



The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Mary Wells

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Detroit r&b singer and early Motown star Mary Wells. Enjoy!

Mary Wells - My Guy

“Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, ruled America like devil king for four years. His purges were an American mirror image of Stalin's purges, an unnoticed similarity.” -- Martha Gellhorn

News and Opinion

‘Getting Trump’ with the New McCarthyism In a normal world – after Tuesday’s testimony before the House Intelligence Committee – former CIA Director John Brennan would have been led away in a straitjacket or given the role of General Jack D. Ripper in a remake of the Cold War dark comedy, “Dr. Strangelove.” Instead, Brennan’s Russo-phobic ramblings were made the lead story in the Times, the Post and other major American newspapers. While General Ripper worried about Russian operatives polluting our “precious bodily fluids,” Brennan warned that any conversation with a Russian or some Russian intermediary might put Americans on a treasonous path even if they “do not even realize they are on that path until it gets too late.” He also testified, “I know what the Russians try to do. They try to suborn individuals and try to get individuals, including U.S. individuals, to act on their behalf, wittingly or unwittingly.” In other words, any American who has some contact with Russia or Russians may be a spy or mole whether he or she knows it or not. Subversion or possible subversion is everywhere. Trust no one. ... There was a time when some Democrats, some Republicans and a few courageous journalists objected to this kind of broad-brush challenge to the patriotism of American citizens. CBS News correspondent Edward R. Murrow famously stood up to Sen. Joe McCarthy and his Red Scare in the 1950s. It was then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton who chastised President George H.W. Bush during a 1992 presidential debate for making an issue of Clinton’s student trip to Moscow during the Cold War. But that was then. These days, Hillary Clinton and her Democratic allies have led the smearing of Trump supporters as possible Kremlin agents, albeit without proof of the so-called “collusion” or even clear evidence that Russia did “meddle” in last November’s election. ... A core problem with what Brennan and other Obama administration officials have set in motion is that the suspicions are so vague at this point – even some 10 months into the investigation – that a paranoia has taken over. There is a McCarthyistic element to these allegations, including guilt by association regarding any contact with any Russian or even some intermediary who might somehow be a Russian “false-flag.” Anyone or everyone might be a Russian “mole.” So, yes, I get the desire to get rid of Trump because of his unfitness and ineptness. But the “Russia thing” – as Trump calls it – is unleashing an ugliness that many of us thought was a thing of the past, an era of evidence-free accusations of disloyalty and a crazed hostility toward the other nuclear superpower that could end in a miscalculation that could end life on the planet. Is this really what Democrats and progressives want to embrace?

Washington Post Already Claiming Russiagate Is Still Valid Even If Seth Rich Was DNC Leaker The CIA-funded Washington Post has something very important to tell you about the Seth Rich case. WaPo, which is owned by the planet’s third-wealthiest plutocrat and lucky recipient of $600 million from the US Central Intelligence Agency, would like you to be aware that if for some reason it should be revealed that Russia didn’t hack the emails of DNC staffers and provide them to WikiLeaks, this doesn’t nullify the Trump-Russia collusion story. You know, just in case something should happen in the near future to make you think such a thing. In its most recent story in this series, oddly titled “The Seth Rich conspiracy’s biggest myths, explained,” WaPo agent David Weigel waited until halfway through his article to deliver the core message that WaPo’s directors need readers to believe: If the theory is right, does the “Trump/Russia” story implode? That’s pretty clearly what Sean Hannity thinks. “If Seth was wiki source, no Trump/Russia collusion,” the Fox News host tweeted this past weekend, as he promoted the out-of-almost-nowhere arrival of Internet celebrity Kim Dotcom to the story. The theory is simple: If someone could prove that WikiLeaks had a mole inside the DNC, the table-banging about Russia-linked hacking would be debunked, whoosh, just like that. The problem, which really should be more obvious, is that the DNC wasn’t the only Democratic campaign organization hacked in 2016. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was hacked. Podesta’s email was hacked. In the fantasy where the Rich obsessives are vindicated, they end up with no rebuttal to the federal investigators who say that hackers penetrated the DCCC and Clinton’s campaign chairman. And, not incidentally, the emails that did the most intra-Democratic Party damage, like the proof that then-DNC Vice Chair Donna Brazile shared two questions that were going to be asked at Clinton-Sanders televised events, came from the Podesta hack. So if I’m reading this CIA trade rag correctly (and I might not be as my eye is twitching furiously), we are meant to believe that should Russia be proven innocent of hacking DNC emails and giving them to WikiLeaks as mainstream outlets like the Washington Post have been assuring us every day they did, we still have to keep the Russia hysteria running full blast because surely the Russians are guilty of the other remaining hacking accusations that these outlets have been promulgating.

