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"Sentient Reaper drone Nikki Haley is now saying that North Korea is “begging for war” in a page borrowed from the classic “she was asking for it” courtroom defense of accused rapists. Pundits and politicians across all conceivable boundaries have as always found a way to set aside their differences to advocate for the interests of the US war machine in response to an alleged hydrogen bomb test by the DPRK, and mainstream America is lapping it up.

It’s just mind-boggling how they keep selling the same plotline over and over and over again. A mentally deranged dictator is threatening American safety and abusing his own citizens, and we need to take him out right now before he does any more harm! People buy into it again and again, like a bunch of kids watching Scooby Doo thinking “This monster’s real for sure this time!” Then it turns out the ghost was just the creepy old rich guy from scene three and the next episode they’re acting like it never happened."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Everyone hopes China will save us from North Korea

Vladimir Putin weighed into the debate about the rising threat from North Korea Tuesday, pointedly criticizing the U.S. and its allies, and warning that ramping up “military hysteria” would lead to a “planetary catastrophe.” The Russian leader’s comments echoed those made by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is fast becoming the focal point for both U.S. hostility and North Korean provocation.

While Putin called for calm, the international community has become increasingly frustrated with Pyongyang’s continued taunts. The UN is expected to approve another round of sanctions as soon as Tuesday, while the U.S. in particular has been ramping up the rhetoric. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has said that Kim Jong Un is “begging for war,” and President Trump confirmed Tuesday that the U.S. will sell billions of dollars of arms to South Korea and Japan.

[Well, thank goodness that all of this chest-thumping that Trump is doing is good for business!!! - js]

The Chinese authorities are stuck in the center of this crisis, as the world increasingly sees China as the only player at the table powerful enough to cut North Korea off economically, which might finally force it to back down. As the hermit kingdom’s main trading partner, it alone has the power to impose harsh sanctions which could threaten the stability of Kim’s regime.

“The concern is, if China, under international pressure, has to cut off the economic lifeline of North Korea, and therefore directly threaten the stability of the regime, in that case, given the North Korea has nothing more to lose, it is totally possible that North Korea could threaten China as well,” Tong Zhao, a North Korea expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, told VICE News. ...

In recent days both Trump and Haley have implied that the U.S. would cut economic ties with China if it didn’t do more to limit the North Korean threat. But this threat is pretty hollow, given that up to 100 countries still have some trading relationship with North Korea, including U.S. allies like France and Saudi Arabia.

What the Media isn’t Telling You About North Korea’s Missile Tests

Here’s what the media isn’t telling you about North Korea’s recent missile tests. Last Monday, the DPRK fired a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan’s Hokkaido Island. The missile landed in the waters beyond the island harming neither people nor property. The media immediately condemned the test as a “bold and provocative act” that showed the North’s defiance of UN resolutions and “contempt for its neighbors.” President Trump sharply criticized the missile test saying:

“Threatening and destabilizing actions only increase the North Korean regime’s isolation in the region and among all nations of the world. All options are on the table.”

What the media failed to mention was that, for the last three weeks, Japan, South Korea and the US have been engaged in large-scale joint-military drills on Hokkaido Island and in South Korea. These needlessly provocative war games are designed to simulate an invasion of North Korea and a “decapitation” operation to remove (Re: Kill) the regime. North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un has asked the US repeatedly to end these military exercises, but the US has stubbornly refused. The US reserves the right to threaten anyone, anytime and anywhere even right on their doorstep. It’s part of what makes the US exceptional.

Monday’s missile test (which flew over Hokkaido Island) was conducted just hours after the war games ended. The message was clear: The North is not going to be publicly humiliated and slapped around without responding. ... And the same is true of the three short-range ballistic missiles the North tested last week. (two of which apparently fizzled out shortly after launching.) These tests were a response to the 3 week-long joint-military drills in South Korea which involved 75,000 combat troops accompanied by hundreds of tanks, armored vehicles, landing craft, heavy artillery, a full naval flotilla and flyovers by squadrons of state of the art fighters and strategic bombers. ...

Imagine if Russia engaged in a similar operation over the border in Mexico while the Russian fleet conducted “live fire” drills three miles outside of San Francisco Bay. What do you think Trump’s reaction would be?

Like Donald Trump, Nikki Haley is a dangerous embarrassment to the decent people of the United States.

U.S. envoy says North Korean leader 'begging for war' as U.N. mulls sanctions

The United States on Monday said countries trading with North Korea were aiding its “dangerous nuclear intentions” as the United Nations Security Council mulled tough new sanctions and the isolated regime showed signs of planning more missile tests.

