Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and string band music fiddler and guitarist Butch Cage and Willie B. Thomas. Enjoy!

“Heroes. Victims.
Gods and human beings.
All throwing shapes,
Every one of them
Convinced he's in the right;
All of them glad to repeat themselves
And their every last mistake
No matter what.”

-- Sophocles

News and Opinion

Senate vote on Yemen rebukes Trump administration's pro-Saudi stance

The Senate has delivered a significant rebuke to the Trump administration by defying the advice of its top officials and advancing a measure that would cut US military support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. The Republican-majority chamber voted 63-37 to allow the measure, which invokes the War Powers Resolution, stopping all involvement of US armed forces in the Yemen war, to proceed to the floor of the Senate for a vote, expected next week.

The bipartisan measure was introduced by the independent senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Republican senator Mike Lee and Democrat Chris Murphy. It may yet be significantly amended, it would not stop arms sales to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, and would face an uphill challenge to be passed by the House of Representatives.

But the moment represented a highly symbolic act of defiance, coming a few hours after the administration had wheeled out two of its biggest guns, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and defence secretary, James Mattis, to brief the entire Senate on the essential importance to US national security of US support for the Saudi-led coalition. It also marked an assertion of Congress’s constitutional prerogative to decide whether the country goes to war – and an expression of alarm over the actions of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Should Saudi Crown Prince Be Charged With War Crimes? G20 Host Argentina Considers Probe

Argentina prosecutor takes on case against Mohammed bin Salman

A prosecutor in Argentina has accepted a request to prosecute Mohammed bin Salman for alleged crimes against humanity, hours after the Saudi Arabia crown prince arrived in the country for the G20 summit. It is highly unlikely that such a prosecution could be successfully launched before the prince leaves Buenos Aires, but the move is an embarrassing development as world leaders gather for the two-day summit, which begins on Friday.

The advocacy group Human Rights Watch presented a writ earlier this week, arguing that Argentinian authorities should invoke universal jurisdiction laws to seek prosecution of the prince for mass civilian casualties caused by the Saudi-led coalition’s campaign in Yemen, and for the torture of Saudi citizens – including Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

On Wednesday a source said that the court had accepted the writ, and a prosecutor had asked a judge to determine if either Saudi Arabia or Yemen are investigating the prince for possible crimes against humanity. If no cases have been opened in either country, HRW argues that the principle of universal jurisdiction could apply. Before that could happen, however, the supreme court would have to rule whether Prince Mohammed is covered by diplomatic immunity – a decision which would be unlikely to come before the prince leaves the country after the G20 finishes on Saturday.

War in Yemen: Trump support for MBS "is prejudicing any attempts at peace talks"

Despite Vote to Advance Yemen Resolution, Senate Republican Support for Ending U.S. Involvement in the War Is Uncertain

The Republican-controlled Senate voted 63-37 on Wednesday to advance a piece of legislation that would direct the president to withdraw U.S. forces from assisting the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. The resolution — originally introduced by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Mike Lee, R-Utah; and Chris Murphy, D-Conn. — invokes the 1973 War Powers Act, and instructs the president to remove U.S. forces from “hostilities” in the fight against the Houthis, an Iranian-backed rebel group in northern Yemen.

Wednesday’s vote did not pass the resolution; rather, it discharged the resolution from committee, bypassing an important procedural hurdle and guaranteeing that it will get a vote on the Senate floor, likely sometime next week.

The vote is a sign of increasing frustration with Trump’s unwillingness to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was assassinated by Saudi agents while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October. When the Senate voted on the same resolution back in March, it failed 55-44, with 10 Democrats voting against it. Wednesday’s procedural vote got the support of every Senate Democrat and 14 Republicans, including Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the powerful chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Postponing the final vote leaves open the possibility that the resolution could be amended or watered down before it receives a final vote. And several Republicans, including Corker, emphasized that they would not necessarily vote for the bill the next time around. “I just want to make clear that what I’m voting for today is not voting for the substance that is before us,” Corker said Wednesday on the Senate floor. “I reserve the right to do so. But I’m voting on our ability to have a debate, as it relates to our ability to have a relationship with Saudi Arabia.”

Senate Votes To Debate Ending Yemen War!

Ukraine president calls for Nato warships in Sea of Azov

The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, has called on Nato to deploy naval ships to the Sea of Azov to “provide security” amid a deepening crisis with Russia. Nato foreign ministers are due to meet next Monday in Brussels and will assess their existing presence in the area, but it is unlikely they will send warships to the area. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, insisted there was no military solution, even after describing Moscow’s actions as unacceptable. She said she would be talking directly to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, at the G20 summit in Argentina, which starts on Friday. ...

