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“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”

-- Gore Vidal

News and Opinion

A Mix of Hope, Fear and Anger in Catalonia After Millions Vote for Independence From Spain

Catalonia remained on edge Monday, a day after millions voted for independence from Spain in a referendum that the central government used force to disrupt, severely limiting turnout but also raising questions about the legitimacy of a democracy that orders the police to beat voters.

As the European Union spurned an appeal from the president of the Catalan autonomous region, Carles Puigdemont, to facilitate talks with Spain about what comes next, tens of thousands of students marched through the streets of Barcelona with their mouths taped shut, to express their frustration about the Spanish government denying them a voice.

This generation of Catalan youth's consent to be governed by closet Falangists of the PP elite just evaporated pic.twitter.com/j8IwgtZJ3a

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) October 2, 2017

There was particular outrage at the violence inflicted on voters by members of Spanish police forces who were called in to block the referendum after a Spanish court ruled that it was unconstitutional. The images of police officers beating voters and firing rubber bullets at polling places on Sunday stunned and horrified Catalans, and rage at the police only grew on Monday as more video clips were broadcast and circulated on social media.

In Barcelona, hundreds of protesters blocked traffic outside the headquarters of the Spanish national police force in the city, where Catalan nationalists were tortured during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.

Thousands protest and strike over Catalonia referendum violence

As Madrid comes under growing international pressure to resolve its worst political crisis in decades, the crowd gathered in the Catalan capital, chanting “independence”, calling Spanish police an “occupying force” and urging them to leave the region.

In Barcelona, municipal police said about 15,000 people had stopped traffic as they rallied, many draped in the blue, yellow and red Estelada flag used by Catalan separatists, shouting: “The streets will always be ours.”

The protest came as several small labour unions and grassroots pro-independence groups urged workers throughout Catalonia to go on partial or full-day strikes. “An attack on democracy without precedent in recent times calls for a united response,” said Javier Pacheco, the secretary general in Catalonia of the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) union. “We have called on all sectors to take part.”

However, while the Catalan sections of the CCOO and UGT unions are supporting the strike, the two organisations’ national leaderships are not.

Schools and universities were shut on Tuesday and most small businesses were closed after unions called for the stoppage to “vigorously condemn” the police response to the poll, in which Catalonia’s leader said 90% of voters had backed independence from Spain. ...

“People are angry, very angry,” said Josep Llavina, 53, a self-employed worker who had travelled to Barcelona from a nearby town to participate in the protest outside the police building. “They brought violence with them. They have beaten people who were holding their hands up. How can we not be outraged?”

U.N. rights boss seeks probe into Catalonia violence, political talks

The top United Nations human rights official called on Spanish authorities on Monday to investigate thoroughly and impartially violence linked to Catalonia’s independence referendum, and to hold talks to resolve the secession issue.

Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, voiced concern at Sunday’s violence in which hundreds were injured, saying police responses needed to be ”at all times ...proportionate and necessary.

Catalonia: What's the next move?

Catalonia Leaders Seek to Make Independence Referendum Binding

The leader of Catalonia insisted on Monday that Sunday’s independence referendum, though marred by clashes and rejected by the Spanish government, had earned his region the right to a separate state and that he would press ahead to make the vote binding. Without specifying when, Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan leader, said he would submit the result for approval to the regional Parliament. That could lead to a unilateral declaration of independence. ...

Rafael Catalá, Spain’s justice minister, warned Monday morning that the central government in Madrid was prepared to use its emergency powers to prevent a unilateral declaration of independence. Under Spanish law, the government could suspend Mr. Puigdemont from office, and take full administrative control of Catalonia.

“If somebody tries to declare the independence of part of the territory — something that cannot be done — we will have to do everything possible to apply the law,” Mr. Catalá said on national television on Monday.

