When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose

The title of this post is from the song Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan. I was reminded of it when reading news reports that Iran announced that it has exceeded the amount of low-enrichment uranium that they had agreed to under the deal arrived during the Obama administration between them and the US, Russia, China, UK, France, and Germany. Iran later announced that they were also going to enrich the uranium to higher levels than specified under the agreement.
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Jeffrey Epstein may be in more trouble than we thought

It is a sad commentary on the state of the justice system and the presidency in the US today that immediately after the news broke that on Saturday the FBI had arrested convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein at the airport his arrival back in the US on his private plane, the question that was widely asked was whether he would again use his connections to get off with a slap on the wrist, like he did the first time. After all, Alexander Acosta who was the US attorney who arranged that sweetheart deal is now secretary of labor. Donald Trump has spoken warmly of his friend Epstein and of his fondness for especially young women. So the question was whether Attorney General William Barr who is the ultimate boss the US Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) that brought the indictments would quash the investigation or Trump would pardon him. You can read a live blog of his arraignment that was held today.
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The story of money

The radio program On The Media had a fascinating episode on money: what it is, how it came to be, why it has value, and what its purpose is. It started with a story of someone I had not heard of before, an artist named J. S. G. Boggs, who made detailed drawings of currency notes with some slight imperfections deliberately inserted, and then exchanged those notes for goods with people who accepted them at face value as a work of art and even gave him change in regular currency, knowing that they were not notes issued by the government.
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Nancy Pelosi reveals her real constituency

As Mehdi Hasan reports, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives seems to be far more dismissive and critical of the progressive members of her own party than of Donald Trump and the Republicans.

THEY CALL THEMSELVES the “Squad.” From climate change to student debt to migrants in detention, progressive House Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley have been energetic and outspoken since getting elected last November — and, as a result, have become inured to constant attacks from congressional Republicans and, of course, Fox News.

But how about from their own boss?

In an interview with the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the Squad as “four people” who have their “public whatever and their Twitter world” but don’t “have any following.”

Ouch. This isn’t the first time Pelosi has trolled the left-wing quartet. In April, when she was asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes to comment on the newly emboldened progressive wing of her party, Pelosi responded: “That’s like five people.”

In the wake of November’s midterms, Pelosi mocked calls from AOC and her allies for a Green New Deal: “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?”

To be clear: none of these freshmen Democrats have personally attacked Pelosi and all four of them backed her bid for the speakership. As CNN’s Nathan McDermott tweeted, “It is pretty notable that the most vocally anti-Pelosi Democrats (ala the moderates in swing districts who opposed her leadership) don’t get as much criticism from her as the left-wing of the party.”

This should not cause any surprise. The Democratic party leadership is right-wing and joined at the hip to the oligarchy and is more terrified of left-wing populism than of Trump and the Republicans. When Pelosi dismisses the progressives because they do not “have any following”, what she means is any following among the people that really matter: the wealthy donor class, the financial sector, the military-industrial complex, the mainstream media pundit class, and the social circles in which she moves. Ordinary people just do not count in her world.

It is really interesting how the class lines are finally being exposed and talked about, even if at the moment that discussion is taking place largely outside the mainstream media.

Reckoning for Jeffrey Epstein at last?

The case of Jeffrey Epstein is notorious because the serious charges against him of sex trafficking of underage girls was settled in a sweetheart plea deal kept secret from his accusers and that also placed many documents under seal. The US Attorney who arranged the deal Alexander Acosta is now Trump’s labor secretary. Many famous people were entertained by the wealthy Epstein. A motion by his victims to unseal the documents was approved by a judge last week. (You can see my past posts on the Epstein case here.)
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So tell us what you really think, Mr. Ambassador

The Daily Mail newspaper in the UK is a notoriously unreliable tabloid devoted to scandal and sensationalizing so everything that appears in it should be treated skeptically. But like the National Enquirer in the US with which it shares some similarities, it does on occasion get real scoops.

The paper today says that it has received leaked secret cables from the UK Ambassador in Washington to the Foreign Ministry that paints a damning portrait of the Trump administration.
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Donald Trump reveals the things the history books don’t tell you

Donald Trump’s speech for his vanity July 4th event contained some real howlers such as when he spoke of how George Washington’s Continental Army captured the airports from the British, thus presumably grounding their fleet of Spitfires and giving the American Blue Angels complete superiority of the air. Of course, the history textbooks never mention this great achievement because they are written by liberals who hate America.

Watch.


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If you thought the US justice department was corrupt under Donald Trump …

…. get a load of what is happening in Brazil. The Intercept has published, along with major Brazilian media, a series of articles that constitute a brutal expose of how the current justice minister Sergio Moro, supposedly an anti-corruption crusader as a judge, engaged in utterly distorting the judicial system in order to convict political opponents, including former president Lula, on corruption charges. The scandal was triggered by the leak of a massive trove of secret documents from an anonymous source, a la Edward Snowden.
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