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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Odds and ends

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features music that I ran across while putting together other features. Enjoy!

^{Sugar Boy Williams - Little Girl}

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

-- Erich Fromm

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News and Opinion

Mass Media Is The Enemy Of The People Like The Cage Is The Enemy Of The Bird

“Neither the great political or financial powers of the world nor the population in general realize that the engineering-chemical-electronic revolution now makes it possible to produce many more technical devices with ever less material,” the brilliant inventor and systems theorist Buckminster Fuller once said. “We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be ‘you or me,’ so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before. Only twelve years ago technology reached the point where this could be done. Since then it has made it ever so much easier to do.” Fuller said this in 1981. So why hasn’t it happened yet? Why hasn’t humanity turned its creativity and resourcefulness toward human thriving instead of warfare, exploitation, domination and ecocide?

Stuffy intellectuals who’ve spent too much time indoors might scoff and say it’s because Fuller was wrong, that it is simply human nature that we should all be scrambling to get to the top of the heap by clawing at each other’s flesh and stepping upon each other’s heads until we kill our ecosystem and choke to death on dust and ashes. I say that’s bullshit. The reason we have not turned our creative power toward health and harmony instead of death and destruction is because we are being manipulated by powerful people who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. And they are doing so using the mass media.

Humans don’t want to suffer and toil in order to make a few billionaires even more rich and powerful than they already are. Literally nobody wants that for humanity besides those billionaires and their immediate underlings. The reason we haven’t yet used the power of our numbers to create a system wherein everyone gets their basic needs met and we all work in collaboration with ourselves and our environment instead of poisoning our air and water and spending medicine money on bombs is because there are screens in our lives convincing us all day in and day out that this is not in our best interest. Keep consenting to increasing degrees of corrupt crony capitalism. Keep voting for the same oligarch-owned two-headed one-party system day in and day out. Keep ignoring how the US military is the worst polluter on earth and how the cost of the Iraq war could have purchased the planetary conversion to renewable energy.

Day after day after day the public’s psyches are pummeled with these deceitful narratives which manufacture consent for war, exploitation and oppression instead of health and thriving. The only thing keeping us from rising like lions in unvanquishable number as in the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem and creating a healthy world is because we are imprisoned in a psychic cage made of propaganda narratives. The billionaire-controlled mass media are the enemy of the people in the same way a cage is the enemy of a bird.

Trump, Corporate Media Are Both Enemies of the People

CNN’s liberal and anti-Trump talk show host Erin Burnett was in crisis mode last week. She was rolling her eyes, anxious for the fate of the republic. The cause of her angst? A Gallup poll showing that 57 percent of the nation’s Democrats now respond more favorably to the word “socialism” than they do to “capitalism”—this compared to 47 percent of Democrats who prefer “capitalism” over “socialism.” Burnett interviewed Jen Psaki, a Democratic commentator and former communications director in the Obama administration, and a gloating Republican political commentator named Scott Jennings. She and her two guests agreed that this dreadful socialism business augured certain defeat for the Democrats in 2018 and 2020. ...

Perhaps the most telling thing about Burnett and her guest’s response to the Gallup poll was their utter lack of curiosity about why the number of Democrats who prefer “socialism” to “capitalism” is now 10 points higher than the other way around. Might that have something to do with the profoundly inegalitarian, oligarchic, authoritarian and now clearly eco-exterminist performance of American and global capitalism as experienced by millions and millions of real people, especially the younger adults who embrace “socialism” to a far greater degree than their elders? It was just another tricky day of the U.S. corporate media behaving as—to borrow a phrase from the orange-tinted quasi-fascist Donald Trump—“the enemy of the people.” ...

The dominant U.S. commercial and corporate media are a means of mass consent-manufacturing indoctrination, diversion and dumbing down on behalf of the nation’s intertwined corporate, financial, imperial and professional-class “elites.” Merging the dystopian visions of Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Neal Postman and Phillip K. Dick, they are a bastion of power-serving propaganda and deadening twaddle that work across hundreds of broadcast channels and through countless print and internet outlets to keep the U.S. citizenry allegiant and subordinated to big capital, the professional and managerial “elite” and the U.S. imperial state. ...