The Kurdish referendum has shown a yearning for independence, but also the lack of strength to carry it out

The Iraqi government has banned international flights to the Kurdish capital Irbil from 6pm this Friday, isolating the Kurds in Iraq to a degree they have not experienced since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The isolation is political as well as geographical as traditional Kurdish allies, like the US, UK, France and Germany, have opposed the referendum on Kurdish independence while near neighbours in Turkey, Iran and Baghdad are moving to squeeze the Kurds into submission.

The referendum succeeded in showing that the Kurds, not just in Iraq but in Turkey, Iran and Syria, still yearn for their own state. Paradoxically, the outcome of the poll has demonstrated both the strength of their demand for self-determination and the weakness of their ability to obtain it. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is revealed as a minnow whose freedom of action – and even its survival – depends on playing off one foreign state against the other and keeping tolerable relations with all of them, even when they detested each other. In the past an American envoy would go out one door just as the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards came in the other.

The referendum has ended, perhaps only temporarily, these delicate balancing acts at which the Kurdish leadership was very skilled. In the last few weeks, the US has denounced the referendum in forthright terms, emboldening Iraq, Turkey and Iran to punish the Kurds for their undiplomatic enthusiasm to be an independent nation. The poll was always a dangerous gamble but it is too early to say that it has entirely failed: minority communities and small nations must occasionally kick their big power allies in the teeth. ...

The Kurds are in a fix and normally they would look to Washington to help them out, but under President Trump US foreign policy has become notoriously unpredictable. Worse from the Kurdish point of view, the US no longer needs the Iraqi Kurds as it did before the capture of Mosul from Isis in July. ... Once the KRG dreamed of becoming a new Dubai with gleaming malls and hotels, but since 2014 it has looked more like Pompeii. The skyline is punctured by dozens of half completed tower blocks beside rusting cranes and abandoned machinery. The boom town atmosphere disappeared in 2014 when the price of oil went down, money stopped coming from Baghdad and Isis seized Mosul two hours’ drive away. The state is impoverished and salaries paid late, if at all. This will now all get a lot worse with airports and border crossings closed and 35,000 federal employees no longer being paid.

At all events, the political landscape in Iraq and Syria is changing: we are at the beginning of a new political phase in which the battle to defeat Isis is being replaced by a power struggle between Arabs and Kurds.

Iran sends tanks to border with Iraq's Kurdish region, Kurdish official says

Iran deployed a dozen tanks supported by artillery at its border with Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Monday, a Kurdish official said, adding that the move was a dangerous escalation in the crisis triggered by Iraqi Kurdistan’s independence vote.

“The tanks can be seen from the Kurdish side,” an official from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) security council told Reuters, adding that the move was a “dangerous escalation.”

Iraq’s Kurds overwhelmingly voted for independence in a referendum held one week ago, defying the central government in Baghdad as well as neighboring Turkey and Iran, which fear Kurdish separatism within their own borders.

The deployment at the Parviz Khan border point on Monday was part of joint military drills conducted by the Iranian and the Iraqi armed forces in response to the referendum, state media in Tehran said. The exercises began last Sunday, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.

The KRG says it plans to use the referendum’s result as a mandate to negotiate the peaceful secession of the Kurdish region through talks with Baghdad. ... Baghdad has rejected any talks with the KRG over independence. It demanded that the KRG relinquish control over its external border crossings with Turkey, Iran and Syria. It also demanded the KRG hand over its airports to federal control.

Trump keeps insisting Tillerson not do his job with North Korea

Donald Trump’s Sunday tweet dismissing U.S. diplomatic efforts with North Korea left experts baffled and sparked speculation Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would resign.

On Monday, the White House further undercut Tillerson’s role, doubling down on Trump’s stance that diplomacy has no place in a nuclear crisis.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders reiterated the administration’s position at a White House briefing: “Now is not the time simply to have conversations with North Korea.” Huckabee-Sanders comments followed a whiplash weekend regarding U.S. strategy toward North Korea. On Saturday, Tillerson said the U.S. was directly communicating with Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons program. But by Sunday, Trump subverted that message, tweeting that Tillerson was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.”