South Korea said it was talking to Washington about deploying aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula following the North’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sunday.

At a Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said North Korea’s Kim Jong Un was “begging for war” and urged the 15-member group to adopt the strongest possible measures to deter him.

“War is never something the United States wants. We don’t want it now. But our country’s patience is not unlimited. We will defend our allies and our territory,” Haley said.

How ‘Regime Change’ Wars Led to Korea Crisis

It is a popular meme in the U.S. media to say that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “crazy” as he undertakes to develop a nuclear bomb and a missile capacity to deliver it, but he is actually working from a cold logic dictated by the U.S. government’s aggressive wars and lack of integrity.

Indeed, the current North Korea crisis, which could end up killing millions of people, can be viewed as a follow-on disaster to President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and President Barack Obama’s Libyan intervention. Those wars came after the leaders of Iraq and Libya had dismantled their dangerous weapons programs, leaving their countries virtually powerless when the U.S. government chose to invade.

In both cases, the U.S. government also exploited its power over global information to spread lies about the targeted regimes as justification for the invasions — and the world community failed to do anything to block the U.S. aggressions. And, on a grim personal note, the two leaders, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, were then brutally murdered, Hussein by hanging and Gaddafi by a mob that first sodomized him with a knife.

So, the neoconservatives who promoted the Iraq invasion supposedly to protect the world from Iraq’s alleged WMDs — and the liberal interventionists who pushed the Libya invasion based on false humanitarian claims — may now share in the horrific possibility that millions of people in North Korea, South Korea, Japan and maybe elsewhere could die from real WMDs launched by North Korea and/or by the United States. Washington foreign policy “experts” who fault President Trump’s erratic and bellicose approach toward this crisis may want to look in the mirror and consider how they contributed to the mess by ignoring the predictable consequences from the Iraq and Libya invasions.

Obama Urged Trump To Continue Neoconservative Foreign Policy

CNN has just published the text of a letter that President Barack Obama left his successor upon leaving office, which used well-established neoconservative talking points to urge President Trump to continue the American supremacist policies of US imperialism.

The letter consists of mostly empty niceties and redundant drivel, the exception being the following paragraph, which is its only substantive piece of hard advice on policy:

Second, American leadership in this world really is indispensable. It’s up to us, through action and example, to sustain the international order that’s expanded steadily since the end of the Cold War, and upon which our own wealth and safety depend.

In 1997, the extremely influential neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century published its Statement of Principles, which was signed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Donald Kagan and other notorious members of various US war machine dynasties. The statement uses the same language as Obama’s advice to Trump, describing the need for the US to maintain a position of world leadership in a post-Cold War world. ...

“As the 20th century draws to a close,” the statement reads, “the United States stands as the world’s preeminent power. Having led the West to victory in the Cold War, America faces an opportunity and a challenge: Does the United States have the vision to build upon the achievements of past decades? Does the United States have the resolve to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests?”

Syria: Army breaks Islamic State group siege on Deir al-Zor

Turkey-Backed Syrian Rebels Trade Fire With Kurds Daily

The focus for the Syrian Kurdish YPG forces in recent weeks has been on the offensive against the ISIS capital of Raqqa. Before that, however, there were reports of intermittent clashes with Turkish-backed rebels in Aleppo Province. Those reports never got resolved, but stopped being reported for awhile.

The most recent reports out of Aleppo, however, suggests they never really stopped, and that the US-backed Kurds are trading fire with the Turkey-backed rebels on the pretty much daily basis, and have been for weeks on end.

The Risk of NATO’s H-Bombs in Turkey

Even in this contentious era, one proposition still enjoys near-universal support: the United States should make it the highest priority to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of hostile states. It’s far too late to stop North Korea from getting the Bomb, despite all the militant rhetoric coming out of Washington. But we still have a chance to prevent an erratic Middle East strongman from holding the United States hostage by threatening to seize dozens of deadly hydrogen bombs.

I’m referring, of course, to Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

As I warned more than a year ago, he controls overall access to NATO’s largest nuclear storage facility — a stockpile of some 50 B-61 hydrogen bombs at Incirlik air base in southeastern Turkey. Each weapon has a yield of up to 170 kilotons, nearly 12 times greater than the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima in 1945. The bombs are a holdover from the Cold War, with no current strategic rationale. They represent a growing risk to U.S. security, not a safe deterrent.

As Erdogan’s relations with the United States and Western Europe go from bad to worse, the case for withdrawing those weapons of mass destruction from his reach grows ever more urgent.

