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This evening's music features Atlanta bluesman Blind Willie McTell. Enjoy!

“Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.”

-- Jorge Luis Borges

News and Opinion

A worthwhile 8 minutes.

The Lessons for Western Democracies from the Stunning Victory of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro

Trump Is Blaming the Media for One of the Worst Weeks in Modern American History — but His Own Support for Violent Bigotry Is to Blame

This past week was one of the worst in modern American history. An avid supporter of President Donald Trump mailed 14 pipe bombs to a mix of prominent Democrats, outspoken critics of the White House, and CNN. Elsewhere, after failing in his attempt to break into a local black church in Louisville, Kentucky, a white man went into a nearby grocery store and shot and killed two black grandparents. Before he was caught by police, he assured an armed white man that he’d never shoot white people. Then, on Saturday, the unthinkable happened: Driven by white supremacist and neo-Nazi conspiracy theories, many of which Trump himself has advanced, a bigot with an AR-15 walked right into a synagogue in Pittsburgh and slaughtered 11 mostly elderly Jewish congregants.

Staring all of that in the face, Trump woke up Monday morning and blamed the news media for the “great anger” across our country. He tweeted, “There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame.” It’s difficult to rank Trump’s most dangerous tweets, but this one must be high on the list. In a week where CNN — along with a sitting member of Congress, a couple former presidents, a former vice president, and a former attorney general, among others — received bombs in the mail from one of his supporters, Trump called the media “the true Enemy of the People.” It’s breathtaking. He is signaling to the most disturbing forces in this nation that he supports them.

Meanwhile, Trump spent a recent campaign rally declaring himself to be a “nationalist” — a dog whistle for the sort of white nationalism Trump has been accused of giving succor to. White nationalists, for their part, recognized Trump’s message: Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, who also retweeted Trump’s attack on the media, gleefully supported Trump’s public embrace of nationalism, admitting along the way that it was indeed an embrace of white nationalism. As always, the bigots and racists and white nationalists love Trump; they receive his barely coded messages loud and clear.

Donald Trump's rhetoric has stoked antisemitism and hatred, experts warn

Donald Trump has fuelled a climate of hatred in general and antisemitism in particular, with the Republican party acting as his enabler, experts warned on Monday. The US president’s tone has been under renewed scrutiny after Saturday’s massacre of 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, believed to be the deadliest attack on Jewish people in American history.

“He has dramatically elevated the level of rhetorical tension in ways that do not discourage people from acting out their terrifying views,” said David N Myers, a professor of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Trump renewed the offensive on Monday with a tweet that warned of an “invasion” of immigrants, echoing the hate-filled writings of accused synagogue gunman Robert Bowers.

Many Gang Members and some very bad people are mixed into the Caravan heading to our Southern Border. Please go back, you will not be admitted into the United States unless you go through the legal process. This is an invasion of our Country and our Military is waiting for you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

Two hours before he burst into the synagogue and killed 11 worshippers, Bowers posted on the chat site Gab.com about the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a not-for-profit organisation that helps refugees relocate to the US. “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” he wrote. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

HIAS Responds to Synagogue Massacre with Message of Hope for Refugees

Trump is having trouble getting officials to be seen with him as he visits Pittsburgh

President Trump is visiting Pittsburgh in the wake of the synagogue shooting that left 11 dead — the only problem is no one seems to want him there. So far, numerous Pittsburgh officials, mourners, and major U.S. politicians have declined invitations to appear alongside the president on his Tuesday trip, when funerals for the first few victims are taking place. ...

The list of people who want nothing to do with Trump’s visit is growing longer by the hour, revealing a bipartisan distaste for the president’s agenda. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have all declined invitations from the president, according to CNN.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Pittsburgh County Executive Rich Fitzgerald both confirmed this week that they will not meet with the president, stressing that now is the time to focus on the victims of the Tree of Life massacre. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, will also reportedly not meet with Trump, and neither will Pennsylvania’s two senators. ...