Armed US drone shot down in Yemen

An armed U.S. drone was shot down in western Yemen on Sunday, the Pentagon confirmed Monday.

The incident involving a MQ-9 Reaper is under investigation, Pentagon spokesman Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway said in a statement to The Hill.

The Pentagon uses the Reaper “to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations, including to track terrorist networks,” according to the statement. ...

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the shoot-down in Yemen’s capitol of Sanaa, multiple outlets reported.

Keiser Report: Who’s affected most by anti-Russian sanctions?

Feds asking Facebook for info on anti-Trump activists

Turns out it's not just web hosting provider DreamHost that's fighting Justice Department search warrants on users linked to an anti-Trump site associated with inauguration protests. Facebook is in the same boat.

The Justice Department in February issued three warrants to search the Facebook accounts of people associated with violent protests of President Donald Trump's inauguration. The warrants -- which name DisruptJ20 activists and the anti-Trump organization's Facebook page -- ask for information including the activists' friends, associates and the roughly 6,000 people who just "liked" the page, according to Lawnewz.com, which first reported the story Thursday.

The ACLU, which has posted the warrants here, quickly went to work on behalf of the activists named in the warrants. It went to court Thursday to block the enforcement of the warrants arguing that they are "overbroad under the Fourth Amendment," which protects personal privacy.

"Opening up the entire contents of a personal Facebook page for review by the government is a gross invasion of privacy," said Scott Michelman, a senior staff attorney with ACLU-DC. "Moreover, when law enforcement officers can comb through records concerning political organizing in opposition to the very administration for which those officers work, the result is the chilling of First Amendment-protected political activity."

Jimmy Kimmel on Mass Shooting in Las Vegas

'No law can fix stupid': Congress slams former Equifax CEO for data hack

Equifax’s “lax attitude” to protecting consumers’ data came in for sharp criticism on Tuesday as Congress grilled the credit agency’s former chairman and CEO over the company’s failures in the wake of a massive data breach. The credit company yesterday clarified that at least 145.5 million people had their personal details, including credit card numbers, social security details, addresses, emails, mother’s maiden names exposed after one of the biggest hacks in US history.

Former CEO Richard Smith outlined steps the credit reporting company is taking to regain the nation’s trust at an appearance before a House subcommittee on Tuesday morning, the first of several he will be making over the course of the week. Equifax has been heavily criticised for its response to the breach and congressman Frank Pallone said Equifax had an “ongoing lax attitude when it comes to protecting consumer data”.

He warned Smith that “if Equifax wants to stay in business, its entire corporate culture needs to change to one that values security and transparency.” Congressman Paul Tonko said American now faced “a lifetime of risk” because of Equifax’s errors. At the hearing Smith blamed “human error and technology errors” for the breach which came after Equifax failed to apply a software patch that led to a breach of its systems.

“It’s like the guards at Fort Knox forgot to lock the doors and failed to notice the thieves were emptying the vaults,” Greg Walden, the chairman of the House energy and commerce committee, told Smith. “How does this happen when so much is at stake?” Walden said. “I don’t think we can pass a law that fixes stupid.”

Trump Economic Director Gary Cohn Says It’s Fine for Corporations to Use Tax Breaks to Enrich Executives

One part of the White House’s proposed tax reform framework would involve a “tax repatriation” holiday for U.S. corporations that are storing profits overseas. The logic is that offering a lower tax rate to corporations would entice them to bring money onshore that would then lead to the hiring of American workers.

The proposal re-ups a Bush-era policy that failed to boost job growth; the top 15 companies that took advantage of the repatriation holiday actually reduced their total employment of U.S. workers over the period of the policy.

Many of the corporations that took part in the tax holiday instead spent the money on stock buybacks, a way to enrich insiders and executives; among the top 15 beneficiaries, stock buybacks jumped 16 percent from 2004 to 2005 and 38 percent from 2005 to 2006.

