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This evening's music features Chicago blues musicians, harmonica player Little Willie Anderson and guitarist Dave Specter. Enjoy!

“...do not spare any reasonable expense to come at early and true information; always recollecting, and bearing in mind, that vague and uncertain accounts of things [are]... more disturbing and dangerous than receiving none at all.”

-- George Washington

News and Opinion

Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive. ...

This NSA summary judgment is sharply at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial last week that Russia had interfered in foreign elections: “We never engaged in that on a state level, and have no intention of doing so.” Putin, who had previously issued blanket denials that any such Russian meddling occurred, for the first time floated the possibility that freelance Russian hackers with “patriotic leanings” may have been responsible. The NSA report, on the contrary, displays no doubt that the cyber assault was carried out by the GRU.

The NSA analysis does not draw conclusions about whether the interference had any effect on the election’s outcome and concedes that much remains unknown about the extent of the hackers’ accomplishments.

NSA Contractor Charged for Leak After Intercept Exposé Reveals Russian Cyberattack of 2016 Election

An excellent article worth a full read:

NSA Leak Answers No Questions About Russia, Asks Many About Election Integrity

[T]he Intercept ha[s] published a leaked NSA analysis of a suspected Russian phishing attempt upon a US voter registration outfits days before the November election, and this is literally the third paragraph in its article about that release:

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

... The fact is, we’ve already seen analysis reports from intelligence agencies on the alleged Russian election meddling, like this one by the DHS and the FBI in December, and this one by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in January, and like the Intercept’s NSA leak those didn’t contain any raw intelligence either. I received the same “bombshell”, “smoking gun”, “ha ha bet you feel stupid now” comments when those reports came out as well, but none of that changed the fact that there has never, ever been even one shred of tangible evidence for people to look at apart from the say-so of official-sounding people that any Russian hacking occurred. The NSA leak differs in that the analysis is more detailed and in that it was leaked to the press rather than officially released, but the amount of hard evidence contained in it is the same: zero.

Journalism requires that document be published and reported. Rationality requires it be read skeptically.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 5, 2017

Additionally, the NSA was literally just shown to have been dead wrong about Russia meddling in the French election. This story got quickly buried and as of this writing is even suspiciously inconvenient to find on Google despite its having happened just a few days ago, with top results for expected keywords showing older articles asserting that Russia did hack the French election instead. For weeks establishment outlets were reporting as unquestionable fact that Russia was known to have hacked French electoral infrastructure, citing NSA chief Michael Rogers’ confident proclamation that NSA surveillance had “watched” this happen.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who were paying attention during the leadup to the Iraq invasion, and those who, in one way or another, lacked the maturity at the time to have done so. Anyone who was paying attention back then has been smelling a very familiar scent in the air lately; the same hysterical tension, the same skepticism-free convergence of the mass media upon a single Washington narrative, the same stubborn refusal to produce hard evidence for the extremely serious accusations being leveled, the same accusations of treason, conspiracy theorizing and subversion leveled against anyone who questions the official narrative. The only thing that’s different now is it’s a nuclear superpower that America’s unelected power establishment is gunning for, not some insolent OPEC nation. ...

What’s most interesting to me, however, is how little attention is being paid to discussion of election integrity amidst all the “bombshell”/“smoking gun”/“treason” talk.

NSA contractor Reality Winner accused of leaking file on Russia election hacking

Three days before Americans voted last November, Reality Winner joked with her sister online that Moscow’s efforts to influence the US presidential election could have an upside for her as a keen weightlifter. “When we become the United States of the Russian Federation,” she said on Facebook, “Olympic lifting will be the national sport.” ...

Prosecutors allege that last month, Winner, who was working for the defense contractor Pluribus International Corporation, printed an NSA document detailing how Russia had hacked a voting equipment vendor in Florida and was trying to breach local election systems right up until the days before November’s vote. ...

Winner’s posts on social media over recent months suggest, however, that she, like many other Americans, had become increasingly agitated over some extraordinary developments in national politics. She posted disparagingly on Facebook about Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border, about his draconian criminal justice plans, and about his assault on the Environmental Protection Agency. In February, she referred to the president as “piece of shit”. ...

