MARCH 11 THROUGH 21
 March
21, 2017 The
CIA’s Primary Objective is to Preserve Its Own Existence, Not to Protect
U.S. Citizens. ... So what is the CIA’s primary purpose? Essentially, to
stay in business. This is according to a former CIA counter-terrorism officer
and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The
Ring of Fire 
UNRIVALED
Surveillance State Monitors Every American Citizen! – Redacted Tonight. ...
Redacted Tonight host Lee Camp delves into our twisted and all-encompassing Surveillance
State. One week ago it came out that the CIA has been spying on Americans through,
not only our phones, but even our smart TVs and cars. The Ring
of Fire Why
does House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (Rep. VA) want to fast-track
legislation overhauling civil litigation that protects all Americans—including
those in his Congressional District, who simply wish to have their day in court
when wrongfully injured or cheated by the very corporations to whom Chairman Goodlatte
is beholden? Does he distrust judges and juries that have fairly adjudicated disputes
for years? Does he hate the American people? Ralph
Nader
How 'dirty
money' from Russia flooded into the UK – and where it went. ... Exclusive:
Investigators in eastern Europe have uncovered a trail that leads to fur brokers,
Bond Street jewellers and even a Somerset school. Guardian
Amid Spike
in Civilian Deaths from U.S. Strikes, Trump Requests Lifting Policy Limiting Casualties.
... On Thursday, a U.S. Reaper drone struck a gathering in a rebel-held village
in Aleppo province, killing as many as 49 people. Monitoring groups say most of
the dead were civilians who had gathered at a mosque to pray, while the Pentagon
claims the gathering was a meeting of al-Qaeda members. Democracy
Now
How Senators
Might Get the Goods on Gorsuch; The Reclusive Billionaire Behind Breitbart and
Trump.
Bill
Moyers Network
of wealthy Russians has sunk $100m into Donald Trump's luxury developments. ...
The President recently insisted he has 'no deals in Russia' but investigations
show lengthy list of major investments by Russian elite in his property empire.
Independent
March
20, 2017 - First Day of Spring
U.N. agency
published a report noting that “Israel has established an apartheid regime
that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.” ... the author of that
report, who has served as executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and
Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) since 2010, Rima Khalef, resigned
after the Trump administration, working in conjunction with Israel, pressured
the U.N. secretary-general to demand that she withdraw the report.
The
Intercept
A
Last Chance for Resistance. ... The crawl toward despotism within a failed democracy
is always incremental. No regime planning to utterly extinguish civil liberties
advertises its intentions in advance. It pays lip service to liberty and justice
while obliterating the institutions and laws that make them possible. TruthDig/Hedges
Brexit,
Nationalism and the Damage Done. ... Brexit is English nationalism made flesh,
but the English underrate its destructive potential as a form of communal identity.
CounterPunch/Cockburn
For
Donald Trump, a Terror Attack Will Be an Opportunity Not a Curse. ... CAN WE BREATHE
a sigh of relief after federal judges blocked President Donald Trump’s discriminatory
executive orders? For a moment we can, but we are just a terrorism attack away
from the White House gaining a new pretext for its wrathful crackdown against
Muslims and immigrants. The
Intercept ‘Finks’
Explores the Blurred Line Between Propaganda and Literature ... The CIA colluded
with literary magazines to produce cultural propaganda throughout the Cold War,
a debate began that has never been resolved. The story continues to unfold, with
the reputations of some of America’s best-loved literary figures—including
Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton, and Richard Wright—tarnished as their
work for the intelligence agency has come to light.
