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"Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here."

-- Arthur C. Clarke

News and Opinion

Trump Just Took Another Step to Get Us Ready for Space Battles

It’s not quite the Space Force that Donald Trump really wants, but he just established the U.S. Space Command (aka SpaceCom) in another small step toward getting the U.S. ready for battles in space.

At a ceremony in the Rose Garden Thursday afternoon, President Trump announced the newly revamped program, touting its goals of protecting valuable U.S. satellites and preparing the country for war on the final frontier.

“It’s a big deal,” Trump said. “As the newest combatant command, SpaceCom will defend America’s vital interests in space, the next war-fighting domain.”

“And I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody. It’s all about space,” he added.

SpaceCom will serve as a command center for all U.S. military operations in space — not to be confused with the Space Force that Trump wants, which would be a sixth branch of the military. In order to establish that, he needs congressional approval.

Space warfare: President Donald Trump launches space command to counter Russia and China

Why is China hiding its oil tankers from US trackers?

In early June, a Chinese-owned supertanker abruptly went dark in the Indian Ocean, the tracking system signalling its course apparently deactivated. It was not the first ship to vanish from the monitors. The deactivation of transponders that generate a unique ID issued to ships by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has become increasingly familiar in recent weeks to the companies that track tankers.

The Trump administration has stepped up its efforts to track tankers linked to China’s biggest state-run oil company in response to signs that the vessels are helping to transport Iranian crude in defiance of US sanctions against Tehran. “They are hiding their activity,” Samir Madani, the co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told the New York Times in July. “They don’t want to broadcast the fact that they have been in Iran, evading sanctions. It’s that simple.” ...

The events unfolding on the maritime trade routes point to a wider story, of the increasingly complex convergence of two of the Trump administration’s most pressing foreign policy concerns. While Washington seeks to block Iranian oil exports as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign to force Tehran to negotiate over its nuclear and security policies, China – which is locked in its own escalating trade war with the US – appears to be throwing Iran a significant lifeline. ...

“I think the two issues have been converging for a while,” Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst with the thinktank Crisis Group said.. . “The main reason that China initially complied with the US … policy and significantly reduced oil imports from Iran was because it hoped it could be a card that bore some dividends in the trade negotiations. As soon as those talks ran into dead lock, China turned around and resumed oil imports from Iran.”

UAE Carries Out Airstrikes Against Yemeni Govt Forces

An estimated 20,000 fighters involved in the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen split in half earlier this month, with half backed by the UAE and a separatist movement, and the other half Saudi-backed forces loyal to the Hadi government.

That fighting has raged, but the Saudis and UAE had talked of working something out. Thursday suggests the chances of a deal are shrinking, with the UAE getting directly involved in the fighting, and launching airstrikes against Saudi-backed government forces.

Israeli Strikes Seek to Bait Iran and Scuttle U.S.-Iran Diplomacy

The Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in recent days launched a series of military strikes across the Middle East. The scope of the attacks itself represents a new escalation for Israel, bombing not just regional allies of Iran in Syria but also targets in Lebanon and deep inside Iraq. Notably, the attacks are simultaneous with new diplomatic momentum between the U.S. and Iran and talk of a potential meeting between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and President Trump.

Israel rarely publicly accepts responsibility for its international military and intelligence operations. However, Netanyahu has been remarkably open about taking credit for the recent spate of strikes. “We will act—and currently are acting—against them [Iran], wherever it is necessary,” he recently declared. When asked if Iraq is also a target for attacks, Netanyahu responded: “I am not limiting myself.” Israel has also been widely blamed for the strikes in Lebanon but has not openly claimed them. This acknowledgement of the strikes threatens dangerous escalation across the region. In the face of provocative admissions from Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Iranian leaders and their regional allies will be hard-pressed to ignore the strikes and not respond. ...

The Israeli strikes come on the heels of a significant diplomatic initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron to facilitate renewed U.S.-Iran negotiations. ... The timing of the Israeli strikes suggests they are at least partly aimed at scuttling the potential for such a meeting. A primary goal of Netanyahu’s government has been the prevention of any agreement between the U.S. and Iran. This goal is apparent by the nature of Israel’s lobbying in Washington and its behavior with respect to U.S.-Iran relations. ... At times, Israeli officials have clearly stated their objective of preventing any U.S.-Iran diplomacy. In 2015, Netanyahu’s then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon stated to this end, “every deal that will be signed between the West and this messianic and apocalyptic regime will strike a severe blow to Israeli and Western interests.” While the Netanyahu government failed to achieve its aims with the Obama administration, it has thus far had resounding success with respect to the Trump administration fulfilling its desires.

