Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features delta blues singer and guitarist Tommy McClennan. Enjoy!
Tommy McClennan - I'm A Guitar King
"In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli."
-- Howard Zinn
News and Opinion
Turkey steps up bombing of Kurdish targets in Iraq
Turkish fighter jets have mounted their heaviest assault on Kurdish militants in northern Iraq since air strikes began last week, hours after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said a peace process had become impossible.
The strikes hit six Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets including shelters, depots and caves, the prime minister’s office said. A senior official told Reuters it was the biggest assault since the campaign started.
The Iraqi government condemned the attack as “a dangerous escalation and an assault on Iraqi sovereignty”. In a statement posted on the website of the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, Baghdad called on Turkey to avoid further escalation and seek a resolution to the crisis.
Turkey began bombing PKK camps in northern Iraq last Friday in what government officials have said was a response to a series of killings of police officers and soldiers blamed on the Kurdish militant group.
In a special Nato meeting called by Ankara on Tuesday, the US and other Nato members expressed solidarity with Turkey and underlined the country’s right to self-defence, but also urged a proportionate response to the security threat and called on the government not to abandon the fragile peace process, now hanging by a thread.
Fighting Both Sides of the Same War: Is Turkey Using Attacks on ISIL as Cover for Assault on Kurds?
Turkey-Kurdish Conflict: Every Regional Power Has Betrayed the Kurds So Turkish Bombing Is No Surprise
The Kurds were born to be betrayed. Almost every would-be Middle East statelet was promised freedom after the First World War, and the Kurds even sent a delegation to Versailles to ask for a nation and safe borders.
But under the Treaty of Sèvres, in 1920, they got a little nation in what had been Turkey. Then along came the Turkish nationalist Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who took back the land that the Kurdish nation might have gained. So the victors of the Great War met in Lausanne in 1922-23 and abandoned the Kurds (as well as the Armenians), who were now split between the new Turkish state, French Syria and Iran and British Iraq. That has been their tragedy ever since – and almost every regional power participated in it. The most brutal were the Turks and the Iraqi Arabs, the most cynical the British and the Americans. No wonder the Turks have gone back to bombing the Kurds.
When they rebelled against Saddam Hussein in Iraq in the early 1970s, the Americans supported them, along with the Shah of Iran. Then the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger engineered an agreement between Iran and Iraq: the Shah would receive a territorial claim and, in return, abandon the Kurds. The Americans closed off their arms supplies. Saddam slaughtered perhaps 182,000 of them. “Foreign policy,” remarked Mr Kissinger, “should not be confused with missionary work.” ...
And when the Iraqi Kurds fought Isis last year – the Americans deciding again that the Kurds had their uses – Turkey watched impotently as Kurdistan became the vanguard of the West’s battle. ... This could not be permitted. ... Turkey decided to strike at the PKK under cover of an anti-Isis bombardment. The Americans were to be kept sweet by the reopening of Incirlik air base – in Turkish Kurdistan – and the world would forget that Islamist fighters have received free passage across the Turkish-Syrian border.
US, Turkey Weigh Which Syrian Rebels to Support in Border ‘Safe Zone’
The new “Syrian Safe Zone” that the US and Turkey have agreed to create will be some 60 miles of “moderate insurgent” held territory along the Turkish border. Officials still haven’t decided how wide it will be, but more importantly they also haven’t decided who these moderate insurgents even are.
The obvious choice, in theory, is the US-trained New Syrian Forces (NSF), who were created to fight ISIS in the first place. Giving them territory carved at least in part out of ISIS land would make sense from a US perspective, but the reality is that the US only managed to train 54 people, so they’re not exactly up to the task of ruling the new US fiefdom.
The Kurds would be another candidate from the US perspective, since they are more numerous in the region and are being backed by the US, but Turkey would never allow that, and has been fighting the Kurds as much as ISIS. From Turkey’s perspective, al-Qaeda seems to be the least-objectionable rebel faction, but selling that idea to the US may be difficult as well.