On Thursday, White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn told CNBC’s Eamon Javers that it’s “fine” if corporations do the same thing after this tax holiday.

Congress Threatens to Take Health Insurance Away From 9 Million Kids, Just Because

A program that provides health coverage to some 9 million children was allowed by the Republican-controlled Congress to expire over the weekend.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, a bipartisan initiative that was originally co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch and the late Ted Kennedy in the 1990s, allows children who fall above the Medicaid threshold to obtain low-cost health insurance. ...

The Senate Finance Committee is holding a CHIP bill markup on Wednesday, but states have already been bracing for the worst and some may have to shut down their children’s health program until funding is received.

Ten states, including Arizona, California, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C., will run out of funding between October and December, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, or MACPAC, a nonpartisan congressional advisory body, but most are projected to exhaust money by March 2018.

Puerto Ricans Protest Trump's Visit, Denounce Militarization Amid Lack of Aid Distribution

RIP Tom Petty

Tom Petty: US rock musician dies aged 66

Tom Petty, the rock musician whose hits included American Girl and I Won’t Back Down, has died in California aged 66 after suffering cardiac arrest.

Petty was reportedly rushed to the UCLA Santa Monica hospital after being found unconscious in his Malibu home, but could not be revived.

“We are devastated to announce the untimely death of our father, husband, brother, leader and friend Tom Petty,” his manager Tony Dimitriades said on behalf of the family.

“He died peacefully at 8.40pm surrounded by family, his bandmates and friends.”

Reports: CIA denies Senate Judiciary access to material on Russian interference

The CIA has allegedly rejected the Senate Judiciary Committee's request to access certain information about Russian interference in last year's election.

“We were turned down,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, according to Monday reports. ...

Panel Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Feinstein had asked CIA Director Mike Pompeo to view the same material related to the ongoing Russia probe that the agency had shared wh the Senate Intelligence Committee.

This Week in Russiagate: Facebook and Black Lives Matter

What you need to know about this term’s most important Supreme Court case

It’s not the sexiest case before the Supreme Court this term, but it’s one of the biggest — and it could reshape U.S. voting rights. The case, Gill v. Whitford, dates back to 2010, when Wisconsin Republicans in control of the state legislature redrew district lines to lock in a heavy majority of seats, despite finishing about even with Democrats in the statewide vote.

It’s the first time in over a decade that the Supreme Court has considered the practice, known as partisan gerrymandering. Its impact will be enormous — in July, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an audience at Duke that the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case was “perhaps the most important grant so far.” ...

In 2011, Wisconsin Republicans controlled redistricting for the first time in decades. The leaders of the legislature hired consultants who worked in a closed room for four months, generating map after map after map, trying to see how much more aggressive they could be in terms of giving the Republicans more seats and securing that advantage over the course of a decade.

It was really a secretive, closed-door process. Democrats never saw the maps. Republican members of the legislature were allowed to see their own district, but they weren’t allowed to see the map as a whole. And the result was a map that gives Republicans almost a 60 percent majority, even if they were less than 50 percent of the vote. And it locks that in. For Democrats to win a majority, they would have to get well over 50 percent of the vote to even break even. ...

[If Wisconsin wins] lawmakers are going to see that as a green light to do whatever they want and they will go to town.

Trump’s Pick for EPA Safety Chief Argued Kids Are Less Sensitive to Toxins

Michael Dourson, the toxicologist who will be the subject of a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for what many consider the second most powerful post at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been hired by industry to consult on at least 30 of the chemicals he may be responsible for reviewing if he assumes office.

Dourson’s consulting company, Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment, or TERA, was paid by Dow Chemical, CropLife America, the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and other companies and industry groups to study dozens of chemicals. The evaluations TERA produced consistently failed to recognize threats that were clear to scientists and regulators not on the companies’ payrolls. ...