TruthDig
March 19,
2017
All
IN THE FAMILY - TRUMP STYLE
|
RUSSIAN
IN HACKING PROBE LINKED TO
ALT-RIGHT STOCK FRAUD
Pavel
"Red Eye" Vrublevsky Vrublevsky,
a Russian businessman under investigation in
the FBI’s probe of Russian hacking in the 2016 Presidential election, shared
a business address in John Gotti’s former stronghold of Howard Beach, Queens
with a company led by a Tampa Mobster convicted in the “alt-right” stock
fraud ring run by Sarasota’s own Andrew Badolato, business partner and Breitbart
collaborator of Trump advisor Steve Bannon. MadCow
Related:
Donald Trump and The Palm Beach Homies. ... Trump’s
history with the Mob - beginning with early business partners in Atlantic City
who were ‘dese dem & dose’ guys with crooked noses who knew where
Jimmy Hoffa was really buried —is a virtual travelogue through 30 years of
ever-more sophisticated organized crime. MadCow
From 2008 -
Trump Mansion Sold to “Mobsters Sans Frontières”
... The Russian "businessman" to whom Donald Trump sold his Palm Beach
mansion for a purported $100 million was arrested in Russia in April of 1997 and
charged with masterminding the killing of a business rival, in what law enforcement
authorities called "a contract hit." MadCow
In
Yemen, where US/UK/Saudi have waged savage war:
7 million one step away
from famine, 17 million w/food insecurity - Greenwald. ... Yemen at 'point of
no return' as conflict leaves almost 7 million close to famine. ... Governments
have been warned they face enduring shame should famine take hold in Yemen, where
two-thirds of the population face severe food shortages. Guardian
Southern
Command in Costa Rica:
US Occupation Disguised as Humanitarian Aid . ... The military personnel were
playing the role of missionaries, giving Bibles away. However, simultaneously,
they were carrying out various military training activities in the area around
Alto Cuen, a Bribri community. ... "They said they were missionaries, but
no one believed them," Bribri tribe member Leonardo Buitrago Morales told
Truthout. "We knew they were looking for something more. The truth is that
they want our lands and our forests to make money." TruthOut
Trump
and Mussolini: 11 Key
Lessons from Historical Fascism. ... Italian fascism provides a better model for
our moment than Nazi Germany—and the comparison is not encouraging. AlterNet/Salon
Trump
budget: an extra billion dollars for nuclear weapons.
... His draft 2018 budget would drastically curtail State Department spending
and foreign aid and end financing for the U.S. Institute of Peace, but boost the
budget for nuclear weapons production by 11 percent. Public
Integrity
March
18, 2017 -
BOOKS: Empire
of Illusion - The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle. We now
live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based,
literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth.
The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into
one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class
lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and
political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level.
Chis
Hedges
Compilation
of Trump's Russian Connections. ... We should view all the stories about Russia
and Trump as part of a whole. To facilitate that, I made an outline of the (1)
evidence and (2) people/businesses linking Trump to Russia. DailyKos
(Bookmark this site if interested, it is updated frequently)
The Blow-it-all-up
Billionaires ... When politicians take money from megadonors, there are strings
attached. But with the reclusive duo who propelled Trump into the White House,
there’s a fuse. Huffington
or Download
the report 
The Enemy Is Not Donald Trump or Steve Bannon—It Is Corporate Power (Video).
... The future In a recent speech ... Chris Hedges tells the audience that “resistance
must also be accompanied by an alternative vision of a socialist, anti-capitalist
society.” TruthDig/Hedges
GCHQ taps
fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications. ... British spy
agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook
posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents
from Edward Snowden reveal. Guardian
Ralph
Nader Denounces Trump Budget as Corporatist, Militarist & Racist: "The
Mask is Off" . ... Well, so much for Donald Trump’s campaign promises
to the forgotten men and women of America. They’re the ones who are the big
losers, as you pointed out with your many examples of these budget cuts. DemocracyNow
Can
Customs and Border Officials Search Your Phone? These Are Your Rights TruthOut
March
17, 2017 -
 Rep.
Gutiérrez Speaks Out After Being Handcuffed for Demanding Answers on ICE
Raids & Deportations. ... federal police handcuffed Democratic Congressmember
Luis Gutiérrez along with activists and lawyers Monday, after they held
a sit-in protest at a federal immigration office. DemocracyNow
ACLU
Lawyer Esha Bhandari on Your Rights If Border Agents Try to Seize Your Cellphone
at the Border. ... Border agents are increasingly seizing cellphones and demanding
passwords of travelers, including U.S. citizens. Democracy
Now (Followup
from yesterday)
Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s top counter-terrorism adviser,
is a formal member of a Hungarian far-right group that is listed by the State
Department as having been “under the direction of the Nazi Government of
Germany” during World War II, leaders of the organization have told said
Forward.
