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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Some British blues

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Some British blues. Enjoy!

^{John Mayall's Bluesbreakers - Steppin' Out}

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

-- Oscar Wilde

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News and Opinion

Ralph Nader:

The Rule of Power Over the Rule of Law

Me Too is producing some results. At long last. Victims of sexual assault by men in superior positions of power are speaking out. Big time figures in the entertainment, media, sports and political realms are losing their positions – resigning or being told to leave. A producer at 60 Minutes thinks Wall Street may be next. Sexual assaults need stronger sanctions. Only a few of the reported assaulters are being civilly sued under the law of torts. Even fewer are subjects of criminal investigation so far.

Perhaps the daily overdue accounting, regarding past and present reports of sexual assaults will encourage those abused in other contexts to also blow the whistle on other abuses. Too often, there are not penalties, but instead rewards, for high government and corporate officials whose derelict and often illegal decisions directly produce millions of deaths and injuries.

A few weeks ago, former secretaries of state Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice shared a stage at the George W. Bush Institute, reflecting on their careers to widespread admiration. What they neglected to mention were the devastated families, villages, cities and communities and nations plunged into violent chaos from the decisions they deliberately made in their careers. ... As these ex-officials bask in adulation, the American people are not being shown the burned corpses, charred villages, and poisoned water and soil created by their “public service.” Nor are they exposed to the immense suffering and broken hearts of survivors mourning their deceased family members. ...

These officials overpower the rule of law with the rule of raw power – political, economic and military.

Confidential U.N. Document Questions the Saudi Arabian Blockade That’s Starving Yemen

A U.N. panel of experts found Saudi Arabia is purposefully obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid into Yemen and called into question its public rationale for a blockade that could push millions into famine. In the assessment, made in a confidential brief and sent to diplomats on November 10, members of the Security-Council appointed panel said they had seen no evidence to support Saudi Arabia’s claims that short-range ballistic missiles have been transferred to Yemeni rebels in violation of Security Council resolutions.

“The Panel finds that imposition of access restrictions is another attempt by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition to use paragraph 14 of resolution 2216 (2015) as justification for obstructing the delivery of commodities that are essentially civilian in nature,” the U.N. experts wrote. Resolution 2216 was passed in April 2015, a month after the Saudi-led international coalition began its intervention in Yemen’s civil war. Paragraph 14 calls for U.N. member states to take measures to prevent the supply, sale, or transfer of military goods to a rebel alliance led by a group called the Houthis, which is backed to an unclear degree by Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Iran. The panel of experts was established by a previous 2014 resolution and expanded to five members by resolution 2216. ...

After the blockade was put in place on November 6, U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock told the Security Council that the restrictions on aid to Yemen would result in “a famine killing millions of people, the likes of which the world has not seen for many decades.” This week, Saudi Arabia played down the situation. “There is no embargo,” said Saudi Ambassador to the U.N. Abdallah al-Mouallimi. “There are many sources of supply to Yemen.” On Monday, the Saudi Coalition said they would re-open several ports that had been cut off within 24 hours — but only those in areas already under the coalition’s control. Ports in Houthi-controlled areas were not on the list; ports along the Red Sea at Hudaydah and Saleef, through which nearly 80 percent of imports travel into Yemen, including the bulk of humanitarian aid, were not slated to open.

The Saudis said that before access to all ports is reinstated, the U.N. cargo inspection mechanism known as UNVIM would have to be augmented to include the monitoring of smaller boats. However, even large ships with aid cargos that are already inspected by UNVIM are being held up, while the smaller ships that Saudi Arabia says pose a threat will for now presumably be subject to the same scrutiny as before. On Thursday, the U.N. again called for an immediate end to the blockade — even in its reduced form — though it remains unclear how the impasse will be resolved.

Save the Children says 130 children die every day in Yemen

An international aid group says an estimated 130 children or more die every day in war-torn Yemen from extreme hunger and disease.