Time to step up tempo of Brexit talks, says bullish Boris Johnson

A bullish Boris Johnson has sought to reassure Tory MPs queasy about his plan to suspend parliament by announcing he wants to “step up the tempo” of Brexit talks in Brussels. After his chief negotiator, David Frost, met EU officials in Brussels on Wednesday, the prime minister said on Thursday that both sides had agreed to meet twice a week.

“I have said right from my first day in office that we are ready to work in an energetic and determined way to get a deal done. While I have been encouraged with my discussions with EU leaders over recent weeks that there is a willingness to talk about alternatives to the anti-democratic backstop, it is now time for both sides to step up the tempo,” Johnson said.

Downing Street is gearing up to resist efforts by MPs, lawyers and campaigners to frustrate his suspension of parliament. Johnson’s team face a battle on several fronts, with the Scottish court of session due to rule on Friday on whether proroguing parliament is unconstitutional and MPs drawing up plans to legislate against a no deal.

Downing Street believes it can defeat the legal challenge, if necessary in the supreme court, and it will use every parliamentary tactic available to frustrate the rebel MPs. “We’ve been very clear before that we will deliver Brexit by any means necessary and that remains the case,” said one Downing Street source.

Former Farc commanders say they are returning to war despite 2016 peace deal

Two former commanders of the demobilised Colombian rebel group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Farc, have announced a that they are returning to war, nearly three years after a peace deal which sought to end South America’s longest guerrilla conflict.

The two men, known by their aliases, Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich, released a video to YouTube early on Thursday morning in which they lambasted president Iván Duque and his government for not keeping its end of the deal, negotiated over four years of talks in Cuba.

Dressed in military fatigues and flanked by armed fighters, Márquez said: “This is the continuation of the rebel fight in answer to the betrayal of the state of the Havana peace accords. We were never beaten or defeated ideologically, so the struggle continues.”

The 2016 deal sought to formally end 52 years of war that killed over 260,000 people and forced 7 million from their homes, in a bitter conflict between left-wing rebels, government forces and state-aligned paramilitaries.

Brazil’s Chief Prosecutor, Deltan Dallagnol, Lied When He Denied Leaking to the Press, Secret Chats Reveal

Brazil’s chief prosecutor overseeing its sweeping anti-corruption probe, Deltan Dallagnol, lied to the public when he vehemently denied in a 2017 interview with BBC Brasil that his prosecutorial task force leaked secret information about investigations to achieve its ends.

In fact, in the months preceding his false claim, Dallagnol was a participant in secret chats exclusively obtained by The Intercept, in which prosecutors plotted to leak information to the media with the goal of manipulating suspects by making them believe that their indictment was imminent even when it was not, in order to intimidate them into signing confessions that implicated other targets of the investigation.

Critics of the so-called Car Wash investigation — which imprisoned dozens of Brazilian elites including, most significantly, the center-left ex-President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva when he was leading all polls to win the 2018 presidential election (ultimately won by Jair Bolsonaro after Lula was barred) — long suspected that the prosecutorial team was responsible for numerous media reports that revealed sensitive details about suspects targeted by the investigations.

Dallagnol and his team always publicly, even angrily, denied this. Yet the Secret Brazil Archive obtained by The Intercept, which we began reporting on June 9, contains numerous instances of the prosecutorial team planting exactly the sorts of leaks they repeatedly denied involvement in — often with motives that rendered the outcome legally questionably, if not outright illegal.

Trump's DOJ Just Slapped James Comey With Misconduct — But Won't Throw Him in Jail

A Department of Justice investigation found former FBI director James Comey violated bureau policy by leaking information about his conversations with President Trump. But after reviewing the case, the DOJ decided not to prosecute him, the department’s inspector general’s office wrote in an 83-page report released on Thursday.

Comey set a “dangerous example” by leaking details of his interactions with Trump in the hopes of launching a special counsel investigation, the report says. He helped do exactly that after the content of one of his memos was printed in The New York Times in May 2017, days before special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to probe Trump’s ties to Russia.

Comey struck a defiant tone on Twitter, where he cast the news that he would not be prosecuted as vindication. “I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice,” he wrote, blasting “all those who spent two years talking about me ‘going to jail’ or being a ‘liar and a leaker.’”

Ocasio-Cortez Calls Out Fellow Democrat Barbara Boxer for Helping Lyft Fight Against California Labor Bill

New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out former Sen. Barbara Boxer on Twitter Thursday for helping the ride-hailing company Lyft fight against a proposed state-level bill in California that aims to expand workers' benefits and rights.

