Lt. General Flynn had sent an enthusiastic text message to Alex Copson of ACU Strategic Partners just a few minutes into Trump’s inauguration ceremony. The message allegedly stated that the proposed nuclear power project for the Middle East was “good to go” and that Copson should contact his business colleagues to “let them know to put things in place.”  The implication was that with Trump now President, economic sanctions against Russia would be “ripped up,” paving the way for Flynn and Copson to develop their proposed US-Russia nuclear partnership. Copson reportedly told the whistleblower: “Mike has been putting everything in place for us. […] This is going to make a lot of very wealthy people.” More

Southern California’s Thomas Fire, the state’s fourth largest, continues to grow. To date, it has consumed over 250,000 acres but in the middle of its burn area, which stretches from Santa Paula in the south east to Santa Barbara in the north west, the Ojai Valley (barring an extraordinary turn-of events), has survived. A week ago, the local weekly, The Ojai Valley News, emblazoned its front page with the banner headline, “Ring of Fire”, a phrase that had been in local circulation for several days previously as residents watched the flames encircle their communities on their seemingly inevitable way to the coast. More

Among the stack of DVD’s received from studio publicists last month was Stephen Spielberg’s “The Post” that is both an homage to a newspaper that has propagandized for every imperialist war as well as a surprisingly candid examination of how it became possible partly through the internecine social ties between the paper’s owner and the warmongering political establishment. More