5: Leading Senate Proponents of Spying and War Get Election Boost From “Libertarian” Koch Brothers
SEVERAL OF THE SENATE’S biggest hawks are receiving a crucial political lifeline from the country’s most famous libertarian billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch.
Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., are some of the loudest proponents on Capitol Hill of dragnet surveillance and torture, as well as expanding the military budget and the military’s involvement in conflicts overseas. All three are in heated re-election campaigns and throughout the campaign, especially in recent weeks, Koch money has flooded in to shore them up.
Johnson and Burr, as the chairmen of the committees that oversee domestic security issues, have led the fight to preserve and expand surveillance powers — and both face challengers with a strong record in promoting privacy. Rubio spent much of his failed presidential campaign attempting to push the envelope on national security issues, demanding, incredibly, that the defense budget should be expanded by $1 trillion over 10 years.
The Intercept
4: The Indigo Girls Launch #NoDAPL Boycott of Pipeline Owner’s Major Folk Music Festival
Many musicians, including Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, better known as the folk duo the Indigo Girls, are now banding together to confront Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren and help stop the pipeline. In addition to owning the pipeline, Warren owns a small music label and is the founder and driving force behind the Cherokee Creek Music Festival in Texas. In addition to raising awareness and funds for the land and water protectors at Standing Rock, the Indigo Girls are organizing musicians to challenge Kelcy Warren directly. Emily Saliers and Amy Ray penned a letter to Warren, which was co-signed by noted artists Jackson Browne, Shawn Colvin, Joan Osborne, Keb’ Mo’ and others. It reads, in part, “[W]e realize the bucolic setting of your festival and the image it projects is in direct conflict with the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline … This pipeline violates the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s treaty rights, endangers the vital Missouri River, and continues the trajectory of genocide against Native Peoples.” The letter concludes, “In order to stay true to our music and respect the Native Nations that are united against the Dakota Access Pipeline, we will no longer play your festival or participate in Music Road Records recordings.” We speak to Emily Saliers and Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls.
Democracy Now
3: Battle for Mosul: Iraq army says six ISIL areas seized
Iraqi special forces stepped up attacks against ISIL in Mosul on Friday, seeking to expand the army’s foothold in the east of the city after the leader of the armed group told his men there could be no retreat.
In a military statement, troops from the Counter Terrorism Service said that they had taken over the six neighbourhoods of Malayeen, Samah, Khadra, Karkukli, Quds and Karama. They raised the Iraqi flag over buildings in those neighbourhoods, and inflicted heavy losses on the fighters with ISIL, or ISIS, the statement said.
Iraqi television footage from the east of the city showed heavy plumes of grey smoke rising into the sky.
Iraqi regular troops and special forces, Shia militias, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and other groups backed by US-led air raids launched a campaign two weeks ago to retake Mosul, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group’s last major urban bastion in Iraq.
Winning it back would crush the Iraqi half of a crossborder caliphate declared by ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago.
Aljazeera
2: How Video Games Unwittingly Train the Brain to Justify Killing
Let’s play a game. One of the quotes below belongs to a trained soldier speaking of killing the enemy, while the other to a convicted felon describing his first murder. Can you tell the difference?
(1) ‘I realised that I had just done something that separated me from the human race and it was something that could never be undone. I realised that from that point on I could never be like normal people.’
(2) ‘I was cool, calm and collected the whole time. I knew what I had to do. I knew I was going to do it, and I did.’Would you be surprised to learn that the first statement, suggesting remorse, comes from the American mass murderer David Alan Gore, while the second, of cool acceptance, was made by Andy Wilson, a soldier in the SAS, Britain’s elite special forces? In one view, the two men are separated by the thinnest filament of morality: justification. One killed because he wanted to, the other because he was acting on behalf of his country, as part of his job.
Vice News
1: Donald Trump makes Pennsylvania play as election cranks up
Calling Donald Trump “uniquely unqualified” and “temperamentally unfit” to be president of the United States, President Barack Obama was interrupted by a deafening “Hillary!” chant after an elderly veteran appeared to protest during his address.
After a few minutes of din, during which the president put on his best substitute-teacher hat to calm the crowd down.
“You’ve got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate – he’s not doin’ nothin’. You don’t have to worry about him,” Obama said. “We live in a country that respects free speech.”
“Don’t boo – vote!”
The Guardian