“It is the worst place possible to be keeping nuclear weapons,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear arms control expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund. Citing the relocation of American families from the air base as U.S.-Turkish tensions have grown, he asked rhetorically, “it is not safe for our military spouses and children, but it is OK for 50 hydrogen bombs to be there?”

His concerns were recently echoed by a “former senior NATO official” who agreed the weapons “should be removed given the instability, both in the country and across the border in Syria and Iraq.”

Cuba opens 5-month transition likely to end Castro reign

Cuba on Monday began a five-month political transition expected to end with Raul Castro's departure from the presidency, capping his family's near-total dominance of the political system for nearly 60 years.

Over the rest of September, Cubans will meet in small groups to nominate municipal representatives, the first in a series of votes for local, provincial and, finally, national officials. In the second electoral stage, a commission dominated by government-linked organizations will pick all the candidates for elections to provincial assemblies and Cuba's national assembly.

The national assembly is expected to pick the president and members of the powerful Council of State by February. Castro has said he will leave the presidency by that date but he is expected to remain head of the Communist Party, giving him power that may be equal to or greater than the new president's.

Cuban officials say 12,515 block-level districts will nominate candidates for city council elections to be held Oct. 22.

Palestinian authorities arrest activist in growing free speech crackdown

Palestinian security forces have arrested one of the most prominent human rights activists in the occupied territories after he criticised the arrest of a Palestinian journalist in a Facebook post. Issa Amro, who lives in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, is the highest profile victim of a growing campaign by Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, against journalists and dissent on social media.

Amro is the founder of Youth Against the Settlements, which has long-documented alleged abuses by the Israeli military and settlers in Hebron. He was already facing charges in an Israeli military court for his activism. According to Amro’s brother Ahmed, the activist was summoned by Palestinian security forces for questioning after posting on his Facebook account about the arrest of Palestinian journalist Ayman Qawasmeh, who had called on the unpopular and increasingly autocratic Abbas to resign.

In a statement released shortly before his arrest, Amro said: “All my writings on social media are part of the freedom of opinion and expression stipulated by the Palestinian Basic Law and are protected by all international laws and conventions. My arrest will not affect my defence of human rights and the rights of journalists to exercise their work freely and without pressure from the government.” The move against Amro caught Palestinian officials by surprise. Some of them attempted to secure his release on Monday, saying they were “baffled” by the move against someone who is highly regarded in wider Palestinian society.

Forget Wall Street – Silicon Valley is the new political power in Washington

The scholar Barry Lynn worked at the New America Foundation, a Washington thinktank, for 15 years studying the growing power of technology companies like Google and Facebook. For 14 of them, everything was, he says, “great”. This week, he was fired. Why? He believes it’s because Google, one of the thinktank’s biggest funders, was unhappy with the direction of his research, which was increasingly calling for tech giants including Google, Facebook and Amazon to be regulated as monopolies.

Leaked emails suggest the foundation was concerned that Lynn’s criticism could jeopardise future funding. In one of them, the organisation’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, wrote: “We are in the process of trying to expand our relationship with Google on some absolutely key points … just think about how you are imperiling funding for others.” ...

Funding thinktanks is just one of the ways that America’s most powerful industries exert their influence over policymakers. ... In addition to thinktanks, K Street is packed with slick corporate representatives, hired guns, and advocacy groups. The lobbyists spend their days swarming over members of Congress to ensure their private interests are reflected in legislation and regulation. While the big banks and pharma giants have flexed their economic muscle in the country’s capital for decades, there’s one relative newcomer that has leapfrogged them all: Silicon Valley. Over the last 10 years, America’s five largest tech firms have flooded Washington with lobbying money to the point where they now outspend Wall Street two to one. ...

[Google] spent just $80,000 on lobbying in 2003. Today, its parent company, Alphabet, spends more on lobbying than any other corporation – $9.5m in the first half of 2017 alone and $15.4m the previous year. In 2013, the company signed a lease on a 55,000-square-foot office, roughly the same size as the White House, less than a mile away from the Capitol Building. And it’s not just Google. Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft – which was hamstrung by its lacklustre early efforts to court policymakers – have been pouring money into Washington.

“They are overwhelming Washington with money and lobbyists on both sides of the aisle,” said Robert McChesney, communications professor at the University of Illinois. “The Silicon Valley billionaires and CEOs are libertarian, low-tax deregulation buddies of the Koch brothers when it comes to talking to Republicans, and dope-smoking, gay rights activist hipsters when they mix with the Democrats.” The tech giants aren’t spending this money just to get invited to the best parties in Washington – they’re doing this to protect their oligopolies. Their main areas of concern include the threat of looming action over anti-competitive practices, anything that might lead to higher taxation, net neutrality and privacy.