Save the Children said late on Wednesday that a continuing blockade by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen's Shiite rebels is likely to further increase the death rate. It says over 50,000 children are believed to have died in 2017.

Saudi Arabia blocked Yemen's ports after a rebel missile attack near Riyadh earlier in November.

Hariri to visit France: "Lebanon is increasingly caught between Saudi Arabia and Iran"

Report: the US-led war against ISIS is killing 31 times more civilians than claimed

The Pentagon claims that its air war against ISIS is one of the most accurate in history and that it is so careful in who it targets that the 14,000 US airstrikes in Iraq have killed just 89 civilians.

It turns out that the military’s assertion is a stunning underestimation of the true human cost of Washington’s three-year-old war against ISIS. An 18-month-long investigation by the New York Times has found that the US-led military coalition is killing civilians in Iraq at a rate 31 times higher than it’s admitting.

“It is at such a distance from official claims that, in terms of civilian deaths, this may be the least transparent war in recent American history,” Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal report. ...

The US-led coalition claims that one civilian has been killed in every 157 airstrikes. But Khan and Gopal report that, actually, the rate is one civilian death for every five airstrikes — a rate 31 times as high as what the military claims.

This rumor has been floating around for a while, it seems a likely story, though:

Saudi Arabia king to step down and hand over the crown to his 32-year-old son

The King of Saudi Arabia plans to step down and announce his son as his successor next week, a source close to the country's royal family has exclusively told DailyMail.com. The move is seen as the final step in 32-year-old Prince Mohammed bin Salman's power grab, which began earlier this month with the arrests of more than 40 princes and government ministers in a corruption probe. The source said King Salman will continue only as a ceremonial figurehead, handing over official leadership of the country to his son - often referred to as MBS.

'Unless something dramatic happens, King Salman will announce the appointment of MBS as King of Saudi Arabia next week,' said the source. 'King Salman will play the role of the queen of England. He will only keep the title "Custodian of the Holy Shrines".'

The high level source said once crowned king, the prince will shift his focus to Iran, a long standing rival oil empire to Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, with fears military action is possible. He will also enlist the help of the Israeli military to crush Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia supported by Iran, according to the source.

Saudi Arabia Wants to Fight Iran to the Last American

Many observers have connected the dots and concluded that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince is seeking to drag the United States into a war with Iran and Hezbollah. But that’s only half the story. Looking at the recent events through a broader geopolitical lens, a much more sinister plan emerges: a Saudi plan to trap the United States in a permanent standoff with Tehran.

While most of the world has been aghast by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman’s radical actions of this past week, his conduct is only inexplicable when viewed from the wrong lens, such as the Sunni-Shia sectarian frame or the even more absurd attempt to cast this conflict as part of a greater fight against terrorism. After all, Saudi Arabia provided the seed money for Al Qaeda and openly funded and armed Al Qaeda in Syria (Jabhat al-Nusra), according to the U.S. government.

When seen from a geopolitical lens, however, the unlikely alliance between Zionist Israel and the Wahhabi House of Saud, their opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and their coordinated effort to ratchet up tensions in the region suddenly acquire a degree of logic.

Rather than ethnic or sectarian motivations, Saudi Arabia’s ultimate aim is to drag the United States back into the Middle East in order for Washington to reestablish its military dominance and reimpose on the region an equilibrium that favors Tel Aviv and Riyadh. This, however, does not require just a war in Lebanon, but a permanent state of conflict between the United States and Iran. Israel and Saudi Arabia see this as justified return to the order that existed prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Trump’s Saudi Scheme Unravels

Aaron Miller and Richard Sokolsky, writing in Foreign Policy, suggest “that Mohammed bin Salman’s most notable success abroad may well be the wooing and capture of President Donald Trump, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.” Indeed, it is possible that this “success” may prove to be MbS’ only success. “It didn’t take much convincing”, Miller and Sokolski wrote: “Above all, the new bromance reflected a timely coincidence of strategic imperatives.” Trump, as ever, was eager to distance himself from President Obama and all his works; the Saudis, meanwhile, were determined to exploit Trump’s visceral antipathy for Iran – in order to reverse the string of recent defeats suffered by the kingdom.