For Obama, the Kurds are expendable in order to meet the goal of regime change in Syria. This article has a pretty good summation of the facts just below the surface:
The Politics of Betrayal: Obama Backstabs Kurds to Appease Turkey
The Kurdish militias (YPG, PKK) have been Washington’s most effective weapon in the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But the Obama administration has sold out the Kurds in order to strengthen ties with Turkey and gain access to Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base. The agreement to switch sides was made in phone call between President Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan less than 48 hours after a terrorist incident in the Turkish town of Suruc killed 32 people and wounded more than 100 others.
The bombing provided Obama with the cover he needed to throw the Kurds under the bus, cave in to Turkey’s demands, and look the other way while Turkish bombers and tanks pounded Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq. The media has characterized this shocking reversal of US policy as a “game-changer” that will improve US prospects for victory over ISIS. But what the about-face really shows is Washington’s inability to conduct a principled foreign policy as well as Obama’s eagerness to betray a trusted friend and ally if he sees some advantage in doing so.
Turkish President Erdogan has launched a war against the Kurds; that is what’s really happening in Syria at present. The media’s view of events–that Turkey has joined the fight against ISIS–is mostly spin and propaganda. The fact that the Kurds had been gaining ground against ISIS in areas along the Turkish border, worried political leaders in Ankara that an independent Kurdish state could be emerging. Determined to stop that possibility, they decided to use the bombing in Suruc as an excuse to round up more than 1,000 of Erdogans political enemies (only a small percentage of who are connected to ISIS) while bombing the holy hell out of Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq. All the while, the media has been portraying this ruthless assault on a de facto US ally, as a war on ISIS. It is not a war on ISIS. It is the manipulation of a terrorist attack to advance the belligerent geopolitical agenda of Turkish and US elites.
Repeat: 159 air attacks on Kurdish positions and ZERO on ISIS targets. And the media wants us to believe that Turkey has joined Obama’s war on ISIS?
UN Calls Syria Crisis 'Shameful' As Rebels Mount Offensive Toward Assad's Home Province
Syrian rebels have reportedly launched a major offensive toward the home province of President Bashar al-Assad, as the UN relief coordinator presented yet another dismal report about humanitarian conditions in the war-torn country.
The Army of Conquest, an alliance of Sunni Islamist militias that includes the al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, announced the offensive via Twitter on Sunday. The group, which has already taken over much of Idlib province, vowed to "rain down a barrage of rockets and burning lava" on the native region of Assad's family, Qardaha, "so that Alawite villages can taste the evil that the Assad regime and Hezbollah's hands have done," according to a translation of the statement by a Lebanese news website, NOW.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported Tuesday that the militias have taken territory in the strategically important Sahl al-Ghab plain, an area just east of a mountain range that protects Qardaha and the Mediterranean coast from rebel-controlled areas. Cities and villages along the coast are home to many Syrian Christians and members of Assad's own sect, the Alawites, a Shiite group regarded as heretical by fundamentalist Sunnis. These groups form the core of support for Assad's regime, with many fearing persecution at the hands of the hard-line Sunni groups that now lead the resistance.
Taliban Leader Mullah Omar Is 'Dead'
Reports are now emerging that Taliban leader Mullah Omar has died, and has indeed been dead for several years.
A Taliban spokesperson told VICE News that he couldn't confirm anything at this time, but the group would respond shortly.
Meanwhile, a source from Afghanistan's Presidential Palace told VICE News that Pakistani authorities had informed Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani that Mullah Omar died from natural causes three years ago.
While Backed by US, Saudi Coalition Accused of War Crime in Yemen
The Saudi Arabia-led military coalition—which is backed by the United States—committed an "apparent war crime" when they bombed residential housing in the Yemeni city of Mokha on Friday, killing at least 65 civilians and wounding dozens more, Human Rights Watch declared on Monday.
"The Saudi-led coalition repeatedly bombed company housing with fatal results for several dozen civilians," said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher for HRW, of the attack that claimed ten children among its victims. "With no evident military target, this attack appears to be a war crime."
However, HRW said there are no signs that Yemen's government or any coalition partners are investigating the attack, which struck residential compounds that house family and workers of the Mokha Steam Power Plant on Friday.