Reality began working for Pluribus in Augusta, Georgia, in February this year, according to court filings. She previously served in the US air force since January 2013 and held a top-secret security clearance. Her mother said Reality had been a linguist for the air force. “She speaks the middle eastern languages – Farsi, Dari and Pashto,” said Billie Winner-Davis.

The government employs too many people to stop more Reality Winners

President Donald Trump has declared war on government leakers, but it will be a difficult one for this administration, or any administration, to win.

The Justice Department arrested one culprit Monday who allegedly leaked secrets to The Intercept, but there are millions of people with access to classified government information, and most actually work as contractors outside the government. Trying to catch them all would be like trying to patch the Titanic with plywood. ...

It is the sprawling network of contractors in the intelligence community, in particular, that poses a problem for the feds’ efforts to crackdown on leaks. Journalist Tim Shorrock has estimated that 80 percent of people working for intelligence agencies are contractors, and that 800,000 of the 4 million security-cleared U.S. citizens are employed as contractors.

Contractors aren’t subject to the same strict scrutiny that standard government employees are, and many of the most significant intelligence leaks of the past decade have been traced back to contract workers.

Max Blumenthal Grills Progressive Rep. Jamie Raskin about Russia Allegations

US-backed Syrian forces launch offensive to retake Raqqa from Isis

A US-backed Syrian force says it has begun an offensive to capture the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State, after months of clearing operations.

Raqqa was among the first cities captured by Isis, in January 2014, and has been home to some of the group’s most prominent leaders, including those who planned the November 2015 Paris attacks and other international assaults. The battle for the city is expected to be long and bloody, and could mark a turning point in the war against the extremists.

Talal Sillo, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), told reporters that operations had begun in coordination with the US-led coalition. “We declare today the beginning of the great battle to liberate the city of Raqqa, the alleged capital of terrorism and terrorists,” Sillo told a news conference held in northern Syria. “Morale is high and military readiness to implement the military plan is complete, in coordination with the US-led coalition.”

SDF fighters began advancing toward Raqqa in November, capturing wide areas of northern Syria from the extremists. Last week, they reached the northern and eastern gates of the city after intense clashes under the cover of US-led airstrikes. Raqqa is currently surrounded from the east, north and west, and opposition activists have reported intense shelling and airstrikes on the city since Monday night, which killed at least 12 people.

Will the Neocons’ Long War Ever End?

The recent news from Kabul (in Afghanistan), from Manchester and London (in England), from Mosul (in Iraq), from Raqqa (in Syria), from Marib (in Yemen) and from too many devastated and traumatized communities to list makes it only too clear that the world is trapped in an unprecedented and intractable cycle of violence. And yet, incredibly, none of the main parties to all this violence are talking seriously about how to end it, let alone taking action to do so. After 15 years of ever-spreading conflict has killed two to five million people, the main perpetrators are still getting away with framing their violence entirely as a response to the violence of their enemies. How much violence and chaos will the world accept before people start holding their own leaders morally and legally accountable for decisions and policies that predictably and repeatedly result in massive loss of life, cities reduced to rubble and shattered societies?

The neoconservative vision of a “Long War” or “generational conflict” to reshape the Middle East and other parts of the world has, in effect, created its own reality, as its proponents in the Bush II administration promised. The new crony-capitalist order they envisioned has taken root in places where entrenched ruling classes were already predisposed to it, like the Persian Gulf monarchies. ...

The paradox of this crisis is that, on both sides, the deadly and tragic results of actual military operations and terrorism are offset by success in the information war that sustains them both. We are confronting a perfect storm in which successful information warfare enables leaders on all sides to avoid rethinking strategies and policies that lead only to more violence and bloodshed. On the U.S. side, every city we bomb, every jihadi or civilian we kill, and every country we plunge into chaos becomes a rallying point to recruit more jihadis and generate more anti-U.S. resistance, often in surprising places. While American bombs and Iraqi death squads have been reducing much of West Mosul to rubble and killing thousands of its residents, the West’s enemies have bombed Manchester; occupied Marawi, a city of 200,000 people in the Philippines; and conducted an unprecedented bombing in Kabul’s fortified “green zone.”