So compelling seemed the prize (that MbS seemed to promise) of killing three birds with one stone (striking at Iran; “normalizing” Israel in the Arab world, and a Palestinian accord), that the U.S. President restricted the details to family channels alone. He thus was delivering a deliberate slight to the U.S. foreign policy and defense establishments by leaving official channels in the dark, and guessing. Trump bet heavily on MbS, and on Jared Kushner as his intermediary. But MbS’ grand plan fell apart at its first hurdle: the attempt to instigate a provocation against Hezbollah in Lebanon, to which the latter would overreact and give Israel and the “Sunni Alliance” the expected pretext to act forcefully against Hezbollah and Iran.

Stage One simply sank into soap opera with the bizarre hijacking of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri by MbS, which served only to unite the Lebanese, rather than dividing them into warring factions, as was hoped. ... Let us be clear, the so-called Sunni Alliance (principally Saudi Arabia and UAE, with Egypt already backing off) has just been roundly defeated in Syria. It has no capability whatsoever to “roll-back” Iran, Hezbollah or the Iraqi PMU (a Shiite militia) – except by using the Israeli “stick.” Israel may have the same strategic interests as the Sunni Alliance, but as Ben Caspit notes, “the Saudis are interested in having Israel do the dirty work for them. But as it turns out, not everyone in Israel is as excited about it.” Caspit calls a prospective clash between the Sunni Alliance and the Iranian-led front “a veritable war of Armageddon.” Those words encapsulate Israeli reservations.

Why did Trump gamble so heavily on the inexperienced Kushner and the impulsive MbS? Well, of course, if such a “grand plan” had indeed worked out, it would have been a major foreign policy coup – and one done over the heads of the professional foreign policy and defense echelon who were excluded from it. Trump then would have felt himself freer to ascend above the Establishment tentacles: to attain a certain elevated independence and freedom from his “minders.” He would have achieved his coup through family channels, rather than be officially advised. ... MbS (and Kushner) may have hurt President Trump in a much wider way therefore: the failed bet on the untried MbS may leach into other spheres – such as, in consequence, U.S. allies’ openly questioning the soundness of Trump’s North Korea judgments. In short, the U.S. President’s credibility will bear the consequences for his falling for MbS’ spin.

Raqqa’s dirty secret

The BBC has uncovered details of a secret deal that let hundreds of IS fighters and their families escape from Raqqa, under the gaze of the US and British-led coalition and Kurdish-led forces who control the city. A convoy included some of IS’s most notorious members and – despite reassurances – dozens of foreign fighters. Some of those have spread out across Syria, even making it as far as Turkey. ...

The deal to let IS fighters escape from Raqqa – de facto capital of their self-declared caliphate – had been arranged by local officials. It came after four months of fighting that left the city obliterated and almost devoid of people. It would spare lives and bring fighting to an end. The lives of the Arab, Kurdish and other fighters opposing IS would be spared.

But it also enabled many hundreds of IS fighters to escape from the city. At the time, neither the US and British-led coalition, nor the SDF, which it backs, wanted to admit their part. ... In light of the BBC investigation, the coalition now admits the part it played in the deal. Some 250 IS fighters were allowed to leave Raqqa, with 3,500 of their family members.

Crackdown on RT Met by Media, NGO Silence

Belgian court defers ruling on Carles Puidgemont extradition

A Belgian court has deferred a decision on Spain’s extradition request for the exiled Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and four members of his former government to next month.

Puigdemont’s lawyer, Paul Bekaert, said no decision had been taken during Friday’s short hearing and the case would resume on 4 December.

The timing of the hearing is potentially incendiary as it will take place 24 hours before the start of Catalonia’s regional election campaign.

