Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues musician Jimmy Rogers. Enjoy!

“Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?”

-- Terry Pratchett

News and Opinion

Senate votes to end US military support for Saudis in Yemen

The Senate has passed a resolution calling for an end to US military support to the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemen war, and asserting Congress’s right to decide on matters of war and peace. The measure, which passed by 56 votes to 41, marked the first time the Senate had invoked the 1973 War Powers Resolution to seek to curb the power of the president to take the US into an armed conflict. It marked a significant bipartisan rebuke to the Trump administration, which lobbied intensively against it.

The independent senator Bernie Sanders who had pushed the resolution persistently throughout the year, called it “a historic moment”. He said: “Today we declare we will not long participate in the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen which has caused the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, with 85,000 children starving to death. Today we tell the despotic regime in Saudi Arabia that we will no longer be part of their military adventurism.”

Sanders went on: “The War Powers Act was passed 45 years ago. Today for the first time we are going to go forward utilising that legislation, and tell the president of the United States that the constitutional responsibility for making war rests with the United States Congress, not the White House.” ...

The resolution still faces serious obstacles to becoming law. The House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans for another month, is unlikely to endorse it. The Democrats will take over the House next month, but the legislative process of passing the resolution would have to begin again. Then it would face a certain veto from Donald Trump, which would require a two-thirds vote in both houses to overturn.

Saudi Arabia’s cruelty has people listening to Rand Paul on War Powers

A bipartisan group of senators voted 56-41 on Thursday afternoon to end U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia in its intervention in the civil war in Yemen. The move served as a rebuke to President Trump and a Saudi regime led by the 33-year-old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS). The Senate also unanimously passed a separate resolution, sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, that specifically said the Senate “believes Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” a Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist.

And then there’s Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who would like to see Congress reassert its authority over foreign wars as granted in the 1973 War Powers Resolution. U.S. presidents have been deploying troops unilaterally for nearly 20 years through a 9/11-era law, the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Ceasefire is Reached, While US House Undermines Efforts to End Complicity in War

While progressive U.S. lawmakers' efforts to take meaningful action to end American involvement in the Saudi-led assault on Yemen were stymied this week, human rights groups expressed relief that progress was made across the Atlantic in United Nations-led peace talks in Sweden, with both sides of the conflict in Yemen agreeing to an immediate ceasefire in the port city of Hodeidah.

The city, which has been controlled by the Houthis since October 2014, has been the site of numerous bombings since the Saudi-led coalition began its offensive in June. The ceasefire will bring reprieve not only to the two million Yemenis who live in the city, but for two-thirds of the country's population, who rely on Hodeidah as the key entry point for food, medical supplies, and other aid. All troops from both sides of the conflict are now scheduled to withdraw from the city within 21 days, with further peace talks planned for late January. ...

The ceasefire deal was reached just hours before the U.S. Senate voted to approve a resolution to end U.S. military support for the Saudis, who have relied on U.S. weapons, intelligence, and fuel since its assault on Yemen began in 2015.

But with five despicable Democrats joining the majority of the GOP to pass a measure Tuesday barring Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) resolution to end U.S. involvement, the Senate vote was rendered largely symbolic before it took place. House Democrats will not be able to force a vote on the issue until after the New Year.

UN Yemen mission to rush to Hodeidah to oversee ceasefire

A small-scale UN monitoring mission will rush to the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah next week to oversee a ceasefire, the UN special envoy for Yemen has told diplomats in New York. A fragile truce was secured after week-long negotiations in Sweden, the first Yemen peace talks since 2016.

The special envoy, Martin Griffiths, hopes a UN security resolution, drafted by the UK, will endorse the agreements reached in Stockholm including the need for a UN body to supervise the port’s administration and mutual troop withdrawals. ... The speed with which the two sides in Stockholm reached agreement on the ceasefire was a pleasant surprise for diplomats, but as a result many potential pitfalls remain and need clarification if the deal is not to collapse before the next round of talks in Kuwait in late January.

The agreements leave unclear whether the customs revenues from the Hodeidah port are to go to the Yemen central bank in Aden run by the Hadi government, or instead to remain with Houthis’ banks. The Stockholm talks failed to reach a deal on the reunification of central banks, and it has been the state of economy, including inflation, as much as absence of food that has been driving famine. Similarly, details about the security force to run the city after the mutual troop withdrawals are unclear, but western diplomats are hoping the two rivals will set up a joint force. Plans for the transfer of maps showing the location of mines, IEDs, and booby traps may also prove a stumbling block.

“Hodeidah is the litmus test for the Sweden talks,” said the analyst Hisham al-Omeisy. “The parties have agreed to withdraw to the city limits and for a reorganisation of military units and local security forces. But this is Yemen and nothing is that simple. “For example, the Houthis have recruited a lot of locals in the city. Are they supposed to vacate their homes now? The wording of the agreements has been purposefully vague to get the parties to agree, but it’s going to be very hard to gauge what success will be like as a result.” ...

