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This evening's music features blues, jazz and r&b singer Jimmy Witherspoon. Enjoy!

"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands."

-- H.L. Mencken

News and Opinion

Read this. Sadly it will provide proof that if you aren't pissed off, you're not paying attention. Here's a bit to get you started:

The Taliban Tried to Surrender and the U.S. Rebuffed Them. Now Here We Are.

Did you know that shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban tried to surrender?

For centuries in Afghanistan, when a rival force had come to power, the defeated one would put down their weapons and be integrated into the new power structure — obviously with much less power, or none at all. That’s how you do with neighbors you have to continue to live with. ... So when the Taliban came to surrender, the U.S. turned them down repeatedly, in a series of arrogant blunders spelled out in Anand Gopal’s investigative treatment of the Afghanistan war, “No Good Men Among the Living.”

Only full annihilation was enough for the Bush administration. They wanted more terrorists in body bags. The problem was that the Taliban had stopped fighting, having either fled to Pakistan or melted back into civilian life. Al Qaeda, for its part, was down to a handful of members. So how do you kill terrorists if there aren’t any? Simple: Afghans that the U.S. worked with understood the predicament their military sponsors were in, so they fabricated bad guys. Demand has a way of creating supply, and the U.S. was paying for information that led to the death or capture of Taliban fighters. Suddenly there were Taliban everywhere. Score-settling ran amok; all you had to do to get your neighbor killed or sent to Guantánamo was tell the U.S. they were members of the Taliban. ...

After a few years of this charade, after their surrender efforts were repeatedly rebuffed, the old Taliban started picking up guns again. When they were driven from power, the population was happy to see them go. The U.S. managed to make them popular again.

Liberals then spent the 2008 presidential campaign complaining that the U.S. had “ignored” Afghanistan — when, in reality, the parts of the country without troop presence were the only parts at peace, facing no insurgency against the Afghan government, such as it was. Then President Barack Obama came in and launched a surge in troop levels while simultaneously announcing a withdrawal — coupled with a heightened focus on night raids, relying on the same system of unreliable intelligence that had netted so many uninvolved people already.

Mattis: not decided on number of extra U.S. troops for Afghanistan

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said on Tuesday he was waiting for a plan from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that follows President Donald Trump's South Asia strategy before he makes a decision on how many additional troops to send to Afghanistan. "When he brings that to me, I will determine how many more we need to send in," Mattis told reporters during a visit to Baghdad. "It may or may not the number that is bandied about."

U.S. officials have said Trump has given Mattis the authority to send about 4,000 additional troops to add to the roughly 8,400 already in Afghanistan. In a speech on Monday, Trump offered few specifics but promised a stepped-up military campaign against Taliban insurgents who have gained ground against U.S-backed government forces in Afghanistan.

"We are not nation-building. We are killing terrorists," he said in a prime-time televised address at a military base outside Washington.

After 16 years of bloodshed and destruction, the Taliban are undefeated and terrorism is no less of a threat at home https://t.co/feJZlK3foH

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) August 22, 2017

America’s ‘Global Policeman’ Role

Global disorder is on the rise. What can the U.S. do about it? There are two fundamentally different approaches one can take — it all depends on your philosophy of how the world works. The first school thinks primarily in terms of law, order and authority: it accepts the need for a global policeman. The second school is more willing to let regional nations take the initiative to eventually work things out among themselves. Both schools possess advantages and disadvantages. Something called Balance of Power politics lies halfway between the two.

Global policemen nominate themselves from among the ranks of the most powerful — and ambitious — states of the world. Over the last half century the U.S. has assumed this role — but a significant shift is already under way. In Washington this school argues that growing American disinclination to assert order is a key reason for a more chaotic world. From the end of World War II to the fall of the USSR in 1991 Washington had shared, reluctantly, that role with the Soviet Union — rivals but both unwilling to let the world spin out of control into chaos and nuclear war. Then, after the fall of the USSR, the U.S. triumphantly assumed the role of “the world’s sole superpower.” In an earlier century the British Empire played the same role, although contested by Germany, France and others.