It’s not just about the news. If you really want to see where mass propaganda on behalf of class rule, racial and gender oppression and U.S. global force projection is most effectively and compellingly manufactured, watch the entertainment media. When it comes to selling U.S-Americans on the supposed virtues of the American Empire and the purported evil of America’s “enemies,” for example, the news media have nothing on movies like “Top Gun,” “Iron Eagle,” “Independence Day,” “Rocky IV,” “Black Hawk Down,” “Argo,” “A Few Good Men,” “From Paris With Love,” “Captain Phillips,” “American Sniper,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Iron Man” and “Eye in the Sky,” and nothing on television shows like “24,” “Homeland,” “Law and Order,” “NCIS” and “FBI.” (This is just a short list from the much larger portfolio of U.S-imperialist “entertainment” media production, often generated with significant Pentagon involvement.)

The “mainstream media” work relentlessly to reduce their consumers to view issues from the point of the merely personal and private. It erases the social, historical and institutional. It inculcates the primitive level of consciousness where one can grasp something as childish as “Omarosa and Stormy Daniels were treated badly by Donald Trump” but nothing more complex beyond the individual scale than “America Good, Its ‘Enemies’ Bad”—and certainly nothing as involved and ideologically verboten as “the American Empire and military-industrial complex is invested in the murder of children in the Middle East.” ... So, yes, U.S. corporate media are “enemies of the people,” even if that other great enemy of the people Donald Trump—himself a product and arguably a great “frenemy” of the corporate communications complex beneath all his anti-media bluster—says so for reasons that have nothing to with yours or mine.

Former CIA Director John Brennan’s brief for dismantling democracy

Following Trump’s decision Wednesday to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance, the former CIA chief has emerged as the chief spokesman of the anti-Trump faction of the ruling class. It is an altogether fitting position. Brennan embodies the criminality and authoritarian disposition of the military-intelligence apparatus, which is the driving force behind the opposition within the state to the Trump administration. While Trump is seeking to develop a framework for authoritarian rule — including the cultivation of far-right and fascistic forces based on anti-immigrant chauvinism — there is not an ounce of democratic content in the campaign of his critics within the state and political establishment. In the name of opposing Trump—and the supposed Russian plot that sustains him—they are developing their own arguments for dictatorship. ...

In his column, Brennan presents a massive conspiracy theory according to which the Russian government has been able to manipulate and exploit US political institutions to advance its agenda. “Before, during and after its now infamous meddling in our last presidential election,” Brennan writes, “Russia practiced the art of shaping political events abroad through its well-honed active measures program, which employs an array of technical capabilities, information operations and old-fashioned human intelligence spycraft.” The machinations Brennan ascribes to Russia are the stock in trade of US intelligence agencies, including those formerly overseen by Brennan. ...

More than Russia, the targets of Brennan’s attack are domestic organizations and individuals. He writes: “Electoral politics in Western democracies present an especially inviting target, as a variety of politicians, political parties, media outlets, think tanks and influencers are readily manipulated, wittingly and unwittingly, or even bought outright by Russian intelligence operatives.” Who are these “politicians, political parties, media outlets, think tanks and influencers?” The answer is: Anyone who does not accept uncritically the narrative of the intelligence agencies and the military, including the lies used to justify war in Syria and aggression against Russia.

The essential problem, Brennan concludes, is that “the very freedoms and liberties that liberal Western democracies cherish” have been exploited by Russia “to distribute propaganda and disinformation, increasingly via the growing number of social media platforms.” ... The implications of this argument are clear. All social discontent within the United States is the work of “Russian puppet masters” exploiting “gullible” individuals. If “freedoms and liberties” provide an opening for such operations, then these freedoms must be restricted. To “save democracy,” it is necessary to abolish it.

The pretense of Brennan and his supporters to be acting in the name of “democracy” and “free speech” echoes the claims of a long line of would-be dictators who have employed such arguments in the past. ... In response to Brennan’s statements, top Democrats have given their full support or, as in the case of Bernie Sanders, tacitly endorsed his position by maintaining their silence.

CIA Whistleblower: John Brennan Is Out For Himself, Not the Resistance

Spain to check to make sure that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, possibly due to reports of sightings in Washington D.C. Perhaps Spain should keep a stake at the ready, just in case.

Spanish government approves exhumation of Francisco Franco

Spain has taken another step towards dealing with the legacy of the civil war after the government approved the exhumation of the remains of Francisco Franco, which have lain in the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum near Madrid since his death in 1975. The council of ministers voted in favour of the move, which was opposed by the rightwing People’s and Citizens parties. However, the decree only needed a simple majority to pass. The Socialist party of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, the leftwing Podemos and the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties all voted in favour.