Despite sporadic gunfire and shelling on the city’s northern and eastern outskirts overnight on Thursday, Hodeidah was largely calm by Friday morning, residents said.

Yellow vests protests: How long will it last?

Paris braces for fifth weekend of protests by gilets jaunes

Thousands of riot police and armoured vehicles will be deployed in Paris on Saturday as France anticipates a fifth weekend of anti-government protests in the capital and other cities. Despite government pleas for the gilets jaunes protesters to call off street demonstrations in the wake of this week’s terror attack in Strasbourg, many vowed to continue their struggle. The grassroots protest movement has continued all week on roundabouts and tollbooths, and authorities believe Saturday’s street marches will go ahead.

Emmanuel Macron this week made concessions aimed at chipping away at the high level of public support for the movement. ... But the movement shows no sign of stopping. “It’s really the time to keep going,” Eric Drouet, a senior figure in the movement, said in a video posted on Facebook. “What Macron did on Monday was a call to carry on because he has started to give ground, which is unusual for him.” ...

Laetitia Dewalle, a protester from the Val-d’Oise, said: “We’re continuing – always in a peaceful spirit.” She said she understood that there had been rioting on the edges of demonstrations, but she added: “This movement itself is not violent. That’s not our way of doing things.”

RussiaGate Pusher Gets Owned By Google CEO

Democrats downplay Google censorship at congressional hearing

Google CEO Sundar Pichai denied allegations that the company was engaged in political censorship Monday at a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. Throughout the hearing, Republicans repeatedly claimed that the company was censoring search results to the detriment of right-wing viewpoints, while Democrats either denied the company’s censorship or justified it. The fundamental reality—completely ignored at the hearing — is that the real targets of censorship by Silicon Valley, working with the US intelligence agencies and with the consent of both political parties, are left-wing, anti-war and socialist political organizations.

In April 2017, Google announced that it would implement changes to its search algorithm to promote “authoritative” news sources to the detriment of what it called “alternative” viewpoints. This action led to a massive decline in search rankings and traffic to left-wing, anti-war and progressive websites. The campaign to implement this censorship regime was spearheaded by the Democratic Party, which, based on claims of Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election, sought to pressure the technology giants to block and suppress left-wing opposition, which it branded as “extremist viewpoints.” Compared to April 2017, the far-right Breitbart.com had its search traffic increase by 25 percent. By contrast, search results for the World Socialist Web Site are down by 76 percent over the same period, and other left-wing sites remain down by 50 percent or more. ...

In his remarks, ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler, who will become chairman in January, declared that “no credible evidence supports this right-wing conspiracy theory.” In effect, Nadler and the other Democrats used the Republicans’ accusations about Google’s ‘liberal’ bias as a straw man, arguing, by extension, that all claims that Google is manipulating search results are a “conspiracy theory.” Nadler then proceeded to justify Google’s censorship, which he had just denied. “Even if Google were deliberately discriminating against conservative viewpoints, just as Fox News and Sinclair broadcasting and conservative talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh discriminate against liberal points of view, that would be its right as a private company to do so, and not to be questioned by government.” This, too, is a straw man. In carrying out their censorship of left-wing views, Google and the other technology giants are acting at the instigation of the US intelligence agencies and leading political figures, serving as the state’s accomplice in violating the Constitution. ...

As working class-opposition throughout Europe and around the world continues to mount, the American political establishment is ramping up demands for censorship. Responding to the Yellow Vest demonstrations against social inequality in France, the New York Times wrote an editorial warning that “the power of social media to quickly mobilize mass anger, without any mechanism for dialogue or restraint, is a danger to which a liberal democracy cannot succumb.” The clear implication is that a growing international upsurge of the working class will be met with even further repression and censorship.

The Truth About Israel, Boycotts, and BDS

Betsy DeVos is canceling 15,000 students’ debt after trying to avoid it for a year​

Despite Betsy DeVos’ best efforts, the U.S. Department of Education will cancel the nearly $150 million in student loan debt for 15,000 people whose schools shut down in the middle of their education or defrauded them.

For more than a year, DeVos tried to overhaul or delay the Obama-era “borrower defense” regulations, which intended to automatically cancel loan debt for students who for-profit institutions clearly defrauded. DeVos called the rules “free money” and insisted the Department of Education needed stricter standards for loan forgiveness.

In 2017, however, 19 states and the District of Columbia sued the Department of Education for neglecting to do its job, and a judge ruled in October that the rule had to be implemented right away. On Friday, the Department of Education finally sent emails to the 15,000 students informing them that they’d received a “closed school” loan discharge, which cancels their debt.