Environmental scientists have long recognized that children are especially vulnerable to chemicals, including organophosphates, throughout their development. But in a 2002 paper paid for by the American Chemistry Council and the pesticide industry group CropLife America, Dourson suggested that after six months, most children are no more sensitive to chemical toxicity than adults and that in some cases, they are even less sensitive. This idea places him well outside the scientific mainstream and suggests how he might approach not just these pesticides but all chemicals affecting children.

Subsidizing Earth's Demise: US Taxpayers Forced to Prop Up Dirty Energy Industry

In the midst of a hurricane season that shows just how expensive inaction on climate change can be, two new reports highlight how massive taxpayer-funded subsidies for fossil fuel companies are propping up an industry that refuses to take responsibility for the destructive and costly chaos it has played an enormous role in creating.

A recent analysis found that damage from extreme weather intensified by climate change and the health impacts from using gas, oil, and coal have cost the U.S. economy an annual average of $240 billion in the past decade. Between now and 2028, that figure is expected to rise to $360 billion annually—more than half of the economy's growth—and that doesn't even account for the cost of industry subsidies.

On top of the financial burden from burning fossil fuels, a report (pdf) published Tuesday by Oil Change International (OCI) found that industry subsidies cost U.S. taxpayers more than $20 billion each year, $14.7 billion at the federal level and $5.8 billion at the state level. These subsidies take several forms—including financial handouts, flexible liability policies, and tax breaks — and, researchers argue, "waste billions of dollars propping up an industry incompatible with safe climate limits."

A separate study by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), published Monday in the journal Nature, examined the impact of subsidies on U.S. crude oil production, and concluded that subsidies to oil companies encourage them to drill oil fields that would otherwise be unprofitable.

Over the next few decades, SEI researchers estimate, "tax preferences and other subsidies push nearly half of new, yet-to-be-developed oil investments into profitability, potentially increasing U.S. oil production by 17 billion barrels" that, once burned, will release about 6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, or CO2, into the atmosphere.

After Overwhelming Public Opposition, Scotland Announces Fracking Ban

Environmental groups from around the world applauded Scotland on Tuesday for its decision to ban fracking, following an overwhelming public outcry against the practice—and called for the United States and the rest of the United Kingdom to follow suit.

The Scottish government held a public comment period in recent months on fracking, attracting about 65,000 responses—the majority of which came from people in communities where the natural gas extraction would take place. An overwhelming 99 percent of Scots who participated were opposed to the practice.

"Fracking will lead to an increase in pollution and the decimation of parts of the Scottish landscape and environment," wrote one respondent. "People will feel even more devalued as a result of having been ignored, communities wll be damaged by fracking wells and health will suffer as a result of noise, ground water contamination and probably indirect air pollution. Scotland can't afford to damage the health of its residents any more."

In addition to environmental concerns, many Scots said they weren't convinced of the potential economic benefits of fracking; the auditing firm KPMG found that it was likely to only increase the GDP by 0.1 percent. Others said relying on the risky method of energy production would signify a lack of innovation in the country.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Chris Hedges: The End of Empire

North Korea and Yemen: the Costs of Empire

In 1996, Australia Enacted Strict Gun Laws. It Hasn't Had a Mass Shooting Since.

The White Privilege of the “Lone Wolf” Shooter

1,516 mass shootings in 1,735 days: America's gun crisis – in one chart

‘Wildlife selfies’ aren’t cute. They encourage cruelty and animal suffering

A Little Night Music

Joe Simon - The Chokin' Kind

Joe Simon - Get Down, Get Down (Get On The Floor)

Joe Simon - My Adorable One

Joe Simon - A Whole Lot Of Loving

Joe Simon - Can't Find No Happiness

Joe Simon - It's All Over

Joe Simon - What Makes A Man Feel Good

Joe Simon - Too Many Teardrops

Joe Simon - Say (That Your Love Is True)

Joe Simon - When I'm Gone

Joe Simon - It's Hard To Get Along

Joe Simon - No Sad Songs