The decree means that after a dispute lasting many years, the removal of the former dictator’s remains will go ahead, probably later this year, despite opposition from Franco’s family. ...

While the opposition argued the decision would only reopen old wounds, these have never healed for millions of Spaniards. While Franco has lain in splendour 37 miles (60km) outside Madrid, until recently, an estimated 140,000 of his opponents lay in unmarked graves around the country, buried where they were summarily executed during and after the civil war. The last of these executions was carried out in 1975.

In order to smooth the transition to democracy after Franco’s death, all parties agreed to a “pact of silence”, leaving the crimes of the civil war and its aftermath as unfinished business. As a result, for decades before and after the transition, the “vanquished” in the civil war have had to live alongside the “victors”, often knowing their neighbours or local mayor are the people who murdered members of their family or confiscated their property. No one has been prosecuted and, despite plans to establish a truth commission, those who committed crimes under the dictatorship are protected by an amnesty. ...

Every day, fresh flowers are laid on Franco’s grave, but the fact it exists as a monument is seen as an insult to the millions who suffered and were driven into exile by his regime. While it is a crime in Germany to venerate Hitler and the Nazis, in Spain, there is a Francisco Franco National Foundation dedicated to his memory.

Franco's remains: "There is an element of political calculation"

More than 25 children and four women killed in airstrikes in Yemen

More than 25 children have been killed in the latest round of airstrikes in Yemen, the United Nations has said. The organisation’s humanitarian office reported that at least four women also died in a strike by the Saudi-led coalition – two weeks after a coalition air attack on a school bus killed at least 29 children.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, confirmed on Friday that a coalition airstrike on Thursday had killed 22 children and four women who were trying to escape the fighting in the Al Durayhimi district, in the Hudaydah governorate. He said a second attack in the same area that day had killed a further four children. “I echo the recent statement by the secretary-general on Yemen, condemning such attacks on civilians and calling for an impartial, independent and prompt investigation into these most recent incidents,” said Lowcock, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“I am also deeply concerned by the proximity of attacks to humanitarian sites, including health facilities and water and sanitation infrastructure,” he said. ...

Henrietta Fore, the executive director of Unicef, said: “I had hoped that the outrage that followed the Saada attack in Yemen two weeks ago would be a turning point in the conflict. Yesterday’s reported attacks in Ad-Durayhimi, killing 26 children, indicate that it was not.

Saudi-led Coalition Team to Investigate Civilian Casualties Is “Covering Up War Crimes” in Yemen

In the aftermath of a horrific bombing earlier this month that killed dozens of children aboard a school bus in Yemen, the Trump administration urged the U.S.-backed, Saudi- and United Arab Emirates-led coalition to examine and account for the loss of civilian lives. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert called for a “thorough and transparent investigation into the incident,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly raised the issue in a phone call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters that he supports the State Department’s call for an investigation, adding that he’d dispatched a three-star general to Riyadh to “look into what happened here.”

But as calls for an investigation mount, a new report from Human Rights Watch finds “fundamental problems” with the way the coalition investigates allegations of civilian harm, accusing its members of trying to “shield parties to the conflict and individual military personnel from criminal liability.”

The 90-page report, released Friday, digs into the Joint Incidents Assessment Team, or JIAT, a body the coalition created to investigate civilian casualty claims after the bombing campaign began in Yemen in 2015. By its own count, the assessment team has investigated 79 incidents in which airstrikes allegedly killed or wounded civilians. But the vast majority of its reports — only 75 of which Human Rights Watch could actually find — absolve the coalition of legal responsibility for the strike in question, either by claiming the coalition wasn’t responsible or by determining that the attack was an “unintentional” result of technical errors.

The report also documents 17 instances in which JIAT’s conclusions were profoundly at odds with Human Rights Watch’s own findings. In 2015, after coalition fighters bombed a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa, the assessment team concluded that “there was no human damage as a result of the bombing,” while interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch found that two patients had been injured and the hospital had been forced to shut down, endangering the 200,000 people it serves.

In the years after it was established, the Trump and Obama administrations pointed to JIAT as a sign that the coalition was aware that its attacks were killing civilians and that it was seeking to improve. But critics say the body is a cynical mechanism contrived to make it look as if the architects of the air war in Yemen care about reducing civilian casualties, when in fact their aims are something else entirely.