On Thursday Donald Trump abruptly cancelled his own planned G20 meeting with Putin, blaming Russia’s failure to return the seized ships and sailors.

Ukraine claimed Russia was escalating the crisis by imposing a de facto blockade on two Ukrainian ports on the Sea of Azov and barring ships from leaving and entering via the Russian-controlled Kerch strait. Russia has blocked 35 merchant ships from leaving or entering the Sea of Azov, Ukraine asserted. The infrastructure ministry said on Thursday 18 ships were stuck in the Black Sea, waiting to pass through the Kerch strait into the Sea of Azov, and another 17 vessels were unable to sail out of the Ukrainian ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk.

The Kremlin denied it was restricting shipping and said if there was any blockage it was because of bad weather.

In his most fiery rhetoric of the crisis, Poroshenko accused Putin of wanting to annex Ukraine, telling the German newspaper Bild on Thursday: “Don’t believe Putin’s lies. Putin wants the old Russian empire back. Crimea, Donbass, the whole country.” Likening Putin to a Russian tsar, he said: “He believes his empire cannot function without Ukraine – he sees us as his colony.”

Pence’s Attacks on China Won’t Help Trump at G-20

After Vice President Mike Pence’s poor reception in Asia a couple of weeks ago one shouldn’t expect a great outcome for President Donald Trump when he meets China’s President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires on Friday. Trump sent Pence to Asia earlier this month to deliver two bluntly hostile attacks on the Chinese and to insist that the rest of Asia choose: You’re with us or you’re with them. ... The U.S. vice president’s over-the-top performances were probably a case of calculated pugnacity; a softening-up exercise. But if they have any effect at all on Xi it will be to stiffen his position when he meets Trump later this week. Washington does not yet realize that challenging China’s place as an Asian power is a losing proposition. ...

Trump’s brand of diplomacy is flawed in two key ways.

No. 1: It’s foolish to apply what works in the Manhattan real estate market to global strategy. There is little-to-no chance that Trump’s style will deliver the intended results in Iran, North Korea or in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Trump may win further concessions on trade when he meets Xi in Argentina later this week, but this will have nothing to do with Pence’s disgracefully bellicose speeches at the two back-to-back gatherings of Asia–Pacific nations.

No. 2: Obsessed with its decades of primacy in the Pacific, the U.S. simply cannot accept China’s inevitable emergence as a regional and global power. This second problem is the larger and more worrisome, driving one mistake after another in Washington’s trans–Pacific strategies. So long as members of U.S. policy cliques see everything Beijing does as a threat, they will fail to grasp the many opportunities for cooperation that a stronger and more prosperous China makes possible. This is more than merely a shame: it is causing a self-inflicted decline.

Washington would do well to learn that it’s futile to try to isolate mainland China from the rest of Asia. It’s like trying to isolate most of a hemisphere from the rest of the planet. And no Asian nation—not even the ever-loyal Japanese—shows any interest in choosing a side in a confrontation that is more or less of Washington’s making. ... To be fair to Pence and his boss, the Trump administration is not the first to confront Asians with an us-or-them choice between the U.S. and China. That error goes to the administration of Barack Obama when it was negotiating the Trans–Pacific Partnership. By pointedly not inviting China to join the TPP, it treated the deal, primarily, as a device to isolate China. The U.S. has not had a coherent approach to China at least since the first Bush presidency back in the early 1990s, when there was at least some acceptance of China as a rising power.

Panama the new flashpoint in China's growing presence in Latin America

Jutting four kilometres into the Pacific, the Amador causeway islands separate the concrete and glass skyline of Panama City from the soaring iron arch of the Bridge of the Americas – under which 40 cargo ships pass each day en route to or from the Panama Canal. ... China’s plans to build a new embassy on the islands were derailed after US officials pressured the government of Panama’s president, Juan Carlos Varela, to withdraw its offer of a four-hectare plot, according to senior Panamanian and diplomatic sources.

“Of course there was pushback from the US: they weren’t going to allow a huge Chinese flag next to the entrance to the canal,” a diplomatic source told the Guardian. ... But a previous plan to build a new Chinese embassy in the traditional diplomatic district of Panama City was also blocked by objections from Washington, and Beijing has now established a temporary mission in an office block.

The incident may prove to be a pyrrhic victory for Washington, however. This weekend, the Chinese premier, Xi Jinping, arrives in Panama for a visit aimed at cementing ties with the Central American nation. It will be the first such visit by a senior Chinese figure since Panama cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan to open formal relations with Beijing in June 2017. Since then, the two countries have signed 28 diplomatic and investment agreements, a $500m renminbi-denominated “Panda” bond is expected before the end of the year and Chinese contractors have won major contracts for a port, convention centre and a new bridge over the canal. ...