"Again and again, we see coalition airstrikes killing large numbers of civilians, but no signs of any investigation into possible violations," said Solvang.
US Confirms Israel Spy Pollard Will Be Released in November
Following reports that emerged last week, US officials are confirming today that spy Jonathan Pollard, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1987, will be released on parole in November, which officials are presenting as him having served his “full term.”
Friday’s reports suggested that the timing of the announcement was meant to placate Israel over the Iran nuclear deal, though officials continue to deny that, and Israeli officials continue to insist they won’t be placated under any circumstances at any rate.
Israel's $100 Million Gamble
President Barack Obama’s agreement with Iran to establish a strict inspection regime over its nuclear program is good for everyone. For the U.S. and its friends in the region, it eliminates the likelihood of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, a competition that would inevitably involve Washington and escalate. For Iran, it will end the punishment of the Iranian people through sanctions, it has been welcomed by reformers in that country and it could lead to an easing up and normalizing of the current regime. Even Israel, which is crying wolf, benefits from an Iranian government that has had most of its tools for creating a nuclear weapon taken away or placed under strict control. It allows Israel to remain the only nuclear weapon armed power in the Middle East, which, from Tel Aviv’s perspective, must be regarded as desirable. And Israel also will also be receiving a windfall of new U.S. taxpayer provided weaponry as well as the release of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, whom many Israelis regard as a hero.
A majority of American Jews supports congressional approval of the agreement, a larger percentage than for Americans overall, even though that view is not shared by many Jewish organizations. So Israel’s desire to upend the arrangement must be based on something else, and that something is almost certainly what Iran represents as a regional power. Iran has more than ten times the Israeli population, is physically nearly seventy-four times larger, has abundant oil resources and a young and highly educated workforce. It is geographically well situated on both the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea with borders on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan Turkmenistan and Turkey. Israel has never been seriously bothered by the potential of an Iranian nuke, which has been little more than a pretext. It has been concerned over Iran becoming an unfriendly regional superpower, similar to Turkey. Its response to that threat has been to align United States policy with its own in an attempt to convert Iran into a perpetual enemy. Now that alignment is broken and Israel (or to be more precise its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) is completely losing it, pulling out all the stops to break the deal.
Israel’s Lobby in the United States has declared war and has mobilized behind the effort, to include its assets in congress and the media. ... The Washington Post is reporting that AIPAC alone is going to spend between $20 and $40 million on television, radio and newspaper ads plus direct lobbying. It has prepared phone scripts for its tens of thousands of activist supporters to use in calling the media and congressmen. The war chest will be funneled through a new alphabet soup organization that is being set up for the purpose, the Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, which has former Senator Joe Lieberman on its advisory committee. TV ads are already appearing in the Washington area and there has been a “Stop Iran” rally in New York City. The television ads carefully and deliberately do not mention Israel at all and seek to make a case that Iran is a danger to the United States. ...
Against all that pressure, the White House will be busy making its case, but beyond that there is little organized opposition to the enormous pro-Israel lobbying effort that will be taking place. The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) will no doubt do its best by placing some ads and do its own face-to-face lobbying, but it will be hugely outspent by the pro-Israel billionaires and will be invisible when confronted by the tremendous access the Lobby enjoys to the media and Congress.
Michael Moore film to attack US government's state of 'infinite war'
Michael Moore’s new film, Where to Invade Next, explores how the US government maintains a state of “infinite war”, according to the Oscar-winning documentary film-maker.
Moore revealed rough details of the project, which he has been making “in secret” since 2009, in his first Periscope broadcast. He answered questions from fans posted on Twitter and started by saying he’d like to “say ‘Hello!’ to my NSA friends that are watching right now”. He’s been a vocal critic of the agency’s mass surveillance practices – revealed by the Guardian in 2013 – and called whistleblower Edward Snowden “the hero of the year”.
He said Where to Invade Next, which was filmed across three continents, was “epic in nature”, but made quietly with a small crew. “There’s usually someone chasing us,” he said. It seems the film, which premieres at the Toronto film festival in September, will cover some of the same ground as his Palme d’Or-winning Fahrenheit 9/11, a critique of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” detailing the various dictatorships that have been supported by the US administration in the interests of maintaining conflicts that profited America. Fahrenheit 9/11 is the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking close to $120m (£75m) at the US box office.