Facebook Removes 652 Accounts Linked To Russia/Iran

Corbyn proposes 'public Facebook' as part of media overhaul

Jeremy Corbyn has proposed establishing a British digital corporation that would commission online TV, offer easy access to archive material held by public sector institutions and operate a social networking arm that could play a role in direct democracy. “The public realm doesn’t have to sit back and watch as a few mega tech corporations hoover up digital rights, assets and ultimately our money,” the Labour leader said. He said the British media was failing and that multinational corporations dominated the internet.

Delivering the Alternative MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh television festival on Thursday, Corbyn said: “A BDC could use all of our best minds, the latest technology and our existing public assets not only to deliver information and entertainment to rival Netflix and Amazon but also to harness data for the public good.”

Plans for the new public sector organisation, which would sit alongside the BBC, have led to suggestions that Corbyn wants to create a nationalised answer to Facebook.

However, Corbyn’s team say social networking would be one part of the proposed organisation. They suggest the login used to access BDC content could also be used by the public to vote on which programmes the organisation should commission. The same voting system could be expanded to give the public a say on other parts of the Corbynite policy platform, such as how proposed regional investment banks would operate.

“A BDC could develop new technology for online decision making and audience-led commissioning of programmes and even a public social media platform with real privacy and public control over the data that is making Facebook and others so rich,” Corbyn told the audience.

Reality Winner’s Sentence Is One of the Worst Miscarriages of Justice in Recent History

Worth reading in full:

Yanis Varoufakis: Greece Was Never Bailed Out and Remains in Debtor’s Prison – Bild Zeitung Interview

BILD: Mr. Varoufakis, Greece went broke ten years ago. Where does Greece stand now, after three rescue programmes, 270 billion euros in loans and two debt cuts?

Varoufakis: “At the same point, in the same black hole, and it keeps sinking deeper into it every day. One reason among others is that the creditors’ cutback demands obstruct investments and consumption.”

BILD: But allegedly, Greece can now stand on its own two feet and can be released from the hands of the troika after August 20th …

Varoufakis: “What has really changed? Greece’s state debts have not become lower, but higher. We just have more time now to pay back even more debts. Despite two debt cuts over several billion euros, the debts have grown: the state is still broke, private citizens have become poorer, companies still go bankrupt, and our gross national product has decreased by 25 percent. The cutback demands limit consumption and investments. Companies owe money to each other and to the state. The state owes enormous sums in refunds to companies. Everybody owes money to everybody – but nobody has money to pay back their debts. Since 2010 young people have been leaving the country, in recent years at the rate of 15000 every month. If this continues, we’ll soon only have old people here who either stayed or came back from abroad when they retired. Plus there are the people who work for them, or in tourism. I call this desertification. The Roman Tacitus used the expression ‘They made a desert and called it peace’. In Greece they call it ‘fixed’.”

BILD: But tourism is booming with more than 37 million visitors …

Varoufakis: “We have a dramatic over-taxation in Greece. Combined with social security contributions, small businesses, even the self-employed, pay 75 percent to the state – beginning with the first euro! This is killing young entrepreneurs, in particular. In Bulgaria, next to us, the business tax is ten percent. The companies are running away from us. And yes, tourism is booming, there has been an incredible push over the past years. However, the infrastructure in Greece does not suffice for this. New investments are required. But there is not enough money for that. Plus, the boom and increase in tourism do not suffice to lift the sunken ship from the bottom of the sea.”

BILD: Your former boss and former buddy, head of government Alexis Tsipras, the troika, the German government, the EU – they all point out the budget surplus of XZ percent. Are they all lying?

Varoufakis: “The surplus is very real, not at all a lie. However, it reflects the flesh and blood that the state extracts from a dying private sector. It is the evidence of the crime against logic, not of recovery or success. They portray the statistics of misery as evidence of success. They change the rules so they can say that the Greece bailout was a success. If it doesn’t fit, get a bigger hammer. That is not only against any logic, it is also a crime against the people in the EU states – from Portugal to Germany.”

Australia's new PM is Scott Morrison as moderate Malcolm Turnbull is forced out

Australia has a new prime minister in Scott Morrison – the socially conservative architect of Australia’s hardline anti-asylum seeker policies – after he mounted a late challenge during a drawn-out struggle for power in the governing Liberal party.