Boxer—who retired from the U.S. Senate in 2017—revealed in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this week that she had accepted Lyft's request to "advise them on how to find a compromise" over the bill, which would reclassifying some independent contractors, like drivers who work for the company, as employees.

In the op-ed, Boxer argued the bill, known as AB 5, "could remove drivers from the road, take away their opportunity to support their goals and families, and make a service which many Californians count on less reliable."

But Ocasio-Cortez—responding to a tweet about Boxer's op-ed—wrote on Twitter that former government officials "should not become corporate lobbyists, in letter or spirit."

"It's an abuse of power + a stain on public service," declared the freshman congresswoman. "I don't care if it's a Democrat doing it (both parties do). In fact, that makes it worse—we're supposed to fight FOR working people, not against them."

'Full-scale emergency': musician burned in his tent highlights LA's homeless crisis

Los Angeles homeless advocates and Skid Row residents are mourning the death of a beloved guitarist who was killed when his tent was set ablaze in what authorities say was an “intentional” act.

The gruesome death of Darrell Fields, a 62-year-old musician who was well-known in downtown LA and worked extensively with a local advocacy group, was a particularly brutal representation of a severe and worsening homeless crisis in the region. The deadly fire on Monday night came as a scathing government audit found that LA’s top homeless outreach agency had dramatically failed in its goals to place people into housing.

“We are in a full-scale emergency,” said Kayo Anderson, a Skid Row advocate who was friends with Fields for years and played with him in a band. “We no longer have the luxury of walking at a snail’s pace to get this done. If Darrell was a housed person, he would still be with us. That’s an indictment of us all.” Anderson, 42, has stored Fields’ guitars and keyboards inside his office at the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA Can). “I can’t even express to you how genius he was,” Anderson said of Fields. “He was just brilliant and uniquely gifted. He was also a big-hearted human who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Fields’ friends said he never got into conflicts with anyone, and they said he suffered as a result of the extreme lack of housing options for people like him in the city. ...

Fields was originally from Michigan and later lived in Las Vegas where he worked as a musician, said Anderson. He had performed in a Jimi Hendrix cover band, wrote his own music and loved singing blues and gospel. ... Fields lived with his longtime partner, Valarie Wertlow. Both artists, they had moved to LA to find gigs, and eventually couldn’t afford housing, said Pete White, LA Can’s executive director. Fields landed temporary housing a few times, but never found a long-term housing option for him and his partner, he added.

After Man Serves 35 Years in Prison for $50 Robbery, US 'Should Be Ashamed of System We Allow'

The failures of the nation's justice system were highlighted this week after a judge resentenced a man—who'd been serving life in prison without a chance of parole for a $50.75 bakery robbery—to time served.

Alvin Kennard had already served over 35 years for the 1983 first degree robbery when Judge David Carpenter on Wednesday cut the life sentence short. Kennard is expected to be released in the coming days after processing by the Alabama Board of Corrections.

Author and CNN commentator Keith Boykin weighed in on the case and the disparate hands of justice, writing on Twitter Thursday, "Wealthy CEOs and business executives steal millions of dollars from the public and never go to jail."

As Al.com reported,

Under Alabama's Habitual Felony Offender Act, then 22-year-old Kennard was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. When he was 18, Kennard had been charged with burglary, grand larceny, and receiving stolen property in connection with a break-in at an unoccupied service station. He pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree burglary for that crime in 1979, and was given a suspended sentence of three years on probation.

Those prior crimes, which were not Class A felonies, led to his sentence under the Habitual Felony Offender Act in 1984.

While that "three strikes" law has been changed to allow a fourth time offender the possibility of parole, as ABC News reported, it had no retroactive effect on those already imprisoned under it. Kennard's upcoming freedom is instead thanks to Carpenter noticing the case. Carla Crowder, Kennard's attorney, told the news outlet, "This was a judge that kind of went out of his way."

“All-Out Attack”: Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Policies Target Children, Cancer Patients & Servicemembers

DHS Canceled Congressional Tour of Immigrant Detention Facilities at Last Minute, Members Say

Congress members who tried to tour 11 immigrant detention facilities this week were denied the visits, according to Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. In a letter to acting Department of Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan, Cummings claims DHS blocked access to 11 Border Patrol stations that Congress members had toured last week where they found “serious ongoing problems with the treatment of children and adults in DHS custody.” ...