In Washington right now, neoconservatives and liberal interventionists (export democracy, by gunpoint if necessary) lead the charge against what they see as U.S. abandonment of its moral duty, leaving the world in the lurch. Their list of American failed duties is long: if only we had moved earlier to remove the Kim dynasty in North Korea, or Assad in Syria, or blocked the referendum that reincorporated Crimea into Russia, or brought about regime change in Iran, or backed Saudi Arabia against Qatar to keep the Gulf from splitting, or employed sufficient force to put an end to civil conflict in Afghanistan, or backed Ukraine to the hilt against Russia, pressed more vigorously in Venezuela, established firmer lines in the China Sea, warned Philippine leader Dutarte off from his murderous anti-drug policies, and intervened to prevent looming Ethiopian-Somali-Eritrean war in the strategic Horn of Africa, etc. The list of U.S. duties, neglected in the eyes of this school of “benign” intervention, is endless. ...

Any world policeman today faces a growing number of flashpoints beyond its capabilities. Many are ugly and may cost lives of millions of people. Humanitarian crises will continue to abound (like Palestine, Yemen, South Sudan, the Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Myanmar, Afghanistan, global refugees.) Global warming and environmental degradation create powerful refugee mills that produce millions of hungry and angry have-nots. U.S. intervention is not designed to cope with these issues. ...

How long can the U.S. go on “generously,” supplying international order? Perhaps we are indeed doomed to watch an increasingly Darwinian world out there, operating without Big Brother. But the handwriting is on the wall: few in the world still support American policing of the world — or perhaps policing by any single state. ... In the end, how do we think about history? A process of gradual advancement? Or anarchy kept at bay only by great powers? Does history have any “meaning,” any trajectory? Or, as an earlier British statesman debunked the whole notion: “history is just one damn thing after another.”

Debate: As Trump Prolongs War in Afghanistan, Should U.S. Pull Out Troops Immediately?

U.S. asks if Iran military sites to be checked under nuclear deal

The United States wants to know if the United Nations atomic watchdog plans to inspect Iranian military sites to verify Tehran's compliance with a 2015 nuclear deal, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said on Tuesday.

Haley will meet with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials in Vienna on Wednesday for what she described as a fact-finding mission, which is part of President Donald Trump's review of the deal Iran made with world powers to curb its nuclear program in return for the lifting of most sanctions.

"If you look ... at past Iranian behavior, what you've seen is there have been covert actions at military sites, at universities, things like that," Haley, a member of Trump's cabinet, told Reuters in an interview.

"There were already issues in those locations, so are they including that in what they look at to make sure that those issues no longer remain?" she said. "They have the authority to look at military sites now. They have the authority to look at any suspicious sites now, it's just are they doing it?" ...

Iran's top authorities have flatly rejected giving international inspectors access to their military sites, and Iranian officials have told Reuters that any such move would trigger harsh consequences.

Netanyahu denounces Iran 'threat' in Putin talks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said Iran wielded growing influence in Syria that was a "threat" to his country as he met Russian President Vladimir Putin, a figure in the Syrian crisis.

"Iran is putting in great efforts to fortify its presence in Syria. This is a threat for Israel, for the Middle East and, I believe, for the whole world," Netanyahu said in remarks translated into Russian posted on the Kremlin's website.

"Iran has furthered its control and influence on Iraq, on Yemen. In practice, it in many ways has real control over Lebanon," he said as the two met in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

North Korea is ready to strike unless 'US starts acting sensibly'

Kim Jong Un boosts missile program as Trump touts progress

Just as Donald Trump claimed he was making inroads in bringing North Korea into line over its nuclear ambitions, Kim Jong Un’s regime announced it was boosting its weapons programs by producing more rocket engines and warhead tips.