Xi’s visit comes amid an escalating trade war between China and the US, which has highlighted Panama’s strategic importance as a pinch-point of world commerce. ... Negotiations for a free trade agreement between China and Panama are at an advanced stage; Panamanian officials say the country can benefit from its growing role as a regional logistics hub, build its exports to China and protect local farmers. “We will become the gateway for Chinese goods into Latin America,” the trade minister, Augusto Arosemena, told the Guardian. “I think Panama will be an example of how smaller countries can negotiate with China.”

Meanwhile, the US has been caught flatfooted: diplomats were unaware of Varela’s decision to establish ties with Beijing until hours before its announcement and the state department has yet to name a replacement for John Feeley, who stood down as ambassador in March saying he was “honor bound” to resign rather than serve under Donald Trump.

Yanis Varoufakis on Julian Assange and the Political Economy & future of Europe

Rejecting Macron’s speech, fuel tax protesters call new demonstrations in France

Representatives of Yellow Vest protesters rejected Emmanuel Macron’s speech yesterday morning, in which he tried to stop the movement by supposedly addressing the protesters’ concerns. After long evening meetings with Ecology Minister François de Rugy, they announced that they were maintaining calls for another Saturday protest this coming weekend in Paris. After 10 p.m., Eric Drouet and Priscilla Ludosky, founders of some of the initial Facebook groups calling for road blockades against Macron’s fuel tax hike that launched the Yellow Vest movement, emerged from the meeting and spoke to reporters. They said they were satisfied neither with Macron’s speech nor with their discussion with de Rugy.

Drouet, a truck driver, said: “The feeling we have today is that there is no real desire to improve people’s lives, that’s really the deep feeling we had today.” He added that de Rugy’s comments were “very vague in the end—he said he would try to pass the message along and that was basically it. We said what we thought about the president’s statements to the media, that the French people are not convinced or even worse. It is starting to seriously annoy Yellow Vest protesters on the ground.” Now protests will go ahead, he added: “There will be a rally like last Saturday on Champs-Elysées Avenue. The Yellow Vest protesters want to continue each Saturday on the Champs-Elysées.” ...

De Rugy himself all but acknowledged this in separate comments to the press after his meeting with Drouet and Ludosky. “Their demands go far beyond the ecological question and the question of fuel,” he said, adding: “Of course, we were not there to propose immediate answers.”

The rejection of the Macron administration’s proposals by the protesters and their representatives escalates an unfolding political crisis of European dimensions. After having provocatively ignored the demonstrations for over a week, and launched a violent police assault on Saturday’s rally in downtown Paris that failed to stem the rising protests, Macron finally felt compelled to try to defuse the crisis by seeming to answer the protesters’ demands. A major factor in this decision was no doubt the popularity of the Yellow Vests, amid rising strikes at airlines, ports, oil refineries, logistics, and growing opposition to austerity across Europe. A BVA poll this weekend found that 72 percent of the French population support the Yellow Vests’ demands for more purchasing power and less social inequality and taxation of working people. Fully 59 percent want the protests to grow. ...

Macron’s decision to give a speech on the Yellow Vest movement to a group of businessmen and union officials only made clear, however, that he intends to pursue his right-wing policies and has nothing to offer the protesters. Insisting that he would not change course, but would only offer token symbolic concessions, he pledged to maintain his unpopular fuel tax while continuing with his agenda of endless social cuts, military spending increases and tax handouts to the rich. ... Macron’s speech made clear that his government has been deeply shaken by the growing opposition among working people and the mobilization of the Yellow Vest protesters. The rest of his speech was a rambling and incoherent mixture of threats, arrogant lecturing of the population, and proposals for how to strangle the Yellow Vests by associating them more closely to Macron’s manoeuvres with the trade union bureaucracy.

Keiser Report: Frackers Burning Cash

Wow! Now this could be a more excellent distraction than I had previously thought. What a great plot twist!

Paul Manafort’s “crimes and lies” are bad news for both Mueller and Trump

After his conviction for fraud in August, legal experts said Paul Manafort faced a choice: flip and cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, or bet his freedom on a presidential pardon from Trump. No one expected he would try both.

Manafort’s resulting double-play — in which he struck a deal with investigators, then reportedly leaked information to Trump’s lawyers — was an “insane,” “unheard-of” stunt that now threatens to crush him under a sledgehammer of legal punishment, former prosecutors told VICE News. But Manafort didn’t just throw himself into fresh legal peril, he also dished out a rare and notable setback to Mueller, observers said. Now, Mueller must presume that anything discussed with Manafort was passed to Trump — a prospect that further complicates an investigation already besieged by Trump’s allies and raises fresh questions of obstruction of justice, legal experts said.