This is full-blown asymmetric warfare, and we would be foolish to think it cannot get much, much worse. But we should not let the asymmetry in the numbers killed or the weapons used to kill them obscure the overarching reality that the violence of each party to the conflict is fueling the violence of the other and thereby perpetuating this horrific cycle of violence. ... The contradictions of the U.S. role in the world are becoming too dangerous and too obvious to the whole world to paper over with any amount of propaganda, consumerism and political games. The leaders of other nations and their citizens must now come to grips with the grave responsibilities of addressing the “American problem” and shepherding the world through a critical transition to a sustainable, just and peaceful future.

Is the Qatar boycott a precursor to invasion?

Qatar crisis: This is why Saudi Arabia and its allies have suddenly cut ties to their Sunni Arab neighbour

Qatar is unexpectedly under siege from its neighbours. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, supported by Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, the five Arab states have cut diplomatic relations with Qatar, severed land, air and sea travel and are expelling Qatari citizens who have 48 hours to depart. The Saudis and their allies are demanding, in effect, that Qatar end its independent foreign policy and tame or close down its television station, Al Jazeera. They claim that Qatar is complicit with Iran in supporting terrorism, though Qatar is one of the loose coalition of Sunni states supporting forces hostile to Iran in Syria and Yemen. ...

What has changed in the Gulf to precipitate a crisis now? The answer is that the Trump wrecking ball passed through the region last month and the US President’s unreserved backing for Saudi Arabia, and in particularly for deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has disturbed the regional balance of forces. It has already emboldened the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain to crush the last Shia resistance to its dominance, killing five protesters in one village and closing down the only remaining independent newspaper.

Much more seriously, Mr Trump’s unqualified support for the Sunni monarchies and autocrats during his two-day visit to Riyadh emboldened the kingdom to start a second and, it hopes, final round in its confrontation with Qatar. Mr Trump may not have intended to touch off this latest crisis when he aggressively and inaccurately demonised Iran and by implication the Shia as the source of all terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa. But his words were interpreted by the Saudis as enabling them to move against Qatar though it is home to a major US base.

Under Mr Trump, the degree of protection Qatar can expect from the US is uncertain and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, eager to secure his own path to the Saudi throne, cannot afford a failure. He may even want to go the limit and eliminate Qatar as an independent state, the first time this has happened in the Gulf since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Netanyahu condensed, "Israel will never make a fair deal with the Palestinians; Israel demands control Palestinians and their lands in perpetuity."

Netanyahu insists Israel retain Jordan Valley military control

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday pledged that he would not cede military control of the West Bank’s Jordan Valley in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. Speaking at a ceremony marking 50 years since the outbreak of the 1967 Six-Day War, Netanyahu’s comments seemed likely to cast a pall over US President Donald Trump’s attempts to breathe life into long-stalled peace efforts.

Netahyahu said at the event, " ... in any agreement — and without an agreement — we shall maintain security control over all the territory west of the Jordan Valley and because of that we insist that the Palestinians finally recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people.”

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”

-- Jay Gould

One prison, two realities: detainees suffer, but locals say it keeps a poor town afloat

The Arizona town of Eloy used to live off cotton until it sucked up so much groundwater the desert floor began to crack and collapse. The town withered and almost died. Then it found a new source of revenue: people, colour-coded in blue, green and khaki uniforms. America’s biggest private prison operator built a complex with four prisons in Eloy and imported prisoners from across the United States. CoreCivic, previously the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is now Eloy’s biggest employer and taxpayer, contributing about $2m to its $12m general fund budget.

In addition to generating property and sales tax revenues, the approximately 6,500 prisoners boost state disbursements by swelling Eloy’s official population to more than 17,000. “It’s a positive thing for a small rural community, a great help to us,” said Harvey Krauss, the city manager.