Hmmm. Smells funny. Smells like the WaPo people have been in their secret hide-away utility research kitchen cooking up another narrative about why those damnable Russians are responsible for Hillary Clinton losing the election and must be bombed for their insolence.

How a dubious Russian document influenced the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received what was described as a Russian intelligence document claiming a tacit understanding between the Clinton campaign and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server. The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter. If true, the revelation of such an understanding would have undermined the integrity of the FBI’s investigation. Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election. But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence — and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau. ... Current and former officials have argued that the secret document gave Comey good reason to take the extraordinary step over the summer of announcing the findings of the Clinton investigation himself without Justice Department involvement. Comey had little choice, these people have said, because he feared that if Lynch announced no charges against Clinton, and then the secret document leaked, the legitimacy of the entire case would be questioned.

More ...

Bad Russian intelligence shaped Comey’s investigation into Clinton’s emails The document reportedly describes an email sent from then-chair of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Leonardo Benado, who works for the George Soros-founded Open Society Foundations. According to the document, Wasserman Schultz suggested to Benado that Lynch had told Clinton campaign staffer Amanda Renteria that the email investigation wouldn’t dig too deep. ... The FBI declined to investigate further, even after deciding the document was bad, and despite its potential election-shaping impact, according to the Post. Wasserman Schultz, Benado, and Renteria all said the FBI never interviewed them about it and contend that they don’t know one another. ... FBI agents reportedly informed Lynch of the documents’ assertion, which she denied. She also offered to let the FBI formally interview her and her staff, which the FBI declined.

US raid killed five Yemen civilians, says rights group disputing official story Five civilians were killed in a US navy Seal raid in Yemen against al-Qaida militants, a human rights organisation said on Wednesday. US central command said that the raid on Tuesday had killed seven members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) in Marib governorate, “through a combination of small arms fire and precision airstrikes.” However, Reprieve, a London-based human rights group, said it had talked to two sources from the raided village, al-Jubah, who dispute that account. Both sources said that the raid went wrong from the start as the Seals opened fire on a 70-year-old partially blind man, named as Nasser Al-Adhal, who had come out of his house to see what was going on, possibly to greet them after mistaking them for visitors. On hearing al-Adhal being shot, other men then emerged from their homes, and four of them were shot dead by the Seals, according to the Reprieve account.