“What Manafort did is simply unheard-of, because it’s so risky,” said Rebecca Roiphe, an expert on prosecutorial ethics at New York Law School. “But the big question is how a careful prosecutor like Mueller could allow this to happen. It’s the first chink in an otherwise flawless investigation.”

Manafort’s dramatic reversal comes at a time when Mueller is widely believed to be preparing his long-awaited report on Trump and Russia, and possibly fresh indictments against others in Trump’s orbit. The key questions now, observers said, are how much Manafort already gave up to investigators, what he learned about the probe — and whether Trump’s lawyers encouraged Manafort’s risky play by dangling a presidential pardon in front of him. Offering a reprieve in exchange for thwarting the investigation could amount to obstruction of justice, former prosecutors said — a question already central to Mueller’s investigation.

Trump says he just might pardon Paul Manafort after all

President Donald Trump dangled a pardon in Paul Manafort’s direction Wednesday, just as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team threatened fresh legal vengeance against Manafort for a new wave of “crimes and lies.”

Trump denied that a pardon had ever been explicitly discussed with his former campaign chairman, but it’s “not off the table,” he told The New York Post in an Oval Office interview published Wednesday. “It was never discussed, but I wouldn’t take it off the table. Why would I take it off the table?,” Trump said.

Trump’s musings will likely come as welcome news to Manafort, who’s facing the prospect of life in prison after allegedly breaking the terms of his plea agreement by lying to Mueller and the FBI. He’s now awaiting sentencing in two separate jurisdictions after convictions on fraud and criminal conspiracy charges.

Trump praised Manafort and two other subjects of the investigation, former Trump campaign aide Roger Stone, and Stone’s associate Jerome Corsi. He claimed without any proof that all three have been pressured to lie by special counsel Robert Mueller, who’s investigating Trump’s links to Russia.

Trump adviser sought WikiLeaks emails via Farage ally, Mueller document alleges

An ally of Nigel Farage was asked to obtain secret information from WikiLeaks for Donald Trump’s team during the 2016 election campaign, according to US investigators. Ted Malloch, a London-based academic close to Farage, was allegedly passed a request from a longtime Trump adviser to get advance copies of emails stolen from Trump’s opponents by Russian hackers and later published by WikiLeaks.

The allegation emerged in a draft legal document drawn up by Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and any collusion with Trump’s campaign team. In response to a series of questions from the Guardian, including whether he had acted on the request to make contact with WikiLeaks, Malloch said in an email: “No and no comment.” ...

Mueller’s draft legal document said that on 25 July 2016, Malloch was forwarded an email from Roger Stone, a notorious “dirty trickster” close to Trump. Stone wanted someone to make contact with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who had just published the first tranche of emails stolen from the Democratic party and was promising more revelations. “Get to Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and get the pending WikiLeaks emails,” the email said, according to Mueller’s document. The email was sent by Stone to Jerome Corsi, a conservative author, who promptly forwarded it to his friend Malloch. ...

Six days later, Stone allegedly emailed Corsi again to say Malloch “should see Assange”. Then on 2 August, Corsi replied to Stone: “Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps … Impact planned to be very damaging.” Corsi allegedly erased the emails from his computer but they were recovered by investigators. ... Corsi said in an interview on Wednesday that Malloch did not respond to his email and did not visit Assange. He claimed to have gathered information about Assange’s intentions from other sources.

Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to Congress over Trump project in Russia

One of Donald Trump’s closest advisers spoke with a Kremlin official about securing Russian government support for a planned Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 presidential election campaign, he said on Thursday. Michael Cohen, who served as Trump’s legal fixer for more than a decade, said in an explosive testimony that Trump continued trying to develop a tower in Russia’s capital months into his campaign for the presidency – contradicting Trump’s account.

The development signalled legal peril for Trump, whose presidency has been besieged by special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into whether his campaign team colluded with Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election.

Cohen made his disclosure as he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Moscow project. He said he made false statements to hinder the Trump-Russia investigation and to protect Trump, who was identified in court as “Individual 1”.

“I made these statements to be consistent with Individual 1’s political messaging and out of loyalty with Individual 1,” Cohen told the federal court in Manhattan on Thursday morning, after signing a plea agreement with Mueller. He did not say if Trump directed him to lie.

Charlottesville driver begins trial over woman's death

Nearly 15 months after a white nationalist rally erupted into violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, a jury heard conflicting accounts of what caused a man to drive his car into a group of counter protesters, killing one and injuring several others. Opening statements were delivered on Thursday in the trial of James Alex Fields, a 21-year-old male from Ohio who faces 10 state charges that include first-degree murder and malicious wounding. Fields has separately been charged with 30 federal counts of hate crimes, which could carry the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty.