DHS initially signed off on a second series of visits scheduled to start on Aug. 27. But the day before the first visit, CBP told the committee that McAleenan and the agency’s acting commissioner decided the visits were off because the Congress members hadn’t been cooperative during their previous visits. The agency also imposed new restrictions on future visits, including a two-hour time limit. During previous congressional visits, members have been told they aren’t allowed to take photos or speak with detainees. ...

In his letter to McAleenan, Cummings said he’s concerned DHS is trying to limit transparency and accountability. “It appears that the Administration expects Congress to be satisfied with receiving agency tours of facilities — in some cases without the ability to photograph conditions or interview detainees — and not to question the policies or decisions that agency officials make,” he wrote.

Border Patrol Has Killed At Least 97 People Since 2003. Hear Some of Their Victims’ Stories

Bernie Sanders slammed for doing the unthinkable - praising China

Senate Democrats’ Campaign Arm Is Pressuring Consultants Not to Work With Leading Progressive Candidate in Colorado

Before the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper in a 2020 Senate race, it pressured consultants from at least five firms not to work with a leading progressive in the race, the candidate told The Intercept.

Andrew Romanoff, who is one of more than a dozen candidates vying for Republican Sen. Cory Gardner’s seat, told The Intercept that multiple consultants turned down jobs with his campaign citing pressure from the DSCC.

“They’ve made it clear to a number of the firms and individuals we tried to hire that they wouldn’t get any business in Washington or with the DSCC if they worked with me,” Romanoff said. “It’s been a well-orchestrated operation to blackball ragtag grassroots teams.”

At least five firms and 25 prospective staff turned down working with his campaign, said Romanoff, who has raised more than $1 million in individual contributions so far. “I spoke to the firms, my campaign manager spoke to the staff prospects,” he said. “Pretty much everyone who checked in with the DSCC got the same warning: Helping us would cost them.”

Matt Taibbi: Can Trump Win Again?

'Be Given Our Stolen Time Back?': Trump Once Again Signals Desire to Illegally Extend Term

Not the first time he has done this, President Donald Trump on Friday morning insinuated he would like to extend his term beyond the four years granted by the nation's constitution when he posed as a question the idea of being granted back "stolen time" that was taken from him because of the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and accusations of misconduct by former FBI head James Comey.

The disastrous IG Report on James Comey shows, in the strongest of terms, how unfairly I, and tens of millions of great people who support me, were treated. Our rights and liberties were illegally stripped away by this dishonest fool. We should be given our stolen time back?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 30, 2019

While the IG report this week chided Comey for handing off contemporaneous notes about his interactions with the president to a friend so that they could be provided to the press, the Justice Department said it would not pursue criminal charges against the former FBI director.

In reaction to Trump's tweet suggesting he be given extra time on his current term, critics said the idea was ludicrous. ...

It's not the first time Trump has talked about staying beyond his allowable limit or suggesting he would not cede the office. In June, as Common Dreams reported at the time, Trump pinned a tweet to his timeline showing an online meme that depicted him holding power indefinitely. While critics then acknowledged that the behavior appears to be a form of trolling by the president, it still is a frightening suggestion that would be foolish not to take seriously or with at least some level of concern.

Biden's Press Secretary’s Word Salad That Kills Climate Debate

Brazil: fears for isolated Amazon tribes as fires erupt on protected reserves

Fires have been reported in protected indigenous reserves of the Brazilian Amazon, raising fears that loggers and land grabbers have targeted these remote areas during the dramatic surge in blazes across the world’s biggest rainforest.

Blazes have been seen on the Araribóia indigenous reserve in Maranhão state – a heavily deforested reserve on the Amazon’s eastern fringes, which is home to about 80 people from an isolated group of Awá indigenous people, described by the NGO Survival International as the world’s most endangered tribe.

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has been widely criticised for failing to respond quickly to the crisis, issued a decree on Thursday banning fires in the Amazon for 60 days – a move environmentalists described as largely symbolic. ...

Antenor Vaz, a former employee at Brazil’s indigenous agency Funai and consultant on isolated indigenous peoples, said research based on Nasa images showed that fires broke out in 131 indigenous reserves from 15-20 August. Of those, 15 were home to indigenous groups who are isolated or in stages of initial contact. “Most of these people are constantly fleeing, they are constantly being threatened,” he said. “These people depend on the forest and as fire kills the animals they feel completely desperate with the situation.”

Why have 500m bees died in Brazil in the past three months?

While thousands of fires roar and crackle through the Amazon rainforest, Brazil faces a quieter tragedy playing out in farm country: the silence of empty hives. Earlier this year, beekeepers reported losing over 500m honeybees in only three months. The speed and scale of the die-offs recall colony collapse disorder, a malady that began decimating bees across North America and Europe in 2006. But the symptoms are tellingly different. Where colony collapse caused worker bees to abandon their hives and disappear, the bees in Brazil are dropping dead on the spot. And where scientists blamed colony collapse on a combination of factors, the evidence in Brazil points to one overarching cause: pesticides.