Following months of rising tensions that have raised fears of war between Washington and Pyongyang, Trump told a crowd of supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona Tuesday night that he was seeing signs of progress in the standoff over North Korea’s efforts to acquire a nuclear-equipped intercontinental ballistic missile. ...

But a report released Wednesday by North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency suggested that Trump’s self-assessment was a touch optimistic. The report claimed that, during a visit to a chemical institute, Kim had ordered staff there to boost their production of solid-fuel rocket engines and rocket warhead tips.

While the typical bellicose threats to the U.S. were conspicuously absent from the report, analysts noted that the images released by KCNA purported to show a previously unseen missile, giving the impression that the internationally-sanctioned rocket program continues to advance at pace.

U.S., North Korea clash at U.N. forum over nuclear weapons

North Korea and the United States clashed at a U.N. forum on Tuesday over their military intentions towards one another, with Pyongyang's envoy declaring it would "never" put its nuclear deterrent on the negotiating table. ...

North Korea justifies its weapons programs, including its recent threat to fire missiles towards the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam, by pointing to perceived U.S. hostility, such as military exercises with South Korea this week. ...

"The measures taken by the DPRK to strengthen its nuclear deterrence and develop inter-continental rockets is justifiable and a legitimate option for self-defense in the face of such apparent and real threats," diplomat Ju Yong Chol told the forum, referring to "constant nuclear threats" by the United States.

'Too many soldiers to feed': North Koreans fear more sanctions as drought threatens famine

Sanctions and the worst drought for almost two decades threaten to cause severe hardship for millions of people in North Korea, while the country’s leadership continues to plough scarce resources into its missile and nuclear programmes, according to UN agencies and those with contacts in the impoverished nation. A drought that ravaged crops earlier this summer will leave the North unable to properly feed many of its people, including soldiers in the country’s million-strong army, the groups have warned.

While living standards have improved for some North Koreans under Kim Jong-un’s leadership, many of the country’s 25 million people face a struggle to secure enough food while others risk losing their jobs due to sanctions, according to Jiro Ishimaru, a Japanese documentary maker who runs a network of citizen journalists inside North Korea.

“For one thing, there are too many soldiers to feed,” Ishimaru, whose contacts are equipped with contraband mobile phones, told the Guardian at his Asia Press office in the western Japanese city of Osaka. “And corruption is rife, so that by the time senior military officers have taken their share of food provisions to sell for profit on the private market, there is next to nothing left for ordinary soldiers.”

The UN, concerned about the prospect of widespread malnutrition and other illnesses after the country suffered its worst drought since 2001, has approved $6.3m in aid to help it cope with shortages of corn, rice, maize, potatoes and other essential crops.

Bannon's Out! But For All The WRONG Reasons!

Trump Threatens Funding for California Cops Over “Sanctuary State” Bill. Maybe That’s a Good Thing.

A bruising fight over federal police funding is taking center stage in the battle over whether California will become the nation’s first “sanctuary state.”

The California legislature is poised to enact Senate Bill 54, a state proposal that is the strongest legislative effort yet to enshrine sanctuary protection in the state by curbing local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration officials. But the Trump administration has threatened that, if California passes the act, the state will be cut off from a range of law enforcement grant money. California Democrats, meanwhile, have declared that any move to cut off the spigot of federal policing funds is an attempt at blackmailing the state, and are promising to fight for every dollar.

Lost in the conversation, however, is a question few have raised, let alone answered: Is the federal money necessary for public safety?

Take, for instance, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which is one of the programs California risks losing access to if the sanctuary state bill is passed into law. ... SCAAP provides reimbursements to local jails. The money allows municipalities to partially bill the federal government when detaining immigrants — specifically those in the country without legal authorization, who have been previously convicted of at least one felony or two misdemeanors. In exchange, the local authorities must inform Immigration and Custom Enforcement officials of potentially removable individuals. The funds cover pre-trial and post-conviction costs of detention for state-level offenses, unrelated to federal immigration charges. ...