Spain issued a European arrest warrant for Puigdemont and his team earlier this month, seeking their extradition to face charges of sedition and misuse of state funds.

Zimbabwe: Who is "the crocodile" Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe's main opponent?

Mugabe rolls up at a graduation ceremony — in the middle of a coup

Robert Mugabe took time out from the ongoing political coup in Zimbabwe to appear at a university graduation ceremony Friday, the 93-year-old president’s first appearance since the nation’s military placed him under house arrest. Mugabe was not accompanied at the Harare Open University by his wife, Grace, whose ambitions to succeed her husband are at the heart of the recent turmoil. Mugabe was cheered by the crowd, according to reports.

Wednesday’s military takeover was triggered by the sacking of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa a week earlier. Since then, Mugabe has been confined to his residence in Harare, where generals have tried to persuade him to step aside quietly in favor of a new administration. But the president, who has led the country since independence in 1980, has so far refused to go. The leadership of his ZANU-PF party was planning to force him to quit if he continued to resist, Reuters reported Friday.

“If he becomes stubborn, we will arrange for him to be fired on Sunday. When that is done, it’s impeachment on Tuesday,” the source said. “There is no going back.”

Jacinda Ardern retorts to Donald Trump: 'No one marched when I was elected'

New Zealand’s new prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has described how she joked with Donald Trump when they first met, telling the US president “no one marched when I was elected”. Revealing details about her first meeting with Trump at the east Asia summit in Vietnam last week, Ardern said the exchange was low-key and relaxed. Ardern was sworn in as prime minister last month. The pair had already had a conversation by telephone in late October, when Trump called Ardern at her Auckland home to congratulate her on winning the election.

The meeting at the east Asia summit was the first time the leaders – who are polar opposites on the political spectrum – had been introduced face to face. “I was waiting to walk out to be introduced at the east Asia summit gala dinner, where we all paraded and while we were waiting, Trump, in jest, patted the person next to him on the shoulder, pointed at me and said, ‘This lady caused a lot of upset in her country,’ talking about the election.” Ardern told Newsroom. “I said, ‘Well, you know, only maybe 40%,’ then he said it again and I said, ‘You know,’ laughing, ‘no one marched when I was elected’.”

Redacted Tonight: Chris Hedges & Daily Show Writer J R Harlan

Supreme Court Will Decide If Women Can Join Together To Fight Sexual Harassment At Work

After the news that Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had been sexually harassing and assaulting women in the movie industry for decades, millions of women shared their stories with the hashtag #metoo. The social media campaign shined a light on a fact that to many women: sexual harassment is a daily fact of life in the workplace. Many American corporations foster—or at least tolerate—widespread, egregious sexual harassment of their workers, even all these years after U.S. law first recognized sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination. As the Supreme Court considers the first case of its term, National Labor Relations Board v. Murphy Oil, we hope they have read the stories about Weinstein, Bill O’Reilly and other men, as well as the millions of people who spoke up online.

Just last week, a poll conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found that 48 percent of currently employed women in this country say that they have personally experienced an unwelcome sexual advance or verbal or physical harassment at work. And, while many corporations have announced zero-tolerance policies for harassment, employers are increasingly preventing workers who experience sexual harassment to join together to seek justice.

Today, 24.7 million American workers have been forced to sign contracts that, as a condition of employment, require them to waive their rights to joining a class action lawsuit to address sexual harassment and other workplace disputes—instead these workers must act alone to resolve what is often systemic violations of employment protections. The National Labor Relations Board has determined that these arbitration agreements violate workers’ right under the National Labor Relations Act to join together for “mutual aid and protection.” Business interests—and the Trump administration—disagree. In Murphy Oil, the Supreme Court will decide whether workers have the right to come together to protect themselves from workplace issues like sexual harassment. The case could not be more relevant, or present the Justices with two more starkly divergent options.