There is, in theory, a dilemma for this dusty town tucked between Phoenix and Tucson. One of the four prisons inside CoreCivic’s complex has been dubbed America’s deadliest immigrant detention centre. There have been 15 deaths, including at least five suicides, since 2003, according to an Arizona Republic tally.

A recent joint study by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (Civic) found that detainees who are incarcerated pending deportation proceedings were needlessly suffering and dying at Eloy and other facilities because of improper medical care and misuse of solitary confinement. It cited “systemic failure”.

Jose de Jesus Deniz Sahagun, 31, from Mexico, died after a disturbing suicide. Manuel Cota-Domingo, 34, a Guatemalan with diabetes and pneumonia, died when staff dithered over calling 911.

Such notoriety could present a challenge to the residents of Eloy. It does not. “It’s pretty much out of sight, out of mind,” said Krauss. Residents are spread over a 100 sq miles and many never see, let alone visit, the prison complex. “People just live their daily lives, do their own thing. Prison is just an industry.” Mark Benner, a chamber of commerce spokesman, agreed. “We are non-political. If someone comes down here and protests they’re entitled to have their point of view. We’re interested in businesses.” Residents echoed that view. Few were aware of the immigration prison’s controversial reputation. When told, they shrugged.

It looks like Google has foresaken it's "don't be evil" credo and will now become the monster that stands astride the internet and forcing netizens to pay them taxes.

Be Careful Celebrating Google’s New Ad Blocker. Here’s What’s Really Going On.

Google, a data mining and extraction company that sells personal information to advertisers, has hit upon a neat idea to consolidate its already-dominant business: block competitors from appearing on its platforms. The company announced that it would establish an ad blocker for the Chrome web browser, which has become the most popular in America, employed by nearly half of the nation’s web users. ...

What ads would get blocked? The ones not sold by Google, for the most part. ...

There’s more to the story, however. The real goal for Google appears to be not just blocking ads sold by other digital suppliers besides Google, but to undermine third-party ad blockers, which stop Google ads along with everyone else’s.

According to the Financial Times, Google will allow publishers what it’s calling “Funding Choices.” The publisher could charge the consumer a set price per page view to use third-party sites that block all advertising. Google would do the tracking of how many pages users view, and then charge them. Users could then “white list” particular sites, allowing ads to be shown on them and removing the charge. If users decided to pay to block ads, Google would receive a portion of that payment, sharing it with the publisher.

Web users will quickly recognize their only options: pay to use the internet, or uninstall the ad blockers and surf the web for free.

Supreme Court to decide if Fourth Amendment applies to cellphone records

The Supreme Court will take up a case looking at whether police can peruse someone’s cell phone location records without first getting a warrant, the justices announced Monday, adding another high-profile civil liberties case to the docket for their next session. The high court agreed to hear an appeal from a case in Detroit, where prosecutors used data detailing an armed robbery suspect’s locations from his cell phone data history to help convict him. The police had obtained those records by request, but didn’t go to court to get a warrant.

An appeals court upheld the conviction, saying checking those records isn’t considered a search under the Fourth Amendment, so no warrant is needed. Civil liberties groups are begging for the court to overturn the ruling, saying cell location information can paint a most intimate picture of someone’s life — exactly the kind of information that the Fourth Amendment was intended to protect.

Meet Larry Krasner: Civil Rights Attorney, Death Penalty Opponent & Democratic Philly DA Candidate

North Carolina gerrymandering is racist, Supreme Court rules again

The Supreme Court just ruled again that North Carolina draws racist legislative districts.

In the third ruling about voting rights in North Carolina in the past month, the nine justices on Monday upheld the ruling of a lower court that the state racially gerrymandered 28 districts — nine state Senate and 19 state House, all adopted in 2011 by a Republican-controlled Legislature.

The lower court must now determine whether the state should hold a special election in all 28 districts this fall, which would cut the terms of their legislators short. In January, the Supreme Court had stayed the lower court’s November call for a special election while the justices considered an appeal from state legislators.