Keiser Report: Is US really a 3% GDP economy?

New Zealand election: Jacinda Ardern pledges to decriminalise abortion

Jacinda Ardern has said Labour will decriminalise abortion in New Zealand if it wins this month’s general election. In a fiery 90-minute televised leaders’ debate on Monday night in Auckland, Ardern stated unequivocally that abortion “shouldn’t be in the Crimes Act”. Her stance was met with a round of applause and cheering from the 400-strong studio audience of undecided voters. ... Prime minister and National leader Bill English, who is a practising Catholic, said he thought the status quo was “broadly satisfactory”. “If the changes came before parliament I would be opposed to liberalising the law,” said English, to silence from the audience. “I support the current law and I would not set out to change it.”

Last week, polling put Labour ahead of the incumbent National party for the first time in over a decade, with a resurgent opposition under Ardern, its new and youngest ever leader, up from 26% to 43%. National was on 41%.

While the usual discussion points were covered – including the economy, the housing shortage and how to deal with US president Donald Trump – Monday’s debate also featured a number of surprising moments, including English announcing that if re-elected his government would stamp out child poverty for up to 100,000 New Zealand children. The policy came as a surprise to Ardern, who applauded what she called the government’s change of heart, saying she had been pushing for such a goal for nine years.

On Tuesday Ardern said a Labour government would pull 100,000 children out of poverty by the year 2020, with the eventual goal of eradicating all child poverty in New Zealand. She also reiterated her commitment to standing up to Australia, saying if it were to go ahead with plans to raise the cost of tertiary education for New Zealanders in Australia, Australian students could expect the same treatment in New Zealand.

Will Houston’s Post-Harvey Recovery Exacerbate Inequities or Build a More Just City?

Leaked document reveals UK Brexit plan to deter EU immigrants

Britain will end the free movement of labour immediately after Brexit and introduce restrictions to deter all but highly-skilled EU workers under detailed proposals set out in a Home Office document leaked to the Guardian.

The 82-page paper, marked as extremely sensitive and dated August 2017, sets out for the first time how Britain intends to approach the politically charged issue of immigration, dramatically refocusing policy to put British workers first.

“Put plainly, this means that, to be considered valuable to the country as a whole, immigration should benefit not just the migrants themselves but also make existing residents better off,” the paper says.

It proposes measures to drive down the number of lower-skilled EU migrants – offering them residency for a maximum of only two years, in a document likely to cheer hardliners in the Tory party. Those in “high-skilled occupations” will be granted permits to work for a longer period of three to five years.

The document also describes a phased introduction to a new immigration system that ends the right to settle in Britain for most European migrants – and places tough new restrictions on their rights to bring in family members. Potentially, this could lead to thousands of families being split up.

Jeff Sessions just ordered the phase-out of the Obama-era immigration program

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security will phase out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era program that has granted temporary status to nearly 800,000 people brought to the U.S. as children without documentation.  ...

As of Tuesday, the U.S. government will no longer accept applications for the program, and those seeking to renew their status will have until Oct. 5 to file before the program is fully phased out in March of 2018. ...

The six-month window before DACA comes to an end next year gives Congress a chance to pass a law that would give people currently protected under DACA similar protections. While several bills have been introduced, it’s hard to say whether any of these will become law, especially considering the intense partisanship in Congress now.

Trump Ends DACA: Ball in Congress's court?

Watch What Trump Does, Not What He Says. He May Not Actually End DACA.

Some 800,000 people brought to the United States as children without proper authorization had their lives thrown into limbo on Tuesday when the Trump administration said that it would eventually be ending a 4-year-old program that affords them legal protections. “The program known as DACA, that was effectuated under the Obama administration, is being rescinded,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters, ending the program but implementing a six-month delay before protections are taken away. ...

The move was both a fulfillment of a campaign pledge and a broken promise Trump made to DACA recipients because of the variety of public statements Trump has made on the issue. ...

Trump’s base, riled up by two years of campaign rhetoric and presidential statements against immigrants, is thirsty for more enforcement actions. But people close to Trump say he genuinely does not want to end the program. They said Trump is loath to punish someone who was brought to the U.S. as a young child with no say in the matter. That doesn’t mean, however, that Trump’s personal feelings will save the program. For DACA recipients and millions of their friends and family linked to their fates, it means that their fight is starting again, and much of the politics play to their advantage. ...

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., has made the politics easy for Trump, having already come out against ending the program. Either Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., fail to act — giving Trump an opening to quietly extend the program again while blaming a do-nothing Congress — or Congress will pass something, and the program gets a blessing from the legislature. In both cases, DACA recipients could retain their protections.