Key
Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not to Expect Evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion.
... From MSNBC politics shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching
issue for the Democratic Party’s base since Trump’s victory has been
Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues.
Intercept Israeli
Pol threatens Crimes against Humanity in Lebanon. ... A far-right Israeli minister
said Lebanese civilians must be direct targets in a future war over Hezbollah’s
rising political sway in Lebanon. ... The
next war Israel will launch against Lebanon must take the country back to the
“Middle Ages” and should target civilians in the country,
Informed Comment US
envoy's meeting with Israeli settler leaders raises policy concerns. ... A top
adviser to Trump has met Israeli settler leaders in an unusual move that may raise
fresh concerns over prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
Guardian
March
16, 2017 -
Noam Chomsky on the 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine. ... Amy
Goodman narrates a short video piece for Al Jazeera based on Noam Chomsky’s
book "Manufacturing Consent", a seminal work on mainstream journalism
and its role in the mechanics of power.
DemocracyNow
and
Video
also
Chomsky on US-Russian relationship. Video
‘Web
of Weirdness’: US and Israeli Codependent Relationship is Not Just about
Money. ... “We must look back twenty-five years to realize how far Israel
has fallen in world support,” wrote famed Jewish scholar, Harvard sociologist,
Nathan Glazer in 1976.. CounterPunch
Trump’s
Infrastructure Boondoggle. ... Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan is
not an infrastructure plan and it won’t put $1 trillion of fiscal stimulus
into the economy. It’s basically a scheme for handing over public assets
to private corporations that will extract maximum profits via user fees and tolls.
Because the plan is essentially a boondoggle, it will not lift the economy out
of the doldrums, increase activity or boost growth. Quite the contrary. CounterPunch
Trump
admits his health care plan would benefit rich investors, screw over people who
voted for him. ... President Trump sat down Wednesday for an interview with Fox
News’ Tucker Carlson, and Carlson asked him to respond to criticisms that
the Republican health care plan favors the healthy and hurts most of the voters
who supported his election. Trump didn’t hesitate to agree that that is exactly
what it does. ThinkProgress
Federal
Layoffs Loom as?Trump’s Meat-Ax Targets EPA and?IRS. ... Even former Bush
administration officials agree this would be dangerous and counterproductive.
The draft of President Trump’s first Executive Budget indicates he will make
double-digit funding cuts to dozens of non-military agencies. AlterNet
Beware
The False Temptations Of The Russia Story. ... Fantasy, confirmation bias, and
forgeries in the reaction to Trump. BuzzFeed
Top
Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka is a ‘sworn member’ of Nazi-linked group.
... controversial Trump counter-terrorism aide Sebastian Gorka is facing fresh
scrutiny for his ties to far-right political organizations in Hungary. RawStory
March
15, 2017 -
Don't like your government? Fear not - there is a fix for that.
... Bannon and Trump
Have Quietly Installed an Alt-National Security Council Operating Inside the White
House. ... The Strategic Initiatives Group is the White House pipeline to the
white nationalists of the European right. AlterNet
How
Our Political System Has Cracked—and Why It Probably Can't Be Fixed. ...
What ever happened to the separation of powers? The system wasn’t supposed
to work this way. The Founding Fathers deliberately devised a structure in which
someone like Donald Trump — a vain, self-centered, mendacious demagogue —
could never become chief executive, and in which the legislature could never be
captured by a reckless, ideologically obsessed minority bent on overriding the
majority interests of Americans. AlterNet/Moyers
How Our Political System Has Cracked—and Why It Probably Can't Be Fixed.
... What ever happened to the separation of powers? AlterNet
Senator
introduces bill to investigate Russian news outlet RT. ... New Hampshire Sen.