“The issue of the United States at infinite war is something that has concerned me for quite some time, and provides the necessary satire for this film,” said Moore in the Periscope broadcast.
After Two Years, White House Finally Responds to Snowden Pardon Petition — With a "No"
The White House on Tuesday ended two years of ignoring a hugely popular whitehouse.gov petition calling for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to be “immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon,” saying thanks for signing, but no.
“We live in a dangerous world,” Lisa Monaco, President Obama’s adviser on homeland security and terrorism, said in a statement.
More than 167,000 people signed the petition, which surpassed the 100,000 signatures that the White House’s “We the People” website said would garner a guaranteed response on June 24, 2013.
NSA Doesn't Want Court That Found Phone Dragnet Illegal to Actually Do Anything About It
The National Security Agency doesn’t think it’s relevant that its dragnet of American telephone data—information on who’s calling who, when, and for how long— wasruled illegalback in May.
An American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit is asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which reached that conclusion, to immediately enjoin the program.
But the U.S. government responded on Monday evening, saying that Congressional passage of the USA Freedom Act trumped the earlier ruling. The Freedom Act ordered an end to the program — but with a six-month wind-down period.
“Contrary to plaintiffs’ insistence, Congress in that legislation did not contemplate an abrupt and immediate end to the Section 215 bulk telephony-metadata program,” the Justice Department argued in its latest brief.
U.N. Gives U.S. Flunking Grades on Privacy and Surveillance Rights
The United States scores very low when it comes to protecting its citizens’ privacy, according to a new United Nations Human Rights Committee review.
The committee issued mid-term report cards for several countries on Tuesday based on how well they have adhered to and implemented its recommendations related to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, an international treaty outlining the civil and political rights of all individuals. The U.S. performance in several aspects of protecting privacy was graded “not satisfactory.”
In particular, the committee noted that the U.S. government failed to establish an adequate oversight system to make sure privacy rights are being upheld, and failed to make sure that any breaches of privacy were regulated and authorized by strict law, such as requiring a warrant. The lowest grade reflected the U.S.’s failure to “Ensure affected persons have access to effective remedies in cases of abuse.”
The committee also expressed dismay at the U.S.’s failure to “Establish the responsibililty of those who provided legal pretexts for manifestly illegal behaviour.”
Wyden Blasts Plan to Have Tech Companies Report "Terrorist Activity" – Whatever That Is
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is blocking a major intelligence bill to prompt further debate on what tech companies are calling an impossible requirement that would lead to massive over-reporting of useless information.
A provision introduced into the 2016 Intelligence Authorization Bill by California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein would require Internet and tech companies to report every instance of “terrorist activity” — without defining what that “terrorist activity” is. ...
In a critique of the proposal, the Center for Democracy and Technology arguedthat it would “turn online service providers into law enforcement watchdogs,” and force them to distinguish between different forms of speech using a set of opaque criteria.
Keiser Report: Bigger Fannie-Freddie are back!
Sandra Bland's death in police custody puts spotlight on Texas jail standards
More than 4,200 people in Texas have died in custody in the past decade, and Waller County, where Bland died, has repeatedly been found non-compliant with state regulations that could have prevented her death
If it makes no logical sense that a young and seemingly happy woman would kill herself days after being offered a new job, then the death of Sandra Bland is an anomaly on a statistical level as well.
The official, hotly disputed account is that the 28-year-old hanged herself in her cell on 13 July. If that is true she is the first African American woman to kill herself in a Texas county jail since the state’s standards agency started keeping death records.
Brandon Wood, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said that 140 inmates in Texas county jails have killed themselves since 2009, mostly white men. Suicide, usually by hanging, represents about one-third of the total deaths. Bland’s gender and race mark her out as unique.
Deaths in custody, though, are anything but rare. Officially, more than 4,200 people in Texas have died in custody in the past decade – a figure that includes those killed during attempted arrests or while restrained, as well as those who are incarcerated.