Hurricane Irma now a Category 5 storm as it heads for land

As Texas and Louisiana continue to reel from the devastating impact of Harvey, an even stronger hurricane is causing alarm as it rapidly gathers force on its approach toward the Caribbean islands.

Hurricane Irma was upgraded to a Category 5 storm Tuesday, with maximum sustained winds of 175 mph (281 kph) expected as it moves toward the Leeward Islands in the eastern Caribbean, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said Tuesday. The “extremely dangerous” hurricane is forecast to pass over or near the northern Leeward Islands as early as the end of Tuesday, and on current modeling, could veer north toward the U.S. mainland later in the week.

While Irma’s exact path can’t be known, Florida is already bracing for the worst. Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency Monday, saying the move was necessary to ensure the authorities had enough “time, resources, and flexibility to get prepared for this dangerous storm.”

Petro Metro: A Toxic Tour of Houston from Refineries to Superfund Sites in Wake of Harvey

The Costs of Not Acting on Climate Are Adding Up Fast

As Houston begins a recovery from Hurricane Harvey that is likely to last several years and cost many billions of dollars, the threat of extreme weather events around the country and the globe are illustrating the impact of climate change—and the damage being done by right-wing politicians including President Donald Trump who have refused to heed repeated warnings from scientists and other experts.

Author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben summed up the current state of affairs in a number of major U.S. cities, juxtaposed with Trump's decision earlier this year to withdraw from the 2016 Paris agreement on climate change:

Houston: slowly draining
LA: on fire
Miami: worrying about Cat5 Irma
Paris: climate agreement would be 'bad for America.'

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) September 4, 2017

On Monday morning, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said there is an "increasing chance" that the Florida Peninsula and the Florida Keys will see "some impacts" from the rapidly-approaching Hurricane Irma, and that "rough surf and dangerous marine conditions will begin to affect the southeastern U.S. coast by later this week."

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, firefighters spent the weekend fighting what Mayor Eric Garcetti called "the largest fire in the history of" the city, covering about 7,000 acres and forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate. The wildfire, known as the La Tuna fire, broke out amid temperatures in the hundreds, and the Union of Concerned Scientists has noted that climate change is "fueling the frequency of wildfires" throughout the state in recent years. 

Surrounded by Oil Refineries, Port Arthur, TX Faces New Environmental Crisis Following Harvey Floods

'Putting Politics Before Science,' Trump's EPA Restricting Grants for Climate Research

In what environmentalists characterized as an "outrageous" scheme by the Trump administration to put "politics before science," the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now only issuing grants and awards if they are approved by a political appointee, the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin reported on Monday.

John Konkus—a GOP operative who served as President Donald Trump's Leon County, Florida campaign chairman—now "reviews every award the agency gives out, along with every grant solicitation before it is issued," Eilperin noted.

She continued:

According to both career and political employees, Konkus has told staff that he is on the lookout for "the double C-word"—climate change—and repeatedly has instructed grant officers to eliminate references to the subject in solicitations.

Konkus, who officially works in the EPA's public affairs office, has canceled close to $2 million competitively awarded to universities and nonprofit organizations. Although his review has primarily affected Obama administration priorities, it is the heavily Republican state of Alaska that has undergone the most scrutiny so far.

Liz Bowman, an EPA spokeswoman, made clear in an interview with the Post that the purpose behind having a political aide "screen" awards and grants has nothing to do with scientific merit.

Rather, Konkus's role is "ensure funding is in line with the agency's mission and policy priorities," Bowman said.

Also of Interest

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

What are Donald Trump's options for solving the North Korea crisis?

Nikki Haley: Neocon Heartthrob

The Bad Guys Are The Ones Invading Sovereign Nations

The FBI Pressured a Lonely Young Man Into a Bomb Plot. He Tried to Back Out. Now He’s Serving Life in Prison.

Memphis Wants to Remove a Statue Honoring First Grand Wizard of the KKK

Why Trump Opponents Should Be Happy That Many Political Appointments Remain Unfilled

Massive black hole discovered near heart of the Milky Way

A Little Night Music

Buster Brown - Slow Drag Pt. 1

Buster Brown - I Get The Blues When It Rains

Buster Brown - Lost In A Dream

Buster Brown - Two Women

Buster Brown - John Henry

Buster Brown - Good News

Buster Brown - Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby

Buster Brown - Sugar Babe

Buster Brown - The Madison Shuffle

Buster Brown - My Blue Heaven

Buster Brown - Raise a Ruckus Tonight