Battle Lines Drawn as GOP Moves Closer to 'Greatest Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich in Modern American History'

With their passage of a deeply unpopular $1.5 trillion tax cut bill on Thursday, House Republicans did their part in "paving the way for the greatest transfer of wealth from regular people to the super-rich in modern American history,"—a move that sparked a flood of outrage from progressive activists and lawmakers who vowed to mobilize and do everything in their power to "kill the bill."

"If we are going to stop Republicans from taking healthcare from millions and slashing Medicare to give tax cuts to the wealthy and large corporations, now is the time to stand up and fight back," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a call to action that was echoed by many of the progressive groups that played a significant role in the fight against Trumpcare.

Now that the House bill has passed, "the fight now turns to the Senate, where the Trump tax scam has always faced much tougher odds," noted CREDO political director Murshed Zaheed said in a statement.

Democrats Join Payday Lenders To Screw Poor People

A bill from Sen. Mark Warner envisions a future when anyone could get a predatory loan at 380 percent interest.

A little over a year ago, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) addressed a small audience of political insiders at the Brookings Institution, one of the most prestigious think tanks in the nation’s capital. Times were changing, Warner told the crowd, and the old guard from Washington and Wall Street wasn’t keeping up with the needs of the modern workforce. The gig economy, outsourcing and automation had created an era of unprecedented “income volatility” for Americans. New financial technology firms had “an opportunity to bridge part of that new social contract,” to “lean forward and meet workers where they’re working.” ...

In late July, Warner introduced the ingeniously titled “Protecting Consumers’ Access to Credit Act of 2017.” The legislation would allow payday lenders to ignore state interest rate caps on consumer loans as long as they partnered with a national bank.

Although it has been generally overlooked amid the GOP’s stumbling attempt to repeal Obamacare and its aggressive plan to slash taxes for Wall Street, Warner’s little bill has a much better chance of making it into law than the Republican Party’s marquee efforts. Companion legislation is scheduled for a vote in the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, where the bill has the backing of archconservative Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and Reps. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), liberal Democrats with a history of for the financial industry. Warner’s Senate version is co-sponsored by tea party darling Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). ...

Dozens of states regulate payday lending through usury caps ― blocking loans with annual interest rates higher than a certain amount, often 36 percent. Payday loans usually take the form of a two-week advance of a few hundred dollars with a “fee” of a few dozen dollars. In 2013, the Pew Charitable Trusts found that a typical payday loan was about $375, with a $55 fee. Since the life of the loan is so short, in just two weeks this “fee” works out to an annual interest rate of over 380 percent. In practice, though, it’s usually much worse than that, since, according to Pew, a typical customer ends up repeatedly rolling over a payday loan, ultimately handing over about $520 in fees to pay off an initial $375 advance.

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Why Everyone Should Do What WikiLeaks Did

By far the best thing about the WikiLeaks-Don Jr. controversy has been watching the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC who spent a year and a half priming everyone for President Hillary now saying, “Ha! WikiLeaks claims they’re a legitimate news organization, and yet here they are, advancing an agenda!” WikiLeaks has an agenda. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t exist. I have an agenda, too. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t write. And I’ll tell you right now that if I had the ear of the US president’s son, I would most certainly use it to advance my agenda. ...

The WikiLeaks Twitter account (likely via Assange though possibly through someone else at times) contacted a presidential candidate’s son with:

• Information about a pro-Iraq war PAC which it said was now running an anti-Trump site, and advice on how to sabotage the interests of that PAC.
• A request for help circulating a story about Hillary Clinton’s alleged suggestion to “just drone” Julian Assange.
• A link and a suggestion that Trump get his followers digging through the Podesta emails for incriminating information.
• A request for Trump’s tax return and any other negative information that was at risk for being leaked by establishment media.
• A suggestion that Trump not concede the election he was expected to lose so as to draw attention to the massive problems in America’s electoral system, specifically “media corruption, primary corruption, PAC corruption etc.”
• A suggestion that Trump move to make Assange ambassador to Australia, knowing they “won’t do it”, but in order to “send the right signals” to the US allies who’ve been collaborating with US power to keep him a de facto political prisoner.
• A couple more links it wanted more attention on.
• A suggestion that Don Jr. publish the information on his Trump Tower meeting with them.