And it's not just President Trump causing controversy in the wake of the shooting in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh — Vice President Mike Pence, who is an evangelical, also drew a round of criticism Monday after inviting a Christian rabbi to speak before a campaign event, where he invoked Jesus in his prayer for the slain Jewish worshipers.

How White Supremacist Ideology & Conspiracies Have Fueled U.S. Domestic Terror & Hateful Violence

After Pittsburgh massacre: New York Times covers up Trump’s role in instigating fascist violence

The editorial published Sunday by the New York Times on the massacre of 11 Jewish congregants at a synagogue in Pittsburgh is an expression of political bankruptcy and cowardice. The leading US newspaper, the longtime voice of the Democratic Party and the agenda-setter for the bulk of the corporate media, effectively absolves President Trump of any political responsibility for the anti-Semitic atrocity on Saturday and the mail bombs sent to more than a dozen prominent Democrats and other Trump targets last week. Under the headline “The Hate Poisoning America,” the editorial treats anti-Semitism as a psychological disorder, not a specific form of ultra-right-wing politics that has invariably been whipped up by factions within the capitalist ruling elite in preparation for war and dictatorship.

It notes that the killer, Robert Bowers, was a gun enthusiast and an active user of social media, drawing the conclusion that laws or regulations should be enacted to crack down on both the “hardware of hate” and its “software”—i.e., guns and social media. The editorial thus seeks to direct popular revulsion over the Pittsburgh massacre in a reactionary, anti-democratic direction, bolstering the campaign for internet censorship launched by the Times and the Democratic Party based on bogus allegations of “Russian meddling” in the 2016 US presidential election.

As for Trump, the moral author of the Pittsburgh massacre, the Times has this to say:

“So it was reassuring to hear President Trump condemn the attack in Pittsburgh, as he did the pipe bombs. And it was disappointing to see him immediately head back out on the campaign trail, as he did on Saturday, to disparage his opponents and critics all over again.

“As a candidate and as president Mr. Trump has failed to consistently, unequivocally reject bigotry, and he has even encouraged violence at some of his rallies. He has adopted a temporizing moral equivalency in the face of anti-Semitic hate, most notoriously after neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched in Charlottesville last year …”

The Times editors present Trump as an inconsistent opponent of bigotry, rather than an avid promoter of it. They claim to find it “reassuring” when he utters, in perfunctory language devoid of any sincerity, the words of condemnation drafted by his White House spin doctors, and “disappointing” when he drops the “presidential” mask and begins his usual ranting, including, only hours after the massacre, the vilification of several prominent Jewish critics.

The editors must take the Times’ readers for complete fools.

Erdogan claims people behind Khashoggi killing being protected

A game is being played to protect someone involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Turkish president has claimed. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had shared information with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the weekend that the two European leaders had not previously known. Erdogan’s remarks have been interpreted as his most pointed attempt yet to suggest the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, cleared the killing of Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on 2 October.

Over the past fortnight, the Saudis have changed their story to accept the Washington Post columnist’s murder was premeditated, but claim the 15 Saudi officials who went to Istanbul acted without Bin Salman’s authority or knowledge. They are under investigation in Saudi Arabia, along with three other senior figures, including the deputy head of intelligence.

The comments from the Turkish president also suggest any effort by western powers to smooth over the dispute between Turkey and Saudi Arabia is being given short shrift in Ankara, and Turkey is trying to either dislodge Bin Salman or weaken his previously unparalleled power in Riyadh.

Blissful ignorance? 42% of Brits unaware of Yemen war despite arming Saudis

The Yemen war death toll is five times higher than we think – we can't shrug off our responsibilities any longer

One reason Saudi Arabia and its allies are able to avoid a public outcry over their intervention in the war in Yemen, is that the number of people killed in the fighting has been vastly understated. The figure is regularly reported as 10,000 dead in three-and-a-half years, a mysteriously low figure given the ferocity of the conflict. Now a count by a non-partisan group has produced a study demonstrating 56,000 people have been killed in Yemen since early 2016. The number is increasing by more than 2,000 per month as fighting intensifies around the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. It does not include those dying of malnutrition, or diseases such as cholera.