On Friday, incumbent Malcolm Turnbull failed in his attempt to stare down a challenge from hard right MP Peter Dutton, with insurgents in his party gathering enough signatures to call for a “spill” – or leadership contest. That led to a three-way challenge that included Morrison, Turnbull’s treasurer, Dutton, the former home affairs minister, and Julie Bishop, the foreign minister. Turnbull himself stood aside from the contest.

Bishop was eliminated in the first round, and Morrison beat Dutton in a subsequent run-off, 45 votes to 40, suggesting the party is still deeply divided. There appears no end in sight to the civil war consuming the ruling Liberal-led coalition government. The country may be headed to an election, with Turnbull saying he will not stay in parliament. His resignation in between general elections would erase the government’s single-seat majority in the House of Representatives.

Australia has now had five prime ministers in just over five years. Since 2010, four prime ministers have lost office, not at the ballot box, but torn down by their own parties, earning Canberra the unhappy appellation “the coup capital of the Pacific”.

Hundreds dead, no one charged: the uphill battle against Los Angeles police killings

Police in America kill more people in days than other countries do in years, and Los Angeles law enforcement has repeatedly led the US with its body count, according to The Counted, a Guardian US project that tracked deaths at the hands of law enforcement. From 2010 to 2014, police in LA county shot 375 people, about one person every five days. Black residents make up 9% of the population, but represented 24% of deaths.

Across the US, the odds are stacked against families who look to courts for justice. Charges are extremely rare and convictions even rarer, with the law widely protecting officers who claim they feared for their lives. In LA, the odds of prosecution are effectively zero.

Since 2000, there have been no charges for the more than 1,500 shootings by police in the county. Since the district attorney Jackie Lacey was elected in 2012, roughly 400 people have been killed by on-duty officers or died in custody, according to Black Lives Matter LA. Lacey even declined to file charges when the chief of the LA police department (LAPD) called for the prosecution of one of his own officers.

Here are some excerpts from a FAIR interview with Megan Hustings from Food Not Bombs. Click the link for the full interview/transcript.

‘We Don’t Want to See People Who Are Homeless in Our Cities’

Janine Jackson: In the winter of 2017, seven people were arrested in Florida for the crime of serving food to homeless people in a public park. Media didn’t take much notice, though one wire report explained that while you might think feeding the hungry sounds good, it’s “actually a legally complicated matter that could violate laws and even send you to jail.”

MH: What’s key about food-sharing, especially as Food Not Bombs tends to do it, which is just going out into the community, into the parks where people congregate, is that it finds people where they are. ... The restrictions that we know about have been anywhere from requiring a permit, which I believe is what is on the books in Tampa—permits to share food—and sometimes that requires that you do it actually indoors, or have some sort of facility where food prep is highly regulated. Orlando had a law on the books that said that you cannot share food with more than 25 people in public places, so folks were getting arrested when they handed out that 26th sandwich. In general, these ordinances have been around for a very long time. We’ve been tracking them for about 20 years, and what we see is that, in general, what communities are in effect doing is making homelessness less visible. ...

There’s not just ordinances, but also subtle things that cities do, like putting arm rests in the middle of public benches so that you can’t lie down. Here in DC, we have bus stop benches that have little dividers between the seats, and they’re very, very skinny, so it would be very difficult to lie down and be comfortable. So there’s these little things here that are subtly saying, we don’t want to see people who are homeless in our cities, in our downtown areas. You know, we try to move them along in any way we can. And we just think that this is really antithetical to ending homelessness, and truly doing something to help people get off the streets. And we understand that there’s a lot of cities’ mayors who get a lot of feedback from their community that homelessness is a large problem, but we’re not going to solve it by saying, “You can’t be homeless here.” That’s not looking at all at the causes of why somebody is homeless, or really what the issues are that are preventing them from getting and affording long-term housing.

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How Green Party Performs "Vital Function" For Democracy w/Constance Gadell-Newton

A mostly black Georgia county decided not to close most of its polling places after all

The plan to close 7 of 9 polling places in a predominantly black and liberal-leaning rural Georgia county has been reversed. After drawing nationwide media attention, condemnations from two candidates for governor, and threats to sue over racist voter suppression, the Randolph County elections board on Friday reversed their decision to close the majority of the polling precincts.

“We would like to acknowledge the concern that has been expressed about the consolidation and polling places from within Randolph County and throughout the state and country,” the two-member Randolph County Board of Elections wrote in a statement Friday, following a morning meeting, which reportedly lasted only one minute. “The interest and concern shown has been overwhelming, and it is an encouraging reminder that protecting the right to vote remains a fundamental American principle.”