Climate change progress at Trump's EPA is grinding to a halt, workers reveal

Current and former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees have described how work on climate change is grinding to a halt at the agency, with programs being scrapped and fears that staff may be reassigned away from climate-related tasks. ...

Climate work at the EPA is being systematically targeted for elimination, according to Alyssa Hall, who was the climate change adaption coordinator for EPA’s region one, which encompasses New England, until last month. “I felt like we were being attacked on a daily basis from headquarters. A lot of my projects were being cancelled or postponed indefinitely, so I was left with nothing to do,” Hall told the Guardian. Hall worked on integrating climate change considerations into the EPA’s programs, better preparing the agency for a world with higher temperatures, rising seas and more intense storms. But the change in direction under the incoming Trump administration was like “whiplash”, she said, with staff afraid of even using the term “climate change” in emails.

“If it was a project associated with climate change, people at headquarters would pick up the phone rather than email,” she said. “Staff were paranoid that their programs were going to get cut if they mentioned climate change. One day it was fine and then it was like you were being slapped in the face every day.” Hall, who now works in the private sector, said that “everyone knows” at the agency that climate change staff will be sent to other areas. The EPA has reportedly started moving climate adaption employees to new roles, although an agency spokesman said he would not comment on rumors of reassignments. The climate change division and the climate protection partnership division sits within the EPA’s office of air and radiation.

Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, has launched what he calls a “back to basics” strategy at the agency where focus shifts from climate change to basic functions such as cleaning up toxic sites and addressing air and water pollution.

Rex Tillerson gets frosty welcome in New Zealand – complete with single finger salutes

The US Secretary of State has been met with a frosty reception and a backhanded compliment from the prime minister while on a flying visit to New Zealand. Rex Tillerson arrived in wet and windy Wellington for an eight-hour visit on Tuesday, with his motorcade greeted by middle fingers and thumbs-downs.

Fairfax Media reported that the US media contingent were surprised by the hostile reception from members of the public. “I’ve never seen so many people flip the bird at an American motorcade as I saw today,” the New York Times’ Washington correspondent, Gardiner Harris, told Stuff.co.nz.

About 200 protesters with the climate change action group 350 Aotearoa were gathered outside Parliament to “unwelcome” Tillerson, following president Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris accord.

Great view of @GreenpeaceNZ's climate action ahead of Rex Tillerson's meeting with PM Bill English today. pic.twitter.com/CWcB9CKm65

— Green Party NZ (@NZGreens) June 5, 2017

The prime minister himself was less than effusive over Tillerson’s visit. At a press conference, Bill English said: “New Zealanders have for a long time not liked various presidents of the US and disagreed with their views about our anti-nuke policies for 30 years – but that doesn’t prevent us confirming our shared values and cooperating with them on security and defence.” English later told news media that he and Tillerson “discussed our disagreement over the withdrawal from the Paris agreement”.

Also of Interest

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

Democrats Chase Red Herring of Russia-gate

Trump and the American Decline

How The Intercept Outed Reality Winner

Fresno State Cancels a Middle East Studies Professorship Amid Alleged Right-wing Pro-Israel Pressure

What’s Happening in the Persian Gulf

We were told Corbyn was ‘unelectable’. His fightback shows he’s anything but

Design Fault: Counterterrorism’s Egregious Failures Don’t Trouble Our Leaders at All

Faking 'wokeness': how advertising targets millennial liberals for profit

The Demolition of American Education

Americans own 640m acres of national land – but can we keep it?

'Cancer Alley' residents say industry is hurting town: 'We're collateral damage'

A Little Night Music

Little Willie Anderson - Looking For You Baby, West Side Baby

Dave Specter - Chicago Style

Otis Clay with Dave Specter - This Time I'm Gone For Good

Little Willie Anderson - Everything Gonna Be Alright

Willie Anderson & Barrelhouse Chuck - Westside Baby

Little Willie Anderson - Big Fat Mama

Studebaker John w/Dave Specter - Partner in Crime

Dave Specter, Tadd Robinson and Deitra Farr - Anywhere But Here

Dave Specter - Soul Serenade