“We estimate the number killed to be 56,000 civilians and combatants between January 2016 and October 2018,” says Andrea Carboni, who researches Yemen for the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), an independent group formerly associated with the University of Sussex that studies conflicts and is focusing attention on the real casualty level. He told me he expects a total of between 70,000 and 80,000 victims, when he completes research into the casualties, hitherto uncounted, who died between the start of the Saudi-led intervention in the Yemen civil war, in March 2015, and the end of that year. The oft-cited figure of 10,000 dead comes from a UN official speaking only of civilians in early 2017, and has remained static since. This out of date statistic, drawn from Yemen’s patchy and war-damaged health system, has enabled Saudi Arabia and the UAE – who lead a coalition of states strongly backed by the US, UK and France – to ignore or downplay the loss of life.

Casualties are rising by the day as Saudi and UAE-directed forces try to cut off Hodeidah – the last port controlled by the Houthi rebels – from the capital, Sanaa. Oxfam said this week, a civilian is being killed every three hours in the fighting, and between 1 August and 15 October, 575 civilians were killed in the port city, including 136 children and 63 women. An airstrike on Wednesday killed 16 civilians in a vegetable market in Hodeidah, and other strikes this month have hit two buses at a Houthi-held checkpoint, killing 15 civilians, including four children.

Little information about casualties in Yemen reaches the outside world because Saudi and the UAE make access difficult for foreign journalists and other impartial witnesses. By contrast to the war in Syria, the American, British and French governments have no interest in highlighting the devastation caused in Yemen – they give diplomatic cover to the Saudi intervention. But their deliberate blindness to the death of so many Yemenis is starting to attract more negative attention, as a byproduct of the flood of international criticism of Saudi Arabia in the wake of the premeditated murder of Jamal Khashoggi – now admitted by Saudi officials – in Istanbul on 2 October.

Saudis demanded good publicity over Yemen aid, leaked UN document shows

Saudi Arabia has demanded that aid agencies operating in Yemen should provide favourable publicity for Riyadh’s role in providing $930m (£725m) of humanitarian aid, an internal UN document reveals. ...

Although many donors seek publicity in return for grants, the extent of the Saudi demands are highly unusual.

The document, entitled Visibility Plan, covers the terms of the 2018 humanitarian budget for Yemen, and shows the extent to which the UN aid agency, Ocha, was put under pressure to accept the PR strings attached to money given both by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The two countries provided nearly one third of the total UN humanitarian budget for Yemen for this year. Future grants distributed by Ocha to agencies should be tied to the amount of beneficial publicity given to Saudi Arabia, the documents advises. It also calls for Ocha to seek favourable publicity for the Saudi humanitarian effort in Yemen in newspapers such as the New York Times and the Guardian.

The document also sets out how all agencies receiving Saudi aid must share a summary of their publicity around the funding. The agreement adds: “We consider it very important to ensure that our dear fellow Yemenis are all aware of our donations. More emphasis should be placed on strengthening the local visibility plan by engaging local media … so that donors get deserved recognition and not to be overshadowed by the recipient’s agencies’ visibility.”

The document then sets out 48 specific steps UN agencies have agreed to take this year to publicise Saudi activity covering five different UN aid-linked agencies, including the UN Development Programme, Ocha, the World Health Organization and Unicef. The leaked documents also show the pressure the two countries have brought to bear on the UN to raise their profile as charitable donors.

New Zealand Ratifies TPP Against Will Of People

From Poverty to Student Debt to Gun Violence to Climate Crisis, Trump's America Is Seriously Stressing People Out

While deep anxiety about mass shootings, falling standards of living, inadequate pay, and lack of healthcare long predate the Trump era, a survey by the American Psychological Association (APA) published on Tuesday found that President Donald Trump—with his bumbling incompetence, immense cruelty, and plutocratic economic agenda—has intensified the stress Americans feel about their financial situation, the U.S. political system, the climate crisis, and a variety of other issues facing the nation and the world.