Angela Chan, an attorney and policy director with Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, said that the stream of money to county sheriffs meant that state law enforcement was effectively profiteering from ICE. “The feds aren’t reimbursing them for anything the sheriffs aren’t already spending money on, like the salaries of the jail deputies,” Chan said. “They’re making money off ICE, and it’s unconscionable, really.” In other words, the program encourages local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants without legal authorization to be in the country. ... “What that means is that if I’m a law enforcement agency and I run a jail and have to fund that jail, the federal government will pay me if I arrest an undocumented immigrant for a felony but not a citizen,” said Lena Graber, a staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “So the incentives are really disgusting.”

Charlottesville: United Nations warns US over 'alarming' racism

A UN committee charged with tackling racism has issued an “early warning” over conditions in the US and urged the Trump administration to “unequivocally and unconditionally” reject discrimination. The warning specifically refers to events last week in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the civil rights activist Heather Heyer was killed when a car rammed into a group of people protesting against a white nationalist rally.

Such statements are usually issued by the United Nations committee on the elimination of racial discrimination (Cerd) over fears of ethnic or religious conflict. In the past decade, the only other countries issued with early warnings were Burundi, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan and Nigeria. The United States has been warned under the procedure in the past when Cerd raised the issue of land rights conflicts with the Western Shoshone indigenous peoples in 2006.

“We are alarmed by the racist demonstrations, with overtly racist slogans, chants and salutes by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, promoting white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination and hatred,” said Anastasia Crickley, chair of the committee. ... The warning was issued on 18 August but came to light on Wednesday, the day after protests outside a rally by the president in Phoenix, Arizona. Trump used Tuesday’s event to portray himself as the victim of events in Charlottesville, branding journalists who “do not like our country” as the true source of division in America. He also accused the “crooked media” of “trying to take away our history and our heritage” and read out previous statements that he said condemned hatred, bigotry and violence.

The NFL has to decide whether it wants to be an institution that participates in racism. If they won't do right, their institution should be boycotted.

Kaepernick, activism and politics. The NFL doesn't know how to stop this row

On Wednesday afternoon the NFL will be forced again to confront a story it must wish to go away. At an hour when the league’s employees should be hustling home from their New York office they will walk into a rally on the street outside, organized to ask the same inexplicable question that has perplexed many for months.

“Why is Colin Kaepernick still unsigned?”

The NFL season begins in two weeks and the quarterback who took the San Francisco 49ers to within seven yards of winning the Super Bowl four years ago does not have a job. His absence isn’t difficult to explain. His refusal to stand for the national anthem last year as a way to draw attention to racial inequality in the US has apparently made him toxic to the league’s owners who fear a backlash from white fans and corporate sponsors offended by a perceived lack of patriotism.

Proof of this comes in the words of New York Giants owner John Mara who recently told Sports Illustrated that he had “never received more emotional email from people than I did about this issue.” A typical letter, he said, read: “If any of your players do that, we are never coming to another Giants game.” ...

As the NBA encourages star players like LeBron James to speak out on social issues, the NFL’s fear of upsetting wealthy ticket buyers and corporate executives seems trapped in another era. In trying to make Kaepernick disappear, teams have made him as visible as ever.

DOJ backs off demand for info on 1.3M visitors to anti-Trump site

The Department of Justice is backing down from its eye-popping demand that a web hosting service turn over information on 1.3 million visitors to an anti-Trump website.

In a Tuesday filing, U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips said that the government would no longer need DreamHost to reveal “all” visitors to the disruptj20.org website. The request is the second time in just a few months that the federal government has requested user information from websites about users critical of the Trump administration. It’s also the second time the government has pulled back.

“Much of the DOJ’s original demand for information is still in place, and there are still a few issues that we consider to be problematic for a number of reasons,” DreamHost said in a company blog post after the government updated its filing. “We are moving forward with a filing to address the remaining First and Fourth Amendment issues raised by this warrant.”