Jeanne Shaheen is introducing a bill that would give the Justice Department additional
authority to investigate Russia's English-language news outlet RT America for
possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Politico
Edward
Snowden Has Some Advice for Donald Trump About Surveillance. ... NSA whistleblower
Edward Snowden said on Tuesday that if Donald Trump is sincerely concerned about
the government’s ability to listen in on his private communications, he should
fix the NSA mass surveillance programs that collect data on every American. Intercept
Ex-NSA
analyst: Intel sources say White House ‘targeting journalists’ with
‘help from Russian intel’. ...Former NSA analyst John Schindler, who
now is a national security columnist for the Observer, reported on Tuesday that
his sources in the intelligence community believe that President Donald Trump’s
White House is colluding with Russian intelligence to “target journalists.”
RawStory
(2013) FISA court oversight: a look inside a secret and empty process... Obama
and other NSA defenders insist there are robust limitations on surveillance but
the documents show otherwise. Guardian
March
14, 2017 -
The Deep State 2.0 ... The prospect of four years of Donald J.
Trump's nonstop rants about imaginary conspiracies against his daughter, wholesale
slander against the judicial branch and attacks on the press as enemies of the
people has caused some Americans to slip into a comforting form of denial. He
will be a blip in our history, they say, because our formal institutions, and
the American people, will ultimately prevail against a rogue disruptor. TruthOut/Moyers
The
Trump administration is exploring how to dismantle or bypass Obama-era constraints
intended to prevent civilian deaths from drone attacks, commando raids and other
counterterrorism missions outside conventional war zones like Afghanistan and
Iraq, according to officials familiar with internal deliberations. NYT
If We Don't
Act Now, Fascism Will Be on Our Doorstep, Says Yale Historian. ... Timothy Snyder
warns: History gives us a bunch of cases where democratic republics became authoritarian
regimes.
AlterNet
The American
'Deep State,' as a Trump Voter Might See It ... When
unelected leaders confront illiberal ones. The
Atlantic
Angels
and Demons in the Cold War and Today. ... George Kennan knew how to bring down
the house. His lecture audiences started off skeptical about whether Russia really
wanted to be remade on the American model. NYTimes
Cambodia
Outraged as US Demands Repayment of 'Blood-Stained' War Debt. ... The
US dropped more than 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia during the Vietnam War.
... Cambodians are responding with outrage to the U.S. government's demand that
the country repay a nearly 50-year-old loan to Cambodia's brutal Lon Nol government,
which came to power through a US-backed coup and spent much of its foreign funds
purchasing arms to kill its own citizens, according to Cambodia's current prime
minister Hun Sen. Common
Dreams
March
13, 2017 -
The Dance of Death. ... The ruling corporate elites no longer
seek to build. They seek to destroy. They are agents of death. They crave the
unimpeded power to cannibalize the country and pollute and degrade the ecosystem
to feed an insatiable lust for wealth, power and hedonism.
TruthDig/Hedges
Chris
Hedges Discusses the ‘Irrevocable Decline of the American Empire’ With
Poet Linh Din. ... “We are really the poorest country on earth, and people
refuse to see that,” we only look good because of our military might, but
this farce cannot go on forever.” Truth
Dig Video Trump’s
War on Dangerous Memory and Critical Thought ... The ideal subject of totalitarian
rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom
the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. CounterPunch/Giroux
Globalization
Is Just a Contemporary Word for Financial Colonialism. ... We who live in imperialist
countries owe an enormous debt of solidarity to people in countries like Bangladesh,
which are being ransacked by our governments and corporations. We cannot have
socialism in the West until we acknowledge and start repaying this debt. TruthOut
The
Perils of the New, Shiny George W. Bush. ... The cuddly George W. Bush who paints
pictures of dogs and Jay Leno is a war criminal. He doesn’t deserve an inch
of rehabilitation. JacobinMag
White
Nationalist Party (wiki)
White
Nationalist - White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist
ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of nonwhites. Groups listed
in a variety of other categories - Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist
skinhead, and Christian Identity - could also be fairly described as white nationalist.
SPLC
(May
2016) White Nationalist Party Claims More of Its Members Are Now Trump Delegates.