Half of them fell under the responsibility of the state prisons department, which typically holds inmates serving sentences of more than a year. Those in county jails are usually serving short sentences or are awaiting trial and have not yet been convicted, like Bland.
Hat tip Funkygal:
Death Of Choctaw Activist Rexdale Henry In Neshoba Jail
A private autopsy is under way for Rexdale W. Henry, a 53-year-old man found dead inside the Neshoba County Jail in Philadelphia, Miss., on July 14.
According to WTOK, detention officers found Henry’s body around 10 a.m.; he was last seen alive 30 minutes earlier. The state crime lab in Jackson conducted an autopsy and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is looking into the case.
Funeral services for Henry took place July 19 in Bogue Chitto. A few days later, his body was flown to Florida for an independent autopsy paid for by anonymous donors.
Henry, a member of the Choctaw tribe and a lifelong community activist, coached stickball and had been a candidate for the Choctaw Tribal Council from Bogue Chitto the week before his arrest on July 9 for failure to pay a fine.
Helping with the family’s independent probe are civil-rights activists John Steele, a close friend of Henry’s, and Diane Nash, a cofounder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, as well as Syracuse University law professors Janis McDonald and Paula Johnson of the school’s Cold Case Justice Initiative.
Information from a SNCC email listserv states of Henry: “His family wants to know what or who caused their healthy, fifty-three year old loved one to die in that cell.”
Rihanna's Freddie Gray concert was blocked by Baltimore police
Rihanna was reportedly blocked by Baltimore police from playing a free concert for Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old African American man who was fatally injured by six police officers in April.
According to newly released emails between police and the singer’s representatives, obtained by the Baltimore Sun, Rihanna wanted to go to Baltimore in the week after race-related rioting broke out, to walk with protesters and perform a free concert. ...
The possible concert was ... mentioned in a situation report on 1 May, which revealed the location to be the intersection of Pennsylvania and West North avenues, the focal point of the protests. “Possible Rihanna Concert at Penn & North,” it read. “No time given. Police are claiming they have no permit so it will not be allowed.”
This article contains a link to Bernie Sanders' speech to the SCLC on Saturday night. It's a
good speech
Bernie Sanders: Strong Words on Structural Racism and Inequality
The stakes were high for the speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the national gathering of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Saturday night. Sanders’ speech to the civil rights organization, whose first president was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., came just one week after Black Lives Matter activists disrupted a Netroots Nation event in Phoenix, Arizona, featuring Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, to demand that candidates address police brutality against African American communities, and put racial justice at the center of their campaigns.
If Sanders responded badly to demands of the Black Lives Matter activists, almost immediately afterward he showed an understanding of and willingness to address their concerns with the same forcefulness he brings to populist economic issues. After Phoenix, Sanders was the first candidate to speak out against the arrest of Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in Waller County, Texas, earlier this month. In a statement released last Tuesday, Sanders denounced the “totally outrageous police behavior” recorded in the video of Bland’s arrest, and cited it as evidence of “why we need real police reform.”
UC Unions Call On AFL-CIO To Terminate Police Union’s Membership
Citing a “long history of police intervention in labor politics and complicity in racial violence,” UAW members say they want the cops’ union out of the country’s largest labor federation.
United Auto Workers Local 2865, the union representing 13,000 teaching assistants and other student workers throughout the University of California, called on the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA) in a resolution passed by its governing body on July 25.
The resolution came in the wake of a letter written by the UAW’s Black Interests Coordinating Committee (BICC). The group formed in December 2014 in response to the acquittals of police officers in the deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner and is largely inspired by recent actions in the Black Lives Matter movement. With the letter, BICC aims to “start a really difficult conversation that the labor movement has had in the past and needs to continue to have around the intersections of race and labor, economic privation and racial disparity,” according to BICC member Brandon Buchanan, a graduate student currently studying Sociology at UC Davis who serves as Head Steward. ...