Statement from Randolph County supporting its decision not to close 75% of the county’s polling places during the November election. pic.twitter.com/LhI55KfgRh

— Victor Blackwell CNN (@VictorBlackwell) August 24, 2018

The decision to close the precincts was first recommended by elections consultant Mike Malone. When speaking at public hearings, Malone told residents that Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and the Republican candidate for governor, had recommended consolidating precincts, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

When the Journal-Constitution interviewed him, however, Malone told reporters that he didn’t remember Kemp making such a recommendation. Kemp’s office reportedly recommended Malone, who has also donated $250 to Kemp’s campaign, for the elections consultant job. Malone was fired Wednesday.

To Force Billionaires Off Welfare, Sanders Tax Would Make Corporations Fund 100% of Public Assistance Their Low-Paid Workers Receive

Amazon CEO and world's richest man Jeff Bezos makes more money in ten seconds than his company's median employee makes in an entire year, and thousands of Amazon workers are paid such low wages that they are forced to rely on food stamps, Medicaid, and other forms of government assistance to survive.

Declaring that this ever-growing gulf between the obscene wealth of top executives and the poverty wages of workers—which is hardly unique to Amazon—is morally unacceptable, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced on Friday that he will introduce legislation next month that would impose "a 100 percent tax on large employers equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers" in an effort to pressure corporate giants into paying a living wage.

Under the new legislation, "if an Amazon worker receives $300 in food stamps, Amazon would be taxed $300," the Vermont senator's office noted in a press release. The tax would apply to all companies with 500 or more employees.

"While Mr. Bezos is worth $155 billion and while his wealth has increased $260 million every single day this year, he continues to pay many Amazon employees wages that are so low that they are forced to depend on taxpayer-funded programs such as food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidized housing just to get by," Sanders said in a statement on Friday. "While Mr. Bezos is the most egregious example, the Walton family of Walmart and many other billionaire-owned large and profitable companies also enrich themselves off taxpayer assistance while paying their workers poverty-level wages," Sanders added. "That is why I am introducing legislation in September to demand that Mr. Bezos and other billionaires get off welfare and start paying their workers a living wage."

s Trump Above the Law? James Risen on Prosecuting the President & Why Press Needs to Fight Back

“Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the “other side” including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr......

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018

....FISA abuse, Christopher Steele & his phony and corrupt Dossier, the Clinton Foundation, illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign, Russian collusion by Dems - and so much more. Open up the papers & documents without redaction? Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018

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America’s dirtiest lake was cleaned up — but the fish are still poisonous

For over 100 years, Onondaga Lake was used as a dumping ground for the county and industry groups like Allied Chemical, whose factories line the shore. It became known as the most polluted lake in America as a result, and the reputation hasn't faltered. But over the past decade, the lake’s main polluters have spent more than $1 billion on water treatment plants and greywater infrastructure, as well as an ambitious engineering effort to dredge and cover 16 percent of the contaminated lake bottom. They’re calling the clean-up a success, but not everyone agrees.

“It's still a Superfund site,” says Tadaho Sid Hill, chief of the Onondaga nation. “There are still toxins in there.” Superfund sites are areas so polluted with toxic waste that they pose a risk to human health and the environment. There are 1,343 active superfund sites in the U.S., and a disproportionately large amount are on land owned or claimed by Native Americans.

Onondaga Lake, which obtained its Superfund designation in 1994, is no exception. The lake is central to Native American history, says the Onondaga Nation. It was on its shores that the Iroquois Confederacy — a democratic treaty between five warring nations, a constitutionally recognized precursor to the US constitution — was formed. One of the toxins that concerns Sid is mercury. Allied Chemical, which later renamed itself Honeywell, dumped 165,000 pounds of mercury into the lake, leading to a complete fishing ban in 1970. ...

The state says the lake is now clean. ... But even though Honeywell’s cleanup plan significantly reduced the lake’s mercury levels, the fish in the lake still contain levels that could harm humans if ingested. So the state continues to recommend that children and women of childbearing age avoid eating fish from the lake altogether.

Climate change is melting the French Alps, say mountaineers

For the tourists thronging the streets and pavement cafes of Chamonix, the neck-craning view of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, is as dazzling as ever. But the mountaineers who climb among the snowy peaks know that it is far from business as usual – due to a warming climate, the familiar landscape is rapidly changing. “Global climate change has serious and directly observable consequences in high mountains,” says Vincent Neirinck from Mountain Wilderness, a campaign group that works to preserve mountain environments around the world.