Mother
Jones
(2016)
How White Nationalists Learned To Love Donald Trump. ...Once they believed he
was a secret Jew. Now he has more white-power support than any mainstream candidate
in modern politics. Here’s how it unfolded. Politico
The
Complete History Of Donald Trump's Relationship With The White Nationalist Movement.
... Bannon oversaw Breitbart News’ attempts to normalize and embrace the
white nationalist movement. As the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, Breitbart
"has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist
fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant
ideas." MediaMatters
March 12,
2017 -
Exposing the corporate ties, corrupting influences and conflicts in
Trump's billion dollar cabinet.
Updated Corporate
Cabinet
Former Koch Agents,
Fossil Fuel Industry Hired Guns Now Staffing Trump's Agencies. ... A DeSmog investigation
shows that this list of staffers, largely undisclosed before this week, includes
former operatives allied with Koch Industries, oil and coal industry employees,
a former employee of a prominent climate denial group, and an advocate for a pro-trophy
hunting organization funded by oil and gas. CommonDreams
Related:
ProPublica
Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama. ... German chancellor
furious after revelations US intelligence agency listened in on her personal mobile
phone. Guardian
Frightening
Truth About Trump Supporters
Fox News viewers believe the mainstream media
is the enemy of the people, even as they consume said media. The American right
is rife with internal contradictions, perhaps none more pronounced than its attitude
toward the mainstream media. AlterNet
How to
Forget, American-Style: George W. Bush and the Forever War. ... George W. Bush
peddles his book of wounded soldiers, and his past crimes are forgotten. Thousands
of refugees seek asylum from the wars we started, and are denied. We forget what
he was, we forget the aftermath of what he did, but how? Whence comes this shallow
grave of memory?. TruthOut
March
11, 2017 -
Book of the Week -
1984
by George Orwell -
Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling
prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision
of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than
ever.
March
11, 2017 -
Our President Is Up to No Good ... Does Donald Trump in his fevered,
ungovernable mind relish polluting the public with ever more abominable lies?
Is he so unhinged he wants to take the republic down with him, like a raging,
blinded Samson?
TruthOut
(Moyers and Giroux) New
Anti-Protesting Legislation: A Deeper Look. ... In recent weeks, multiple articles
have pointed to the wave of new anti-protesting bills introduced in state legislatures
since the end of 2016. TruthOut
New UK Secrecy Laws Include Harsh Sentences For Journalists Working With Whistleblowers.
.. Open Rights Group's Executive Director Jim Killock says PM Theresa May has
demonstrated a preference to defend the right to government secrecy over the right
to a free press. The
Real News
Why
the Russia Story Is a Minefield for Democrats and
the Media. ... Russia scandals have bloodied the Trump administration. But it
carries dangers for those reporting it. Rolling
Stone/Taibbi
Little-noticed
House Republican bill would let employers demand workers’ genetic test results.
... A House panel voted to allow employers to require workers to undergo genetic
testing or risk paying a penalty of thousands of dollars. RawStory
Trump
keeps finding himself in the same city as Russian billionaire who paid him $95
million for mansionl. ... A Russian billionaire paid Donald Trump $95 million
for a Palm Beach mansion nearly a decade ago — a substantially higher price
than the future president had paid several years earlier and more expensive than
any other home for sale at the time. RawStory
Death
in al Ghayil -
Women and Children in Yemeni Village Recall Horror of Trump’s “Highly
Successful” SEAL Raid ... On January 29, 5-year-old Sinan al Ameri was asleep
with his mother, his aunt, and 12 other children in a one-room stone hut typical
of poor rural villages in the highlands of Yemen. A little after 1 a.m., the women
and children awoke to the sound of a gunfight erupting a few hundred feet away.
Roughly 30 members of Navy SEAL Team 6 were storming the eastern hillside of the
remote settlement. Intercept
Solar Creates
More US Electricity Jobs Than Oil, Gas, Coal, Nuclear Combined. ... The US Department
of Energy (DOE) issued its second annual US Energy and Employment Report (USEER)
in January of 2017, and the numbers didn't bode well for the fossil fuels industry.
TruthOut
.
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