That’s all of them, in order. If WikiLeaks were a purely neutral journalism outlet with no agenda other than publishing leaks, these transactions would look weird and suspicious. If, like me, you see WikiLeaks as an organization dedicated to gumming up the gears of America’s unelected power establishment, then you’ll have a hard time understanding why anyone’s making a big deal about any of this. ... I will never have the ear of the US President’s eldest son, but if I did I wouldn’t hesitate to try and use that advantage if I thought I could get him to put our stuff out there. This wouldn’t mean that I support the US president, it would mean that I saw an opening to throw an anti-establishment idea over the censorship fence into mainstream consciousness, and I exploited the partisan self-interest of a mainstream figure to do that.

We should all be willing to do this. We should all get very clear that America’s unelected power establishment is the enemy, and we should shamelessly attack it with any weapons we’ve got.

As the Al Franken News Broke, His Friends in the Senate Had No Clue How to Respond

Senators in the Capitol were stunned into rare speechlessness by the wave of Weinstein-inspired allegations finally crashing down on a member of the august body that dubs itself the most exclusive club in the world. ... Dozens of senators routinely eager to speak to the horde of reporters in the Capitol struggled to get their bearings, with a curiously high number of them suddenly getting urgent phone calls just as reporters approached. “I just heard the allegations, I’d like to hear it from Al,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, shortly after the news broke.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein similarly said she didn’t “know anything about it,” adding “I’ve learned, don’t comment before you know what you’re commenting on.” The caution was bipartisan. “Just barely saw it, so no reaction,” shot Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona who recently denounced President Donald Trump while announcing his retirement.

Senate Democrats abruptly postponed a 12:30 p.m. press conference and Franken didn’t appear for any of the day’s votes. He began with a short apology that said he remembered the encounter with Tweeden differently than she did, calling the photo an attempt at a bad joke. Not long after, he issued a much lengthier apology, this time requesting an ethics committee investigation into his own case.

Oh, my. Come to Washington, we're running a special - bottomless hypocrisy, free refills!

The Al Frankenstien picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words. Where do his hands go in pictures 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 while she sleeps? .....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2017

With Franken, the Reckoning Over Sexual Misconduct Comes to the Democrats

With the country warmed up by a debate about whether Roy Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct toward underaged women should disqualify him for Senate candidacy, or even serve as grounds for his expulsion if he is elected on December 12, calls for Al Franken’s resignation will come quickly following allegations from TV personality Leeann Tweeden that the Minnesota senator groped and assaulted her during a USO tour in 2006. Even if some of Tweeden’s allegations were rebuttable, the photo she released of a leering Franken placing his hands on her breasts as she slept on the military transport plane at the end of the tour is probably a career-ender for him. Indeed, the internet chatter from both left and right has already gone there. ...

Franken is almost certainly going down, and the only question is whether he can somehow tough it out until the end of his current term in 2020. The odds are very low that he can, particularly since his entire career in politics and comedy is now going to come under fresh scrutiny for misogyny and/or hypocrisy.

George HW Bush accused of groping woman while president

George HW Bush was accused of groping a woman while president on Thursday, following multiple allegations he had groped women after he left office.

A Michigan woman told CNN that the 41st president squeezed her buttocks while she posed for a picture with him at a campaign fundraiser in 1992. The woman, who was not identified by CNN, said she attended the event with her father and “we got closer together for a family photo and it was like ‘Holy crap!’” she said of Bush’s grope.

Bush, 93, has faced several allegations of groping women during photos in recent weeks but all of the previous allegations took place long after Bush had left office.

The latest accuser, whose ex-husband and best friend spoke to CNN about the incident, said the spate of allegations made against Bush convinced her to come forward. “All the focus has been on ‘He’s old.’ OK, but he wasn’t old when it happened to me,” she said. “I’ve been debating what to do about it.”