Flying directly in the face of Trump's celebration of the supposed "economic miracle" his administration has produced and the president's jingoistic "make American great again" mantra, the APA's survey found that issues related to money and work continue to top the list of stressors among American adults overall.

As the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations rake in obscene profits thanks to Trump's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, the APA found that "nearly two-thirds of adults (64 percent) reported money and work each to be a stressor." Personal debt, housing instability, discrimination, and hunger were among the specific sources of stress reported by a sizeable percentage of Americans.

Though these stessors are hardly new, Trump and the Republican Party's efforts to hike rents on poor Americans, encourage discrimination against minorities and the LGBTQ community, and take food stamps from millions have likely contributed to Americans' growing anxiety. More broadly, APA found that 62 percent of Americans are stressed by the current political climate—up from 57 percent in 2016—and 69 percent are anxious about the future.

According to APA's survey, the political and economic stress pervading the U.S. is disproportionately afflicting Americans between the ages of 15 and 21, known collectively as Generation Z. "Specifically, 75 percent of Gen Z members said that mass shootings are a significant source of stress," the APA notes. "Gen Z members are also more stressed than adults overall about other issues in the news, such as the separation and deportation of immigrant and migrant families (57 percent of Gen Z vs. 45 percent of all adults reported the issue is a significant source of stress), and sexual harassment and assault reports (53 percent vs. 39 percent)." In addition, 58 percent of Gen Z members reported that climate change is a source of stress in their lives, compared to just 51 percent of adults overall.

Trump says he wants to abolish birthright citizenship

Trump wants to end birthright citizenship by executive order but it’s unclear if he can

Donald Trump said Monday he wants to scrap birthright citizenship through an executive order, part of a raft of hard-line immigration measures announced ahead of the midterms. The president told Axios that he can use his executive power to end the right for the U.S.-born babies of non-citizens and illegal immigrants to gain American citizenship — even though such a move would likely violate the Constitution.

“We're the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States ... with all of those benefits,” Trump said. “It's ridiculous. And it has to end.”

Around 30 countries offer birthright citizenship, including Canada.

When challenged on whether he could simply rewrite the law through an executive order, Trump insisted his counsel believed he could.

The right to citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” As Trump acknowledged in the interview, it is widely believed that to reverse the status quo would require a constitutional amendment — although he maintained this was not the case.

Eric Holder Inspires Most Disturbingly Boring TV Show Ever

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds

Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation. The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.

“We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. “If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done.”

“This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is,” he said. “This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is our life-support system.” ...

The Living Planet Index, produced for WWF by the Zoological Society of London, uses data on 16,704 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, representing more than 4,000 species, to track the decline of wildlife. Between 1970 and 2014, the latest data available, populations fell by an average of 60%. Four years ago, the decline was 52%. The “shocking truth”, said Barrett, is that the wildlife crash is continuing unabated.

Worth a full read:

The unseen driver behind the migrant caravan: climate change

Thousands of Central American migrants trudging through Mexico towards the US have regularly been described as either fleeing gang violence or extreme poverty. But another crucial driving factor behind the migrant caravan has been harder to grasp: climate change. Most members of the migrant caravans come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – three countries devastated by violence, organised crime and systemic corruption, the roots of which can be traced back to the region’s cold war conflicts.

Experts say that alongside those factors, climate change in the region is exacerbating – and sometimes causing – a miasma of other problems including crop failures and poverty. And they warn that in the coming decades, it is likely to push millions more people north towards the US. “The focus on violence is eclipsing the big picture – which is that people are saying they are moving because of some version of food insecurity,” said Robert Albro, a researcher at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University.

“The main reason people are moving is because they don’t have anything to eat. This has a strong link to climate change – we are seeing tremendous climate instability that is radically changing food security in the region.” Migrants don’t often specifically mention “climate change” as a motivating factor for leaving because the concept is so abstract and long-term, Albro said. But people in the region who depend on small farms are painfully aware of changes to weather patterns that can ruin crops and decimate incomes.