Yet Another Video Shows U.S.-Funded White Helmets Assisting Public Executions in Rebel-Held Syria Syria Civil Defense, popularly known as the White Helmets, can be seen in a new video assisting in a public execution in a rebel-held town in Syria. It is at least the second such execution video featuring members of the Nobel Prize-nominated group. The White Helmets have received at least $23 million in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a wing of the State Department. The British Foreign Office and other European governments have pitched in as well. Frequently cited as an invaluable source of information by major Western media outlets, the group was the subject of an Academy Award-winning 2016 Netflix documentary, The White Helmets. Endorsements from A-list Hollywood celebrities like George Clooney and Justin Timberlake, as well as Hillary Clinton and British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, have followed. Large corporate media networks have yet to report on the dark side of the White Helmets, however, and films like the widely celebrated Netflix feature function as uncritical commercials for the group, helping to keep the public in a state of ignorance about the domination of the Western-backed Syrian armed opposition by extremist Salafi jihadist groups, and about the civil conflict in general. The public execution took place in the small city of Jasim, in Syria’s southern Daraa province — which is often described as a hub for “moderate” rebels. Activists posted the video on May 16 on the Facebook page Coordination of the City of Al-Harra, Mother of the Martyrs, a site for the opposition in the neighboring city of Al-Harra. Two days later, Syria Civil Defense released a carefully crafted statement admitting its members were involved in the execution. The statement noted that a tribal council in Jasim had asked the White Helmets “to humanely dispose of the body of a person that had been sentenced to death, by the local court, for murder.” The group said it had “conducted an investigation” into the execution, and in response dismissed a White Helmet leader, while temporarily suspending two other team members.

U.S. Troops In Firing Range of ISIS Since the U.S. military began its campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, American troops, primarily special operators, have been creeping closer to the front lines and toward increasingly active combat. A new, official video provides measurable clues about just how close conventional forces now are to enemy in the fight to finally eject the terrorists from their de facto capital in Iraq, Mosul. On May 19, 2017, the U.S. Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division published another in a set of videos of its soldiers supporting Iraqi security forces (ISF) in and around Mosul. Unlike the other footage – which showed paratroopers flying in to a helicopter landing zone on UH-60 Black Hawks, driving and walking through liberated streets inside the city, delivering ammunition, and training Iraqi police snipers – this particular clip followed a mortar section providing relatively close-range fire support. Other images show the mortars in action in or near Mosul as early as March, 14, 2017. ... What this means is that, most likely, these soldiers from the 82nd Airborne were within that range of their enemy. ... While the U.S. military has employed artillery in support of Iraqi and Kurdish forces fighting ISIS before, it had done so at appreciable distances. ... This only continues to highlight the obtuse nature of the American advisory mission in Iraq and Syria. ... The issue is particularly important in light of President Donald Trump and his administration’s increasing willingness to send both special operators and

conventional troops on risky missions throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Use of Air Power in Afghanistan up Sharply as Trump Troop Decision Looms U.S. warplanes dropped more weapons on Afghanistan in April than in any other single month since 2012, according to new statistics, as military officials press U.S. President Donald Trump to send thousands more troops to the country. The escalation in the use of American air power was partly due to an effort by U.S. commanders to wipe out a nascent Islamic State presence before the group can establish more of a foothold in the county, a military spokesman said. The U.S. Air Force unleashed 460 bombs, missiles, or other ordnance last month in Afghanistan, more than double the 203 weapons dropped in March and more than seven times the quantity deployed in April last year. Trump has yet to announce a decision on proposals from his top military advisers calling for the United States and its coalition allies to send 3,000 to 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Currently around 8,400 U.S. and 6,500 coalition troops are deployed, mostly to train and support Afghan forces. The additional troops could also be used to ramp-up air support, which has often been seen as decisive in preventing the total collapse of some Afghan defensive positions and relies on trained air controllers on the ground.

South China Sea: US warship sails within 12 miles of China-claimed reef A US navy warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built up by China in the South China Sea, US officials have said, the first such challenge to Beijing in the strategic waterway since Donald Trump became president. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the USS Dewey had travelled close to Mischief reef in the Spratly Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals over which China has territorial disputes with its neighbors. The so-called “freedom of navigation operation” by the destroyer, which is equipped with guided missiles, is sure to anger China. It comes as Trump is seeking Beijing’s cooperation to rein in ally North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

House intelligence committee will also subpoena Flynn, top Democrat says The US House intelligence committee will join its Senate counterpart in subpoenaing former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election after he declined to appear before the panel, its top Democrat said on Wednesday. “We will be following up with subpoenas, and those subpoenas will be designed to maximize our chance of getting the information that we need,” Adam Schiff told journalists at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. The leaders of the Senate intelligence committee said on Tuesday they would subpoena two of Flynn’s businesses after he declined to hand over documents in its separate Russia probe.