A jury was sworn in Thursday morning following a strenuous selection process that dragged on for three days, complicated in part by the high-profile nature of the case. Nearly everyone summoned as part a pool of prospective jurors said they had either seen or read the news coverage surrounding the events on 12 August in Charlottesville, which resulted in the death of Heather Heyer, a 31-year-old paralegal and civil rights activist.

Both the prosecution and defense agreed on Thursday it was not in dispute that Fields was the driver of the vehicle that struck a group of individuals who had gathered in downtown Charlottesville to protest the so-called Unite the Right rally. The crux of the case, they said, was why. “This case isn’t about what he did. It’s about what his intent was,” said Nina-Alice Antony, one of two prosecutors representing the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Antony said prosecutors would summon several witnesses whose testimony would demonstrate that Fields intentionally rammed his Dodge Challenger car into the crowd, rebuking the claim made by the defense that Fields acted in self-defense. While Antony acknowledged Fields apologized upon being apprehended by police and expressed his belief that he was under attack, she said it would be for the jury to determine, upon reviewing the relevant evidence and testimony, “whether those statements have any credibility”.

Black women in Alabama dying of preventable cancer at alarming rate

Cervical cancer, a disease researchers believe is on track to be eradicated within 20 years in some industrialized nations, is killing a disproportionate number of women across the American south. Black women in Alabama are dying of cervical cancer at more than twice the national average, a trend that appears to be increasing despite the disease being preventable and curable if detected early, a new Human Rights Watch report shows.

Lack of health insurance, in the words of one victim’s daughter, was a “death sentence”. “My mom could have had a hysterectomy, and I believe that it would have prevented the precancerous cells from growing and turning to a tumor,” said Karen Snipes, whose mother died of cervical cancer in 2017.

The group blames the state’s restrictive health insurance policies, lack of physicians, poverty and structural racism for the failure to properly treat the disease. Given current technology, experts said cervical cancer could be virtually eliminated in industrialized nations such as the US.

“We should never, ever see cervical cancer. Not in the United States,” said Dr William M Stevens, a gynecologist in Selma, Alabama. Stevens is the only gynecologist in five of Alabama’s poorest counties which lie in a region sometimes called the “black belt” for its rich soil and large population of African Americans. Stevens described the situation as comparable to under-resourced Kenyan villages, where he also practices. In Kenya, 21.8 women out of every 100,000 will die of cervical cancer.

On average, cervical cancer in the United States kills 2.4 women out of every 100,000, or about 4,200 women a year. In Alabama, women die at a rate of 3.9 out of every 100,000, but vast racial health disparities skew the picture. Black women die at nearly double the rate of white women, at 5.2 out of every 100,000 versus 2.7 out of every 100,000. Human Rights Watch found the situation appears to be worsening. Cervical cancer deaths in Alabama increased 34.5% between 2010 and 2014.

Charles Koch Ramps Up Investment in ALEC as the Lobbying Group Loses Corporate Funders Over Far-Right Ties

The American Legislative Exchange Council is holding a conference in Washington, D.C., this week, providing a venue for lobbyists to meet behind closed doors with newly elected state legislators. The group, which is celebrating its 45th year, has long shaped state law, designing bills that imposed three-strikes mandatory sentencing, restricting the minimum wage, curbing municipal broadband, and other shared goals in areas of interest to corporate America and the GOP.

Many of the major donors to the conservative bill-writing organization, however, have decided to quit their membership, expressing fear that the group has become too associated with the toxic politics of the far right. The latest companies to discontinue financial support for ALEC include AT&T, Dow Chemical, and Honeywell, spokespersons for the companies told The Intercept. The news comes on the heels of an announcement two months ago that Verizon, another major donor, decided to leave ALEC.

The group has been roiled by negative stories over several years. Verizon announced it was ending its support following a hate-fueled speech by anti-Muslim activist David Horowitz at ALEC’s annual meeting in August. Horowitz, who is well known for taking extremist views on a range of topics, used the platform at ALEC to attack marriage equality and suggested that the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise was not about black people. ... After the Horowitz speech, a coalition of 79 organizations, including civil rights, good government, and environmental groups, called on ALEC’s corporate funders to end their financial support. The coalition sent 21 letters to corporations that had recently been identified as funding ALEC.

The loss of corporate members came as Republicans faced massive setbacks in statehouse elections this year. At least 333 state legislative seats flipped to Democrats. Though ALEC bills itself as a bipartisan organization, its members are overwhelmingly Republican.