It provides historical evidence to its allegations, saying, “Police unions in particular emerge out of a long history of police intervention in labor politics and complicity in racial violence,” before referencing deadly disputes with activist workers in the 19th century, the defense of Jim Crow segregation, the lobbying that enabled the circumstances of Freddie Gray’s death and the crackdown on the Occupy movement across the country as examples of American police acting as a “violent supressive force.” ...
The letter was presented by Buchanan on behalf of BICC to the joint council of UAW Local 2865, the local’s governing board. According to Buchanan, the letter and its call to the AFL-CIO were endorsed overwhelmingly.
“The AFL-CIO is an enormous part of the labor movement. It has a lot of say, it influences elections, it is an organization which serves to build a lot of solidarity between a number of different unions,” Buchanan told In These Times. “But at the same time, one of the things that we noticed is that it also has these police associations which are a part of it—police associations who have consistently worked not necessarily in the interest of workers, in particular black workers, but instead have upheld a capitalist status quo as well as white supremacy.”
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature news from the Bayonne Standard Oil Strike in New Jersey: "New York Times Continues Hero Worship of Sheriff Kinkead, Declares Him an Idol."
Tune in at 2pm!
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European Mining Dispute Illustrates Risks of Corporate-Friendly Trade Deals
Offering a stark warning of how corporate-friendly trade pacts like the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) put both democracy and the environment at risk, a Canadian company is seeking damages from Romania after being blocked from creating an open-pit gold mine over citizen concerns.
Gabriel Resources Ltd. announced last week that it had filed a request for arbitration with the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, a body not unlike the secret tribunals that critics like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have warned against.
The corporation's Rosia Montana open-pit gold mine project stalled after a series of protests in cities across Romania in 2013 demanded Gabriel's plan be dropped. As Common Dreams reported at the time, Romanian residents and environmental activists have opposed the mine since it was proposed in the 1990s, charging that it would blast off mountaintops, destroy a potential UNESCO World Heritage site, and displace residents from the town of Rosia Montana and nearby villages. In particular, local communities opposed the use of cyanide as part of the extraction process. ...
Now, Gabriel Resources, which holds an 80 percent stake in the Rosia Montana Gold Corporation, says (pdf) the country has violated international treaties. Bloomberg reports that in 2013, Gabriel threatened to seek as much as $4 billion of damages should Romanian lawmakers vote to oppose its gold and silver project in the country.
But as Claudia Ciobanu, a Romanian freelance journalist based in Warsaw, wrote on Monday, "Gabriel is...effectively trying to make Romanians pay for having pushed their legislators to do the right thing."
The Evening Greens
This is an excellent and interesting article worth reading in full:
Dylann Roof Is Not a “Terrorist” — But Animal Rights Activists Who Free Minks From Slaughter Are
The FBI on Friday announced the arrests in Oakland of two animal rights activists, Joseph Buddenberg and Nicole Kissane, and accused the pair of engaging in “domestic terrorism.” This comes less than a month after the FBI director said he does not consider Charleston Church murderer Dylann Roof a “terrorist.” The activists’ alleged crimes: “They released thousands of minks from farms around the country and vandalized various properties.” That’s it. Now they’re being prosecuted and explicitly vilified as “terrorists,” facing 10-year prison terms.
Buddenberg and Kissane are scheduled to appear this morning in a federal court in San Francisco for a hearing on bail conditions, while arraignment is set for early September. The indictment comes just days before the scheduled start of the Animal Rights National Conference, the largest and most important annual gathering of activists. The DOJ did exactly the same thing in July of last year: Shortly before the start of the 2014 conference, they arrested two activists on federal “terrorism” charges for freeing minks and foxes from a fur farm. The multiple activists and lawyers who spoke to The Intercept since Friday’s arrests are adamant that these well-timed indictments are designed to intimidate activists at the conference and more broadly to chill campaigns to defend animal rights.
This latest federal prosecution, and the public branding of these two activists as “domestic terrorists,” highlights the strikingly severe targeting over many years by the U.S. government of nonviolent animal and environmental rights activists. The more one delves into what is being done here — the extreme abuse of the criminal law to stifle nonviolent political protest or even just pure political speech, undertaken with tragically little attention — the more appalling it becomes. There are numerous cases of animal rights activists, several of whom spoke to The Intercept, who weren’t even accused of harming people or property, but who were nonetheless sent to federal prison for years. ...