UK police stop passing Manchester bombing information to US over leaks British police have stopped sharing evidence from the investigation into the terror network behind the Manchester bombing with the United States after a series of leaks left investigators and the government furious. The ban is limited to the Manchester investigation only. British police believe the leaks are unprecedented in their scope, frequency and potential damage. Downing Street was not behind the decision by Greater Manchester police to stop sharing information with US intelligence, a No 10 source said, stressing that it was important police were allowed to take independent decisions. ... Relations between the US and UK security services, normally extremely close, have been put under strain by the scale of the leaks from US officials to the American media.

This is sadly, completely unsurprising. Even more unsurprising is that a US government agency kills innocent people and lies about it for years, but feels that nobody needs to stand to account, rather "internal procedures" need review.

DEA Lied to Congress About Deadly Raid That Killed Four Hondurans, Government Report Says The Drug Enforcement Administration repeatedly lied to Congress about fatal shooting incidents in Honduras, including the killing of four civilians during a DEA-led operation, according to a devastating 424-page report released today by the inspectors general for the State and Justice departments. The report depicts how the DEA withheld information from the U.S. ambassador in Honduras, passed incorrect information up the chain of command, repeatedly misrepresented the U.S. role as an adviser in what was actually a U.S.-led operation, recruited an informant to back up the DEA’s version of events and then stuck by the informant’s story despite its “inconsistent and contradictory accounts.” The DEA told Congress that its informant had passed a polygraph test, but the report concludes that test was undocumented and “largely useless.” Most importantly, the report states that the DEA falsely characterized the deaths of four Hondurans as a shootout with drug traffickers despite proof on video that DEA-led forces fired on unarmed civilians. The dead were traveling on a passenger boat to a town called Ahuas, on the remote Mosquito Coast. Almost immediately, the mayor of Ahuas and other Honduran officials protested that the dead were innocent; the DEA maintained that its forces had been fired upon by drug traffickers. Today, more than five years later, the report confirms that the people of Ahuas were telling the truth. There was no crossfire. It was a DEA agent who ordered a helicopter gunner to open fire on the passenger boat. The four dead Hondurans — Emerson Martínez, Candelaria Trapp, Hasked Brooks Wood, and Juana Jackson — posed no threat. The DEA gave a grossly inaccurate depiction of its own operations to Congress and let that account stand uncorrected. It is unclear whether the DEA personnel involved in the Ahuas shootings and the subsequent misrepresentations will face any sanction for their behavior. The inspectors general did not recommend charging any of the agency’s personnel with obstruction of justice or other criminal violations. Instead, they recommended that the DEA improve its internal procedures around reviewing shootings.

Video appears to show San Antonio police officer punching girl, 14, in face A police officer in Texas can be seen in a newly emerged video apparently punching a 14-year-old girl several times in the face during an altercation at a birthday party. The blurry footage was taken by a bystander in a parking lot outside a party venue on Saturday evening. It shows several officers among a small crowd. Someone cries: “Don’t talk to her like that … oh my God!” One officer appears to throw several punches at a girl in a purple dress, who lurches backwards. She is then dragged away by two officers while a woman, reportedly her mother, screams in the background and is restrained. More screams and wails are audible. The girl was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a public servant, taken to a juvenile detention centre and released on Monday. Her attorney, Artessia House, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian on Wednesday. House told the San Antonio Express-News that the girl had not assaulted the officer and was an excellent student with no history of violence.

Like you have to ask this headline question ...

Trump has ‘hit the restart button’ on search for new FBI director, no longer considering Joe Lieberman President Trump is no longer considering former senator Joe Lieberman as his next FBI director, CNN reported Wednesday. Trump, who had said as recently as last week that Lieberman was his top choice, will in fact "hit the restart button" on the search for a new FBI chief, the network reported.