Another, more reliably right-wing funder appears to have stepped up as ALEC has faced increasing scrutiny. Tax disclosures show that the Charles Koch Foundation and Charles Koch Institute increased annual giving to the group, providing $779,068 to ALEC in 2017, a contribution level nearly $200,000 higher than the previous year. The groups tied to the billionaire donor did not respond to a request for comment.

New York labor leaders: Amazon has 'record of routinely mistreating workers'

As Amazon looks to come to town, New York labor leaders tore into the company’s record on worker treatment in a new report issued on Wednesday. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) and city lawmakers said Amazon’s record of grueling conditions for warehouse workers and opposition to union organizing should make the tech giant unwelcome in the city.

The company plans to open a massive new office in Long Island City, Queens – splitting its planned second headquarters between there and Arlington, Virginia. The plan, backed by the mayor and governor, has sparked a backlash and protests in the city.

“Amazon has a record of routinely mistreating and exploiting its workers at all levels, whether they are employed in its corporate offices or in its warehouses,” said the RWDSU president, Stuart Appelbaum. “Amazon has operated as an anti-worker, union-busting company across the United States and across Europe.” At least nine workers have died at Amazon facilities since 2013, the union’s report says.

It cites reports that there were so many calls for medical help at a Pennsylvania warehouse during a heatwave that the company had ambulances stationed outside, and accusations, denied by Amazon, that UK workers were urinating in bottles because they were too afraid to take a bathroom break. The company has also consistently fought efforts to unionize, releasing a training video to teach managers to find “warning signs” of union organizing and hiring a law firm that specializes in opposing unionization, the union notes, citing published reports.

“Never Pelosi” Democrats are learning why Nancy Pelosi was speaker in the first place

Rep. Nancy Pelosi is now House speaker-elect after outmaneuvering her loudest critics by opening up a grab bag of perks. Over the past year, more than 50 Democrat House reps nationwide pledged to never support her speaker bid — indeed, some actively ran against her. But over the past three weeks, she went down the list and slowly plucked off the votes needed to scare away any potential challenger, and in the secret ballot Wednesday, Democrats supported her 203-32.

Now, the Never Pelosi crowd will have to go back to their districts and convince voters that the one or two concessions they got in exchange for flipping isn’t just a broken campaign promise. ...

The small group that opposed Pelosi favored fresh leadership without specifying any particular shortcomings. A group of new progressives never outright opposed Pelosi but remained on the fence. That enables them to line up asking her for everything from action on climate change (in the case of Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) to a seat on the powerful appropriations committee (Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib). Still others demanded action on gun control, including the promise from Pelosi to bring up a vote on a background check bill. ...

Pelosi’s top lieutenants are willing to forgive the freshmen, especially those in tough suburban districts who are still vowing to oppose Pelosi on the House floor where she can only afford to lose 16 votes. “God bless them,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told VICE News. “They ran for Congress and told their constituents they were going to fight for their constituents. They should do that.”

But Pelosi and her allies may not be as forgiving to the returning members of Congress who are still vowing to vote against her on the floor, but they’re ready to exact retribution if need be.

Bernie Sanders Puts Forward a Program That Could Split the Democratic Party

Bernie Sanders last week unveiled a 10-point legislative agenda that he believes will galvanize the Democratic base in much the way that Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract With America” propelled the GOP to its biggest electoral sweep since 1946. The Vermont senator’s wish list is genuinely impressive in sweep, a full-blown progressive domestic platform for his expected second run for the presidency in 2020. But the immediate obstacle to Sanders’ proposals for Medicare-For-All, tuition-free public higher education, expanded Social Security, a $15 an hour minimum wage, “bold action” on climate change, fixing the criminal justice system, comprehensive immigration reform, progressive tax reform, a $1 trillion infrastructure overhaul and cheaper prescription drugs, is not Donald Trump’s GOP troglodytes -- it’s Nancy Pelosi and her corporate Democrats, who answer to a much higher power: big capital. ...

Keen to tamp down the partisan fervor of rank and file Democrats, lest it be channeled in dangerous directions, soon-to-be Speaker Pelosi spoke of her hope to collaborate with the Trump administration. Pelosi’s biggest problem is pretending that the 800 pound single payer gorilla isn’t squatting on the House floor, itching to savage her party’s relationship with the health care and insurance sector of the ruling class. And now here comes old man Sanders, trying to burden the party with a whole raft of progressive causes -- Medicare-for-All plus nine other points – all of which would shift the party away from the bipartisan corporate consensus on permanent austerity.