She is at least the sixth woman to allege Bush groped her.

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Keystone pipeline shut down after spilling 5,000 barrels of oil in South Dakota

The Keystone oil pipeline spilled more than 5,000 barrels of oil on Thursday before workers took it offline, a large spill that comes days before operators hope to secure a key permit for a sister project.

A TransCanada crew shut down the Keystone pipeline at 6 a.m. Thursday morning after detecting an oil leak along the line, the company said in a statement. The leak was detected along a stretch of pipeline about 35 miles south of a pumping station in Marshall County, South Dakota.

TransCanada estimates the pipeline leaked 5,000 barrels of oil, or about 210,000 gallons, before going offline. The company said it shut off the pipeline within 15 minutes of discovering the leak, and it's working with state regulators and the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) to assess the situation.

The leak comes at an inopportune time for TransCanada, which is to expand its delivery network by building the Keystone XL pipeline. Nebraska regulators are due to announce a permitting decision for the Keystone XL pipeline on Monday morning. The 830,000-barrel-per-day project would bring crude oil from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska, where it would join existing pipelines that feed refineries elsewhere in the United States.

Tom Goldtooth: Carbon Trading is “Fraudulent” Scheme to Privatize Air & Forests to Permit Pollution

GOP Plans to Win Tax and Obamacare Fight by Opening Up Alaska’s Wildlife Refuge to Drilling

Senate Republicans plan to use the prospect of drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to get the votes needed for major corporate tax cuts and a repeal of the individual mandate, one of the key components of the Affordable Care Act. ...

Drilling in ANWR has been one of Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s longtime priorities, as it was for her father, Frank Murkowski, a giant of Alaska politics. While the elder Murkowski was never able to make the drilling dream a reality, it is now within reach. On Wednesday, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Murkowski chairs, passed a bill to allow drilling by a 13-10 vote, with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voting in favor, alongside every Republican.

That bill was in response to what are known as budget reconciliation instructions, a Senate maneuver that allows legislation to go through the full Senate with a bare majority and not be subject to a filibuster. That means Murkowski’s ANWR bill can now be included in the broader tax package being finalized by Senate Republicans. Murkowski was effectively named an honorary member of “the resistance” — those opposed to President Donald Trump’s agenda — earlier this year when she twice held strong against Republican efforts to pressure her to support a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. ...

For all senators, but particularly for those from Alaska, detached as it is from the “lower 48,” home-state priorities almost always trump national ones. Murkowski has also been one of the few Republicans to acknowledge the reality of climate change — but not so much that it would get in the way of more drilling in Alaska.

Activists Condemn Failure of COP23 to Address Interrelated Crises of Climate, Energy & Inequality

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Also of Interest

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

Saudi Arabia: Israel's Dream State

I’ve Been Banned From Facebook For Sharing An Article About False Flags

The Exile of Saad Hariri

Gaius Publius: New Study – “Natural Gas” Has No Climate Benefit, Will Make Things Worse

These Wall Street Companies Are Ready to Cash In on Trump’s Border Wall

A sheriff went looking for a truck with a profane anti-Trump sticker. He found controversy instead.

Robert Mugabe's vast wealth exposed by lavish homes and decadent ways

hat tip divineorder:

The tiny, passionate group battling Google, Facebook, and Amazon’s grip on US minds and wallets

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A Little Night Music

Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton - Rambling On My Mind

Peter Green w/ John Mayall's Bluesbreakers - The Stumble

John Mayall with Peter Green - You Don't Love Me

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - Oh Well

The Graham Bond Organisation - Long Tall Shorty

The Graham Bond Organisation - Long Legged Baby

Graham Bond Trio - Neighbour Neighbour

The Graham Bond Organization - First Time I Met The Blues

Eric Clapton & John Mayall with The Blues Breakers - Hideaway

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