These people thought they’d get their student loans paid off — now they’re panicking Sarah Black has been doing a lot of waiting — to save for the future, to take a major vacation and, perhaps most important, to start having kids. “I’ve always been saying that my life is going to start at 40,” the 36-year-old said. That’s when her roughly $130,000 in student debt will finally be wiped away. As a public defender, Black,who lives in West Chester, Pa., is eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program (PSLF), an initiative that allows nonprofit or government workers with federal student loans to have their debts forgiven after 10 years of repayment. Black is about seven years into the program, but she’s beginning to worry she’ll never get the forgiveness she was promised. ... The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the Education Department will recommend eliminating PSLF, the Washington Post reported recently. Though it’s unclear whether that proposal will make it into the public version likely to be released Tuesday, it would take an act of Congress to get rid of PSLF and it’s likely that borrowers who have already been approved for the program would be grandfathered in — the news has borrowers like Black, who are relying on it, on edge. ... The PSLF program, which was signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007, aims to encourage student loan borrowers to pursue public service fields that may require some education but don’t pay as well as the private sector. So far, more than 500,000 borrowers are on track to have their loans forgiven through the program and, like Black, many have planned their financial lives and careers around it. Even before there were indications that Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education would propose to eliminate PSLF, advocates and borrowers were worried about its future. ... Trump administration officials aren’t the first to propose changes to the program — the Obama administration floated capping the forgiveness at $57,500.

Donald Trump is playing 'bad cop' with his extremist budget proposal An ambitious opening bid is a basic tactic of negotiation, basic enough that Donald Trump (or his ghostwriter, at least) wrote about it in The Art of the Deal: “My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing … Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.” Trump’s draconian budget proposal has all the signs of a gambit designed to get what Trump, and his negotiating partners in Congress, really want, which is a slightly less draconian budget. So it’s cold comfort to its intended targets – the poor, the sick, many in rural red states Trump won – that the budget plan won’t pass in its current form. No president’s budget plan ever does. “Dead on arrival” is how John McCain described it, though his objection was that it does not shift enough money from welfare recipients to defense contractors. ... Congressional Republicans are already feigning shock at some of the more egregious cuts Trump has in mind, including money for cancer and Alzheimer’s research, and Meals on Wheels, calling them “a bridge too far”; elderly people, after all, actually do vote. Don’t be fooled, though. The same lawmakers fanning themselves and reaching for the smelling salts have been pushing the same austerity program for decades. Cutting Medicaid is something Paul Ryan said he’s been dreaming of since he was “drinking at a keg”, while Mitch McConnell has complained that Americans are “doing too good with food stamps, Social Security, and all the rest”. The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Endowment for the Arts have been Republican targets for elimination since the 80s. ... Yet even in hobbled form, Trump is still useful to Republicans on the Hill simply because he allows them to push the same extremist policies they’ve always pushed and appear comparably less extreme. So they will stand up to him on farm subsidies while killing home energy and student loan subsidies, along with climate change research, literacy programs, teacher training, community services block grants, occupational safety and health programs, hazardous waste cleanup, and a host of programs for the poor. ... The truth is Republicans are better at this game than Democrats. They’re perfectly happy to have Trump play the bad cop, because they can assert their independence and still get what they want. Democrats consistently concede to the other side before they’ve even begun to negotiate.





Trump EPA Gives Landfills a Pass on Climate-Warming Methane The Environmental Protection Agency has announced it will delay rules aimed at cutting methane emissions from landfills, a move that could unravel attempts to limit the potent greenhouse gas from leaking into the atmosphere from the nation's garbage dumps. The rules, created during the Obama administration to help combat climate change, require landfills to measure and capture methane, a greenhouse gas with significantly more heat-trapping power than carbon dioxide, over a shorter timeframe. They would reduce methane emissions from landfills by 334,000 tons a year, starting in 2025, roughly the equivalent of 8.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. "Landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions, so they're really a big source of climate pollution," said Peter Zalzal, a lead attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund. "Our concern is that this is the first in a series of actions that will undermine these efforts and eventually do away with them altogether."