Sanders is to be applauded, even though his grand domestic plan is totally incompatible with his abject failure to confront the military budget, the latest $716 billion version of which was supported by 60 percent of Democratic lawmakers. The Republicans have already made known that they will return to Congress next year in a “cut the deficit” mood -- after adding $1 trillion to the debt with their tax cuts to the rich, including $80 billion more than requested for the Pentagon. Sanders remains the imperialist pig (see here, here and here) who can’t break with empire -- like most white folks in the United States, whose sense of identity seems to include the exceptional right to unimpeded global rampage. Bernie can’t bring himself to confront the military budget in any substantial way.

Nancy Pelosi insists that she’ll only go along with legislation that is “pay-as-you-go,” that doesn’t raise the debt -- a still-living legacy of President Obama’s “grand bargain” with the GOP. Full implementation of Sanders’ entire 10-point plan, including several trillion dollar items, is impossible under the bipartisan austerity scheme, and more impossible still without big cuts in the military budget, unless Congress drops all pretense of debt limitation. That’s why I have nothing but the best of wishes for Sanders’ 10 point plan. If Sanders can get the presidential momentum going again, he can force an extended national conversation on Medicare-For-All, tuition-free public higher education, expanded Social Security, a radical roll-back in mass incarceration (an expensive proposition if combined with “investments in jobs and education for our young people”) and the rest of his domestic agenda. With these core issues shaping his message, every step closer he gets to the nomination brings the Democratic Party nearer to the split that is necessary if a mass social democratic party is to come into being in the United States
. ...

So, kudos to Bernie Sanders. Hopefully, his progressive 10-point plan will blow the Democratic Party to pieces, over the next two years, so that a mass politics that is not owned by white corporate men can finally exist in the U.S. Sanders doesn’t have to win the White House to bring about this historic “creative destruction.” He just has to wreck the Party. If the Party sabotages him in the primaries, as in 2016, then progressives will get another chance to do the right thing, and say goodbye to the Democrats. Or, if Sanders wins, hopefully the corporatists will follow the money and run away to the GOP, or form their own Third Way party, and leave the Democratic carcass to the poor folks. Any split will do the trick, as long as the result is a non-corporate mass party.

Past four years hottest on record, data shows

Global temperatures have continued to rise in the past 10 months, with 2018 expected to be the fourth warmest year on record.

Average temperatures around the world so far this year were nearly 1C (1.8F) above pre-industrial levels. Extreme weather has affected all continents, while the melting of sea ice and glaciers and rises in sea levels continue. The past four years have been the hottest on record, and the 20 warmest have occurred in the past 22 years.

The warming trend is unmistakeable and shows we are running out of time to tackle climate change, according to the World Meteorological Organization, which on Thursday published its provisional statement on the State of the Climate in 2018. The WMO warned that, on current trends, warming could reach 3C to 5C by the end of this century.

“These are more than just numbers,” said Elena Manaenkova, the WMO deputy secretary general. “Every fraction of a degree of warming makes a difference to human health and access to food and fresh water, to the extinction of animals and plants, to the survival of coral reefs and marine life.”

Great Barrier Reef: record heatwave may cause another coral bleaching event

A record-breaking heatwave in north Queensland will further increase above-average marine temperatures, heightening the risk of another coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef next year, scientists say. Dozens of record November temperatures have been recorded in the region, most along the reef coastline, this week.

The most remarkable was at Cairns, where consecutive days reached temperatures of 42.6C and 40.9C. The maximum temperature on Tuesday broke a November record that has stood since 1900 by 5.4C.

Extreme weather fuelled more than 130 bushfires, which the premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said on Twitter was “not the kind of fire we have seen in Queensland before”. “Heatwave records and fire weather is unprecedented,” Palaszczuk said.

Reef scientist Terry Hughes, from the coral centre of excellence at James Cook University, said the summer heatwave was “terrifying” and lifted the chances of coral death on the Great Barrier Reef early next year. The reef sustained successive marine heatwaves, in the early part of 2016 and 2017, which killed corals and badly damaged the northern and central sections.

This is terrifying. An early summer heatwave breaks all records, lifting the chances of another episode of coral mortality on the #greatBarrierReef next Feb/March. https://t.co/NQkoKhGW5P

— Terry Hughes (@ProfTerryHughes) November 26, 2018

World Faces 'Impossible' Task at Post-Paris Climate Talks

Three years after sealing a landmark global climate deal in Paris, world leaders are gathering again to agree on the fine print. The euphoria of 2015 has given way to sober realization that getting an agreement among almost 200 countries, each with their own political and economic demands, will be challenging — as evidenced by President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris accord, citing his “America First” mantra.

“Looking from the outside perspective, it’s an impossible task,” Poland’s deputy environment minister, Michal Kurtyka, said of the talks he will preside over in Katowice from Dec. 2-14. ... The conference will have “quite significant consequences for humanity and for the way in which we take care of our planet,” Kurtyka told the Associated Press ahead of the talks. ...

