts the sacred waters of the Missouri River at great risk.

Light pollution conceals true darkness from 80% of Europe and North America. What do we lose when we can no longer see the stars?

Every civilisation we know of has devised a system – scientific, religious, what have you – to make sense of the night sky. The mystery of what’s up there, where it came from, and what it means has been inherited and puzzled over for generations. Those questions may be the most human ones we have.

Due to pervasive light pollution – glare from excessive, misaimed and unshielded night lighting – 80% of Europe and North America no longer experiences real darkness. For anyone living near a major metropolis, a satellite image of the Milky Way seems abstract: we understand it to be a document of something true, but our understanding is purely theoretical. In 1994, after a predawn earthquake cut power to most of Los Angeles, the Griffith Observatory received phone calls from spooked residents asking about “the strange sky”. What those callers were seeing were stars.

I grew up in a small town in the Hudson River valley, about an hour north of New York City. Like most children, I regarded the night sky (or what I could see of it) with wonder. I understood that nobody could say for sure what was out there. Little kids are often frustrated by the smallness of their lives – as a child, you can conjure complex worlds, but in your own life, you are largely powerless to make moves. Looking up, the tininess I felt was confirmed, but it no longer felt like a liability. If the night sky offers us one thing, it is a liberating sense of ourselves in perspective, and of the many things we can neither comprehend nor control.

“I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth,” Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1856. He understood those worlds as separate, but in some essential conversation with each other – to receive one without the other was to misunderstand both. But what happens when mankind divorces itself from a true experience of the cosmos, separating from the vastness above, taming it by erasing it? How can we ever come to know a heaven we can barely see?

Also of Interest

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

Coast Guard Fired at Migrant Boats, European Border Agency Documents Show

Every Syrian fighter is waging an existential battle that can only end in victory or death

Will Progressive Democrats Ever Support a Third Party Candidate?

Hillary and the Glass Ceilings Illusion

From the Destruction of Greece to Democracy in Europe

“Mother of all Shorts” when Stocks Cave to Reality?

Revealed: ECB Secretly Hands Cash to Select Corporations

Report Shows Whopping $8.8 Trillion Climate Tab Being Left for Next Generation

Louisiana Climate-Deniers Who Refused Sandy Victims, Now Want Federal Flood Relief

Sea Shepherd will keep harassing Japanese whaling boats despite US court ruling

A Little Night Music

Odetta - Sail Away, Ladies

Odetta - Blues Everywhere I Go, Trouble In Mind (w/Pinetop Perkins)

Odetta - Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Odetta - Gallows Pole

Odetta - Aint no grave can hold my body down

Odetta - House of the Rising Sun

Odetta - Livin' with the blues

Odetta - Weepin' Willow Blues