This latest case shows how extreme and oppressive this law is by design. No human beings were physically injured by the alleged activism of Buddenberg and Kissane, nor did they attempt to harm any. Whatever one thinks of their tactics, it was — even by the FBI’s telling — confined to property damage: essentially vandalism. ... To label this nonviolent political protest “terrorism” yet again illustrates the utterly malleable and propagandistic nature of that term. This is particularly true given that the same DOJ that is charging the activists as “terrorists” just announced that Dylann Roof — who murdered nine people in a Charleston church to advance clear ideological and political objectives — will not be.
Calls for Cecil the Lion’s Killer to Be Hanged as Suspects Are Due in Court
Public anger over the death of a cherished and protected animal has forced a dentist from Minnesota to close his practice in the US, as two other men are set to appear in a Zimbabwean court today over the slaughter.
Walter Palmer is believed to have paid almost $55,000 to hunt and kill Cecil, a beloved lion from one of Zimbabwe's national parks.
The dentist has since said he is "upset" over the fierce backlash he has faced, and insisted he had no idea the lion he killed was protected.
Palmer, who has a felony record in the US related to shooting a black bear in Wisconsin, released a statement on Tuesday after Zimbabwean authorities identified him as the American involved in the July hunt. They said Palmer is being sought on poaching charges, but he has claimed that he hasn't heard from US or Zimbabwean authorities.
...
A Facebook page for Palmer's Minnesota dental practice was taken offline on Tuesday after users flooded it with comments condemning his involvement in the hunt. Hundreds of similar comments inundated a page for his practice on the review platform Yelp, which prior to Tuesday had only three comments. ...
According to US court records, Palmer pleaded guilty in 2008 to making false statements to the US Fish and Wildlife Service about a black bear he fatally shot in western Wisconsin. Palmer had a permit to hunt but shot the animal outside the authorized zone in 2006, then tried to pass it off as being killed elsewhere, according to court documents. He was given one year probation and fined nearly $3,000.
Rappel Shell? Activists in Oregon Suspend Themselves from Bridge to Block Arctic-Bound Oil Ship
Dangling from Bridge, Greenpeace Climbers Blockade Arctic Drilling Ship
Climate justice campaigners rappelling from a towering bridge and paddling in kayaks have so far successfully blocked Shell Oil's fleet from leaving Portland, Oregon's port to embark on a widely opposed drilling expedition in the Alaskan Arctic.
Launched Tuesday and continuing overnight into Wednesday morning, the series of colorful direct actions comes just days after President Barack Obama gave the green-light for the oil giant to drill in the Chukchi Sea, despite his pledge to make tackling climate change a top priority.
But when the oil giant's massive Fennica icebreaker sought to leave the port, campaigners put their bodies in the way.
Twenty-six climbers are currently hanging from the St. Johns bridge over the Willamette River in Portland to prevent Shell's vessel from passing beneath. Bearing signs that say "Shell No" and "Save the Arctic," the protesters have "enough supplies to last for several days," Greenpeace U.S. said in a statement.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Local Governments Increasingly Poking Through Your Garbage
Markos Moulitsas’ Shameless, Racially Divisive Hit Job on Sanders Campaign/Supporters Continues
The Balance of Power in the Middle East Just Changed
Bernie is the candidate for the 99%
LGBT Catholics request meeting with Pope
A Little Night Music
Tommy McClennan - Whiskey Head Woman
Tommy McClennan - Cross Cut Saw Blues
Albert King - Crosscut Saw
Tommy McClennan - Deep Blue Sea Blues (Catfish Blues)
Jimi Hendrix - Catfish Blues
Tommy McClennan - Bottle It Up And Go
Tommy McClennan - I Love My Baby
Tommy McClennan + Robert Petway - Boogie Woogie Woman
Tommy Mcclennan - New Shake Em On Down
North Mississippi Allstars - Shake 'Em On Down
Tommy McClennan - Blues Trip Me This Morning