Experts agree that the Paris goals can only be met by cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to net zero by 2050. But the Paris agreement let countries set their own emissions targets. Some are on track, others aren’t. Overall, the world is heading the wrong way. ... “Everyone recognized that the national plans, when you add everything up, will take us way beyond 3, potentially 4 degrees Celsius warming,” said Johan Rockstrom, the incoming director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We know that we’re moving in the wrong direction,” said Rockstrom. “We need to bend the global carbon emissions no later than 2020 — in two years’ time — to stand a chance to stay under 2 degrees Celsius.”

George Monbiot: Ending Meat & Dairy Consumption Is Needed to Prevent Worst Impacts of Climate Change

Global food system is broken, say world’s science academies

The global food system is broken, leaving billions of people either underfed or overweight and driving the planet towards climate catastrophe, according to 130 national academies of science and medicine across the world. Providing a healthy, affordable, and environmentally friendly diet for all people will require a radical transformation of the system, says the report by the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP). This will depend on better farming methods, wealthy nations consuming less meat and countries valuing food which is nutritious rather than cheap. ...

The global food system is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than all emissions from transport, heating, lighting and air conditioning combined. The global warming this is causing is now damaging food production through extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.

The food system also fails to properly nourish billions of people. More than 820 million people went hungry last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, while a third of all people did not get enough vitamins. At the same time, 600 million people were classed as obese and 2 billion overweight, with serious consequences for their health. On top of this, more than 1bn tonnes of food is wasted every year, a third of the total produced. ...

Research published in the journal Climate Policy shows that at the present rate, cattle and other livestock will be responsible for half of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and that to prevent this will require “substantial reductions, far beyond what are planned or realistic, from other sectors”. “It is vital [for a liveable planet] that we change our relationship with meat, especially with red meat. But no expert in this area is saying the world should be vegan or even vegetarian,” said Tim Benton, professor of population ecology, at the University of Leeds.

Berta Cáceres murder trial plagued by allegations of cover-ups set to end

The verdict against eight men accused over the murder of Honduran indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres will be handed down on Thursday after a controversial five-week trial plagued by allegations of negligence and cover-ups. Cáceres – who won the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize – was shot dead in March 2016, after a long battle against the internationally financed Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam project on the Gualcarque river, territory sacred to the indigenous Lenca people. ...

Cáceres had led numerous campaigns to protect indigenous territories from environmentally destructive mega-projects, as general coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Copinh). ...

Cáceres’s family and colleagues have attempted to expose the criminal networks responsible for the smear campaigns, surveillance, sexual harassment, false criminal charges, threats and ultimately her murder. But their quest for justice has been frustrated by restricted access to crucial evidence controlled by the public prosecutors. Even before the trial opened, hopes that it would uncover the truth were dealt a blow when the judges excluded the family’s lawyers from proceedings.

“The victims were expelled because they demanded the whole truth, to find the intellectual authors and beneficiaries who planned and participated before, during and after the murder,” said Reinaldo Villalba, a Colombian human rights lawyer and member of a team of international trial observers. “We’ve had to fight for information every step of the way,” said Cáceres’s youngest daughter, Laura Zúñiga Cáceres, in a victim impact statement. “This is an important moment to make legal precedents for the people [of this country], who are fleeing, who are bleeding.” ... Villalba said: “We saw unprepared witnesses, a badly prepared incomplete case and poor decisions by the judges which violated the rights of victims and defendants. Berta’s murder was a crime against humanity and the truth is a right for the victims, society and humanity.”

Also of Interest

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

Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi, and the Con of Diversity

America Has Desegregated in Name Only

Obama Militarily Occupied Africa

Google Shut Out Privacy and Security Teams From Secret China Project

An Immigrant Journalist Faces Deportation as ICE Cracks Down on Its Critics

Wall Street Mega-Landlord Blackstone Turns Screw on Spanish Government & Property Market

A Little Night Music

Butch Cage & Willie Thomas - Forty-Four Blues

Butch Cage & Willie B. Thomas - Who Broke the Lock?

Willie B Thomas & Butch Cage - Bugle Call Blues

Willie B Thomas & Butch Cage - Me And My Chauffeur

Willie B Thomas & Butch Cage - Brown Skin Woman

Willie B Thomas & Butch Cage - Butch's Blues

Willie B Thomas & Butch Cage - Baby Please Don't Go

Clarence & Cornelius Edwards & Butch Cage - I Can't Quit You Baby

Clarence Edwards & Butch Cage - Smokestack Lightnin'