The parallels between Brazil’s Amazon crisis and its bee die-offs are many. Just as the relaxation of forestry rules has led to more fires, so have loosened pesticide restrictions exposed more bees to lethal doses. Nearly 300 new products have been fast-tracked for approval since the beginning of the year, including known bee-killers banned or strictly regulated in other countries. And just as burning a rainforest impacts a lot more than trees, so does the loss of bees stretch far past the walls of the hive.

Depending on how you parse the numbers, bee-pollinated crops account for as much as a third of the food in the human diet. Yields of everything from canola to soybeans drop in their absence, while fruits and nuts like blueberries and almonds depend upon them entirely. Beyond agriculture, scientists can only guess at the scale of the problem, but the situation begs a troubling question. If colonies nurtured and tended by professional beekeepers are dying, then what is the fate of bees in the wild? ... Our landscapes abound with wild bees too – diggers, miners, masons, wool-carders, leafcutters, bumblebees, and more. Estimates put the total number of bee species above 20,000, more than all the world’s birds and mammals combined. Many of them are also essential pollinators, of crops as well as the native plants at the heart of ecosystems from tropical forests to mountain meadows. And while most wild bees have never been studied in detail, we know they’re vulnerable to the same chemical threats as honeybees. So whenever domestic hives start failing, it signals a much broader problem in nature.

Wind of change: France turns to turbines

The wreckers just keep on wrecking.

Trump administration to roll back Obama-era pollution regulations to curb leaks of methane,

The Trump administration is rolling back requirements that oil and gas drillers correct leaks of methane – a potent heat-trapping pollutant contributing to the climate crisis. The Environmental Protection Agency announced the proposal on Thursday, against the wishes of some major oil companies.

Trump will reverse standards issued by Barack Obama that forced companies to install controls to curb methane releases from drilling operations, pipelines and storage facilities. The EPA is claiming the changes would save the oil and gas industry $17m to $19m a year, or up to $123m by 2025.

Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former energy lobbyist, said methane is valuable so industry already has an incentive to minimize leaks. He called existing rules “unnecessary and duplicative”. ...

The advocacy group the Clean Air Task Force said the EPA is ignoring decades of its own precedent and mountains of evidence that cutting methane is easy and extremely important. “If the EPA manages to finalize and implement this illegal proposal, it will have devastating impacts on our climate for years to come,” said the group’s attorney Darin Schroeder. ...

The oil trade group the American Petroleum Institute supports the rollback, but Exxon, Shell and BP have spoken in favor of restrictions. Smaller oil producers say the Obama standards would be too expensive and would make it hard for them to compete with the majors.

Also of Interest

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

The Death of Arms Control

'Going to bed hungry': the harrowing reality of poor children living in DC

Revealed: man force-fed in Ice custody at risk due to 'substandard care', doctor says

Film ‘Official Secrets’ is the Tip of a Mammoth Iceberg

Hezbollah Will Respond to Israel: When? How? at What Cost?

Saudi Arabia Acknowledges Defeat In Yemen - Starts To Sue For Peace

The Real Big Brother

From Philadelphia to Oregon, the Insurgency Is Making Waves in Municipal Elections

As GOP's Islamophobic Attacks Continue, Rep. Ilhan Omar Shares Terrifying Reality of Death Threats

Biden pushes back against report that he told an inaccurate war story

NYT Steers Dems Away From the Obvious Formula for Defeating Trump

Tipping Point: UN Biodiversity Chief Warns Burning of Amazon Could Lead to 'Cascading Collapse of Natural Systems'

A Climate Debate Could Still Happen — if 2020 Democrats Revolt Against Their Own Party

Canada: workers race to free millions of salmon trapped after huge landslide

Alabama's Governor Totally Forgot She Did a Super-Racist Skit in College

A Little Night Music

Hip Linkchain & Jimmy Dawkins - Mother-In-Law Blues

Hip Linkchain - Call Muddy Waters

Hip Linkchain - Why I Sing The Blues

Hip Linkchain - Change My Blues

Hip Linkchain - Somebody Loan Me A Dime

Hip Linkchain - Walking From Door to Door

Jimmy Dawkins & Hip Linkchain - Sounds Of West Side Chicago

Hip Linkchain - Little Car Blues & Bright Light City Jam

Hip Linkchain - Diggin' My Potatoes