Execution halted in US after DNA testing raised questions over inmate's guilt

The governor of Missouri halted the scheduled execution of condemned inmate Marcellus Williams after DNA testing raised questions about whether he was guilty. Just hours before Williams was to be put to death, Republican governor Eric Greitens said in an email that he was issuing a stay of execution. Williams was convicted of fatally stabbing former St Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle during a 1998 burglary at her suburban St Louis home. He was due to be executed on Tuesday evening.

Greitens’s decision came after Williams’s attorneys cited DNA evidence found on the murder weapon that matched another unknown person, but not Williams. St Louis county prosecutor Bob McCulloch has argued there was ample other evidence to convict Williams and “zero possibility” of his innocence. ... Williams’s attorney, Kent Gipson, who had asked Greitens for clemency, said the stay of execution was “the appropriate thing to do” and suggested large-scale opposition to the execution was a factor in the governor’s decision. ...

Gipson also had appealed to the US supreme court about concerns over DNA testing of the knife in December using techniques that were not available when the killing occurred. He also cited previous DNA testing of hairs from Gayle’s shirt and fingernails that excluded Williams and said footprints at the scene did not match Williams.

James Clapper the scary liar is frightened by Trumpenstein.

Trump’s Phoenix speech “downright scary and disturbing,” says Clapper

“How much longer does the country have to — to borrow a phrase — endure this nightmare?”

That’s how former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described the Trump presidency on CNN Wednesday morning following the president’s 77-minute primal scream of a speech in Phoenix, where he ran down a long list of grievances, especially with the media. Trump held the campaign-style event against the wishes of Phoenix’s mayor.

Clapper’s assessment went further, much further, suggesting Trump is not mentally sound and fretted that there aren’t enough guardrails to limit the president when it comes to the nuclear codes.

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” said Clapper, who’s served in several past administrations. The former DNI director said the speech was “downright scary and disturbing,” and worried aloud about how Trump’s temperament could thrust the United States into a nuclear war. “In a fit of pique, he decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him,” Clapper said. “The whole system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”

Predicting Trump Won’t Last Full Term, Alec Baldwin Speaks Out on Impersonating the President

Trump-Russia dossier owner faces senators, Donald Jr still a no-show

The co-founder of a Washington opposition research firm that produced a dossier of salacious allegations involving President Donald Trump has met for hours with congressional investigators in a closed-door appearance that stretched into the evening. Glenn Simpson’s lawyer, Josh Levy, emerged from the day-long private appearance with the Senate judiciary committee and said his client had “told Congress the truth and cleared the record on many matters of interest”.

“Following up on comments from certain Senate judiciary committee members who have noted Mr Simpson’s cooperation with this investigation,” Levy said, “I would like to add that he is the first and only witness to participate in an interview with the committee as it probes Russian interference in the 2016 election.” Leaders of the judiciary committee said last month that they were trying to get Donald Trump Jr and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to make similar appearances. However, no such interviews have taken place. Donald Jr has attracted scrutiny for accepting a June 2016 meeting invitation with Russians at which he expected to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

Harvard Study Confirms: #ExxonKnew and Misled Public About Climate Threat for Decades

A peer-reviewed study published on Wednesday confirmed "a discrepancy between what ExxonMobil's scientists and executives discussed about climate change privately and in academic circles, and what it presented to the general public."

"ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it," wrote Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes in their study, published in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters.

"Even while ExxonMobil scientists were contributing to climate science and writing reports that explained it to their bosses, the company was paying for advertisements that told a very different tale," they concluded in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday.

"Exxon has officially run out of excuses," said Greenpeace USA climate liability campaigner Naomi Ages. "This peer-reviewed study from Harvard is just the latest piece of evidence indicating that the largest oil company in the world knew about the risks of climate change, but concealed them from the public and shareholders."

The study confirmed findings from 2015 reports by InsideClimate News and The Los Angeles Times, which claimed the company had long known about the risks of climate change but publicly denied them, and triggered probes by the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Trump seems to think you can just “clean” coal

Donald Trump appears to think that you can “clean” coal.