Environmental Groups as Climate Deniers Most environmental/conservation groups are Climate Change deniers. Specifically, I am talking about the numerous organizations that give lip service to the threat posed by climate change, but don’t even mention to their membership the contribution that livestock production has with regards to rising global temperatures. While most organizations are calling, climate change the environmental issue of our time, they avoid discussing the contribution of animal agriculture in climate change. It is one of those topics that is avoided in any climate change discussions. We hear about the need to reduce fossil fuels and switch to renewable energy. We are encouraged to drive more efficient vehicles or insulate our homes. We are told to turn down the thermostat in winter. Not that these ideas aren’t worthy of action. However, the single easiest and most effective way to reduce one’s personal contribution to global warming is to change one’s diet. Consumption of meat and dairy is one of the biggest contributors to Green House Gas Emissions (GHG) but few organizations are willing to even discuss this problem, much less advocate for a diet change. ... Any number of recent studies have shown that livestock contributes anywhere from 14.5 percent of global GHG emissions (in a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report) up to a World Watch assessment that includes more of the collateral impacts of livestock production estimates that as much as 51% of all GHG emissions are the result of livestock production. And worse for the environment, many organizations promote “grass fed” beef and dairy as if that somehow negates the environmental impacts of livestock. Ironically, because consumption of grass and other “free range” forage is more difficult for rumen bacteria than converting higher quality forage like corn, silage, or soy into energy, grass-fed beef/dairy cows emit more methane over their lives than CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) produced beef/dairy. This is not an endorsement of CAFOs, rather it demonstrates that meat/dairy consumption no matter what the source may be, is counter-productive if your goal is to reduce GHG emissions.

Trump’s Budget Delivers Big Oil’s Wish: Reducing Strategic Petroleum Reserve President Donald Trump‘s newly proposed budget calls for selling over half of the nation’s of the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the 687 million barrels of federally owned oil stockpiled in Texas and Louisiana as an emergency energy supply. While most observers believe the budget will not pass through Congress in its current form, budgets depict an administration’s priorities and vision for the country. Some within the oil industry have lobbied for years to drain the SPR, created in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis. Leading the way has been ExxonMobil, which lobbied for congressional bills in both 2012 and 2015 calling for SPR oil to be sold on the private sector market. The Trump administration says selling off oil from the national reserve could generate $16.58 billion in revenue for U.S. taxpayers over the next 10 years. But EnergyWire’s Peter Behr reported that the Trump SPR budget proposal would potentially violate U.S. commitments as a member of the International Energy Agency. “As a member of the International Energy Agency, the United States must store enough petroleum to equal at least 90 days of U.S. crude imports, according to DOE,” wrote Behr. “The SPR held the equivalent of 141 days of imports as of last September, so cutting the supply in half would apparently put the United States below its commitment to global stockpiles, an insurance policy against a major loss of crude supply from conflict or natural disasters.”

Also of Interest

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

Ukraine Factions Vie for Lobbying Edge

Montenegro finds itself at heart of tensions with Russia as it joins Nato

Why You Should Definitely Keep Talking About Seth Rich

Actually, Bill Maher, Hillary Clinton Was The GREATER Evil

Big Law Moves Big Time into Trump Administration – After Financing Hillary’s Campaign

Catalonia Threatens Spain with “Financial Bloodbath”

A Little Night Music

Mary Wells - Bye Bye Baby

Mary Wells - The one who really loves you

Mary Wells - Bad Boy

Mary Wells - Two Lovers

Mary Wells - Operator

Mary Wells - My Baby Just Cares For Me

Mary Wells - Just One Look

Mary Wells - I'm Learnin'

Mary Wells - Me Without You

Mary Wells - Use Your Head

Mary Wells - The Doctor