One of the consequences of climate change is the ongoing retreat of glaciers. “In the Alps, the glacier surfaces have shrunk by half between 1900 and 2012 with a strong acceleration of the melting processes since the 1980s,” says Jacques Mourey, a climber and scientist who is researching the impact of climate change on the mountains above Chamonix. The most dramatic demonstration of glacial retreat is shown by the Mer de Glace, the biggest glacier in France and one of Chamonix’s biggest tourist hotspots which would now be unrecognisable to the Edwardian tourists who first flocked there. “The Mer de Glace is now melting at the rate of around 40 metres a year and has lost 80m in depth over the last 20 years alone,” says glaciologist Luc Moreau.

A stark consequence of the melting Mer de Glace is that 100m of ladders have now been bolted onto the newly exposed vertical rock walls for mountaineers to climb down onto the glacier. Another key impact of climate change in the mountains is that it is leading to an increase in the number of rockfalls; more than 550 occurred in the Mont Blanc massif alone between 2007 and 2015. The reason, explains Mourey, is that the permafrost that lies within cracks of rocks and cements them together is now melting. “As the permafrost melts, whole sections of rock become destabilised and more prone to collapse.” ...

Significantly, climate change is happening almost twice as fast in high mountains as compared to the rest of the planet. “Whilst there are many theories as to why this is happening, we don’t fully understand what’s going on,” says Mourey. What is not disputed, though, is that many climbing routes have been drastically altered by climate change. ... “If anyone doesn’t believe that climate change exists, they should come to Chamonix to see it for themselves,” Mourey says.

Activists and a journalist face prison terms for trespassing pipeline grounds in Louisiana

Hurricane Lane lashes Hawaii, triggering flash floods and landslides

Hurricane Lane, a powerful Category 3 storm, has lashed Hawaii with high winds and torrential rain, causing flash floods, landslides and raging surf as residents hunkered down to ride out the storm. “Life threatening flash floods. This is a very dangerous situation. Avoid unnecessary travel,” David Ige, Hawaii’s governor, said on Twitter.

The latest predictions showed the eye of the storm twisting west of the Big Island on Friday morning before glancing past Maui and several other islands later in the day on its way to Oahu. But authorities warned the islands could still expect to be hit hard. The storm spun in the Pacific Ocean about 165 miles (260km) south-west of Kailua-Kona and nearly 20 inches (51cm) of rain had fallen on the eastern side of the Big Island of Hawaii, the National Weather Service (NWS) said on Thursday.

“There’s lots and lots of rain, torrential rain, with a lot of moisture in the atmosphere,” NWS meteorologist Chevy Chevalier said, noting there were reports of 50mph (80 km/h) wind gusts. “We’re in it now.” There were no reports of injuries, but roads were closed because of flash floods and landslides in the Pacific island state. ... Evacuations were under way on parts of Molokai and Maui islands while power outages were being reported on social media.

Lane shifted from heading north-west and was headed north at 6mph as the Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale was packing winds of 120mph, the service said in an evening advisory.

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Also of Interest

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

The Government’s Argument that Reality Winner Harmed National Security Doesn’t Hold Up. Here’s Why.

Distorting Past and Present: Reuters on Nicaragua’s Armed Uprising

Banks Are Becoming Obsolete in China—Could the U.S. Be Next?

Change the World, Not Yourself, or How Arendt Called Out Thoreau

Why it’s so hard to get people to care about humanitarian crisis

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A Little Night Music

Gladys Tyler with Ray Scott - A Little Bitty Girl

Jay J Jones - I Don't Know About You

Little Marie Allen - Humdinger

Al Brown & His Tunetoppers - Take Me Back

Anna Belle Caesar - Little Annie

Marie Knight - I Thought I Told You Not To Tell Them

Prentice Moreland - Holy Mack' Rel

Terry Timmons - Got Nobody To Love

Jackie Harris - No kind of Man

Wynona Carr - Till The Well Runs Dry

Dolly Lyon - Palm of your hand

Tiny Topsy - Aw! Shucks Baby

Sandy Scott - Shake It Up

Dennis Herrold - Hip Hip Baby

Ralph Willis - Gonna Hop On Down The Line

McKinley Mitchell - Rock Everybody Rock

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