“We’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal, and it’s just been announced that a second, brand-new coal mine, where they’re going to take out clean coal,” he said at a campaign rally in Phoenix just seven months in his presidency. “They’re taking out coal, they’re going to clean it.”

every time trump says clean coal he imagines a bunch of miners sitting in a bubble bath with a hard hat and a loofah scrubbing their haul

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) August 23, 2017

But if clean coal worked at all, it would, in theory, work by either turning solid coal into a gas by applying heat and pressure, in a steamy, oxygen-rich environment or by trying to trap carbon from power plant exhaust.

Either way, though, the technology is still underdeveloped and ineffective, at least for now. Even the Department of Energy’s website concedes that “these technologies are not ready for widespread deployment on fossil fuel based power plants.”

Only Solution, Says McKibben, 100% Renewables 'As Fast as Humanly Possible'

"Given the state of the planet," writes 350.org founder Bill McKibben in his new feature piece for In These Times, it would have been ideal for the world to have fully transitioned its energy systems away from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable sources "25 years ago." But we can still push for the "second best" option, McKibben concludes. To do so, we must move toward wind, solar, and water "as fast as humanly possible."

The transition to 100 percent renewable energy is a goal that has gained significant appeal over the past decade—and particularly over the past several months, as President Donald Trump has moved rapidly at the behest of Big Oil to dismantle even the limited environmental protections put in place by the Obama administration. Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, a move McKibben denounced as "stupid and reckless."

"Environmental groups from the Climate Mobilization to Greenpeace to Food and Water Watch are backing the 100 percent target," McKibben writes, as are many lawmakers, U.S. states, and countries throughout the world.

Given the climate stance of both the dominant party in Congress and the current occupant of the Oval Office, McKibben notes that we shouldn't be looking toward either for leadership.

Rather, we should look to states like California and countries like China, both of which have made significant commitments to aggressively alter their energy systems in recent months.

The newest addition to the push for renewables is Maryland, which is set to announce on Thursday an "urgent" and "historic" bill that, if passed, would transition the state's energy system to 100 percent renewables by 2035.

This Pipeline Victory Could Have Major Implications for Climate Fights Ahead

Environmental groups on Tuesday were applauding a decision that could have an impact on future rulings on oil and gas industry projects.

An appeals court in Washington, D.C. sided with the Sierra Club when it rejected federal approval of the Southeast Market Pipelines Project, which would carry gas through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida—noting that an environmental analysis of the pipeline, which failed to address its climate impact, was incomplete.

In a two-to-one vote, the court found that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) report on the project did not provide complete information about the greenhouse gas emissions "that will result from burning the natural gas that the pipelines will transport," according to an opinion written by Judge Thomas Griffin. The court ordered FERC to complete a second analysis or explain why it had not provided a complete overview of the project's climate impact.

"Today's decision requires FERC to fulfill its duties to the public, rather than merely serve as a rubber stamp for corporate polluters' attempts to construct dangerous and unnecessary fracked gas pipelines," said Sierra Club staff attorney Elly Benson following the ruling.

Also of Interest

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

Syrian Civilians Brace for Humanitarian Disaster in a Final Confrontation Between Assad and Jihadists

The US deportation system is verging on lawlessness

‘Good Parents’ Who Kill Strangers

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Witherspoon - The Wind is Blowin'

Jimmy Witherspoon - Kansas City

Jimmy Witherspoon - Who's Been Jivin' You

Jimmy Witherspoon - Corn Whiskey

Jay McShann, Jimmy Witherspoon - Please Stop Playing These Blues

Jimmy Witherspoon - My Baby's Quit Me

Jimmy Witherspoon & The Quintones - My Girl Ivy

Art Pepper & Jimmy Witherspoon - Past 40 Blues

Jimmy Witherspoon - Lonely Boy Blues

Jimmy Witherspoon - Hootie Blues

Jimmy Witherspoon - All Right Miss Moore