Pausing for a rest as the first of the three recent migrant caravans passed through the Mexican town of Huixtla last week, Jesús Canan described how he used to sow maize and beans on a hectare of land near the ancient Copán ruins in western Honduras. An indigenous Ch’orti’ Maya, Canan abandoned his lands this year after repeated crop failures – which he attributed to drought and changing weather patterns. “It didn’t rain this year. Last year it didn’t rain,” he said softly. “My maize field didn’t produce a thing. With my expenses, everything we invested, we didn’t have any earnings. There was no harvest.”

'We've never seen this': massive Canadian glaciers shrinking rapidly

Scientists in Canada have warned that massive glaciers in the Yukon territory are shrinking even faster than would be expected from a warming climate – and bringing dramatic changes to the region. ... The rate of warming in the north is double that of the average global temperature increase, concluded the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in its annual Arctic Report Card, which called the warming “unprecedented”. “The region is one of the hotspots for warming, which is something we’ve come to realize over the last 15 years,” said David Hik of Simon Fraser University. “The magnitude of the changes is dramatic.”

In their recent State of the Mountains report published earlier in the summer, the Canadian Alpine Club found that the Saint Elias mountains – which span British Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska – are losing ice faster than the rest of the country.

In 2016, the meltwaters of the glacier shifted dramatically away from the Slims river, cutting off critical water supplies to Kluane Lake – a Unesco world heritage site. Since the diversion, water levels at the lake have dropped more than 6.6ft – stranding thousands of fish from their natural spawning rivers. Dust storms have begun to flare up along sections of the well-travelled Alaska Highway – at times halting traffic, the result of a dry river bed covered in glacial silt. The events at Kluane Lake are a precursor of what can be expected elsewhere, said Hik. The dramatic changes to the landscape come amid predictions that the Arctic region is slated to experience far quicker – and potentially devastating –warming in the coming years. ...

In the St Elias range, researchers have found warming intensifies at higher altitudes – a phenomenon they are not quite able to explain.

Venice under water

Three-quarters of Venice flooded by exceptional high tide

Venice has been inundated by an exceptional high tide which put three-quarters of the lagoon city under water. Large swathes of the rest of Italy have also experienced flooding and heavy winds which toppled trees, killing four people. ...

Venice frequently floods when high winds push in water from the lagoon but Monday was exceptional, with levels peaking at the highest seen since December 2008, according to statistics.

The mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, said a series of underwater barriers being erected in the lagoon would have prevented the situation. The project, nicknamed Moses, is long overdue, having been beset by cost overruns and corruption scandals. ...

Much of Italy is under flood alert due to heavy rains, a problem exacerbated by a lack of maintenance of the country’s many river beds. High winds toppled trees that killed passersby in three accidents in Naples and Lazio.

Also of Interest

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

'It's not fair, not right': how America treats its black farmers

A Glimpse Into the U.S. Warfare State Abyss

What Jair Bolsonaro’s Unfortunate Brazilian Victory Means

Welcome to the Jungle

Jair Bolsonaro denies he is a fascist and paints himself as a Brazilian Churchill

With No Mention of Climate Crisis and More Austerity, Theresa May's UK Budget Decried as "Insult to Our Young People's Future"

WikiLeaks’ Legacy of Exposing US-UK Complicity

Nancy Altman on Social Security Myths

Record Low Water Levels Are Causing Chaos in Germany

A Little Night Music

Blind Willie McTell - Searching The Desert For The Blues

Blind Willie McTell - You Was Born To Die

Blind Willie McTell - Dying Crapshooter's Blues

Blind Willie McTell - I've Got To Cross That Jordan River

Blind Willie Mctell - Blues Around Midnight

Blind Willie McTell - Honey It Must Be Love

Blind Willie McTell & Curley Weaver - I Keep On Drinkin'

Blind Willie McTell - Hillbilly Willie's Blues

Blind Willie McTell - Warm It Up to Me

Blind Willie Mctell - Kill It Kid