"You're Worth $1 Trillion. Why Do You Need Our $3 Billion?" Angry New Yorkers Confront Amazon Execs at City Council Meeting

After being kept in the dark about New York's $3 billion deal with Amazon, allowing the trillion-dollar corporation to build its new headquarters—complete with helicopter landing pad for CEO Jeff Bezos—in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City, concerned New York City Council members and scores of angry New Yorkers on Wednesday angrily confronted company representatives over the plan.

At the first City Council meeting on Amazon's so-called "HQ2," about 150 protesters joined the mostly-Democratic lawmakers in slamming the closed-door process through which the city and state finalized the deal and the effect the corporation's arrival will likely have on affordable housing and community development in Queens and the entire city, as New York pours much-needed funds into the new one million square foot campus.

"You're worth a trillion dollars," New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said bluntly to Amazon officials Brian Huseman and Holly Sullivan. "Why do you need our $3 billion when we have crumbling subways, crumbling public housing, people without health care, public schools that are overcrowded?"

Amazon has said its arrival in New York will create 25,000 jobs for residents—a claim one protester derided as "smoke and mirrors" during the hearing—and has promised to fund a new school that would serve just 600 of the city's school children.

Huseman, Amazon's vice president for public policy, noted that 5,000 New York workers are already employed by the company at a fulfillment center on Staten Island—but as the hearing was underway those same employees were publicizing their effort to unionize, citing long hours, insufficient breaks, and safety concerns on the job.

RIP:

William Blum, US Policy Critic Derided by NYT, Dies at 85

You know you’ve lived well—well enough to rattle the establishment—when the New York Times smears you in the obituary it runs about you (FAIR.org, 6/20/13).

That distinction was achieved by William Blum, historian and critic of US foreign policy. Once a State Department computer programmer who aspired to “take part in the great anti-Communist crusade,” he quit government in 1967 out of disgust with the Vietnam War and became a founding editor of the Washington Free Press, one of the first alternative papers of the New Left. In books like The CIA: A Forgotten History (re-released as Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II) and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, Blum documented the violent and anti-democratic record of the US empire; he was a reference that FAIR frequently turned to when noting what was missing from the corporate media’s version of history.

How did the New York Times (12/11/18) frame this remarkable life? With this remarkable headline:

William Blum, US Policy Critic Cited by bin Laden, Dies at 85

Yes, to the Times, the most important thing about Bill Blum’s life is that Osama bin Laden once remarked to Americans, in a tape released from hiding, that Rogue State would be “useful for you to read.”

“Blum denounced the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington,” obituary writer Sam Roberts acknowledged, “and said he would not want to live under an Islamic fundamentalist regime.” But, Roberts scolded, "he did not disavow the recommendation or express regret that bin Laden, the orchestrator of those attacks, shared his disdain for the policies carried out by the department where he had once worked."

'Sore Loser Loses Again': Federal Judge Rejects GOP Lawsuit, Defends Mainers' Right to Ranked Choice Voting

In the latest rebuke to Rep. Bruce Poliquin's (R-Maine) repeated attempts to hold onto his seat in Maine's 2nd congressional district after losing the midterm election, a federal judge threw out his lawsuit in which the two-term congressman claimed the state's use of ranked choice voting (RCV) was unconstitutional and unfair to voters.

Local advocacy groups applauded as U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker rejected Poliquin's claim that the use of RCV, which has been endorsed repeatedly by Maine voters, violates Mainers' First Amendment rights and the Voting Rights Act, as well as his argument that the system is confusing to voters.

"Mr. Poliquin and his attorneys threw everything but the kitchen sink at Ranked Choice Voting and the Court defended Maine's law in full," said Kyle Bailey, campaign manager for the Committee for Ranked Choice Voting, in a statement. ... The federal court "ruled today that the people of Maine have a right to choose the way we elect our leaders," Cara Brown, the committee’s treasurer, said. "With this historic ruling, we predict that Ranked Choice Voting will sweep the nation." ...

The congressman had already attempted to stop the re-tallying from happening with a lawsuit, and filed another legal challenge after Golden won the second round of voting by 3,500 votes. "To the extent that the Plaintiffs call into question the wisdom of using RCV, they are free to do so but...such criticism falls short of constitutional impropriety," Walker wrote in his opinion. "A majority of Maine voters have rejected that criticism and Article I [of the U.S. Constitution] does not empower this Court to second guess the considered judgment of the polity on the basis of the tautological observation that RCV may suffer from problems, as all voting systems do."

Scott Walker signs bills limiting powers of incoming Wisconsin Democrats

Outgoing Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has signed a raft of legislation passed by the Republican state legislature that restricts the power of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general as well as limits early voting in the state. Democrats have decried the move as a brutal power grab aimed at hobbling their new administration and an undemocratic ploy that ignores the will of the state’s voters in the recent mid-term elections. They have also threatened litigation.

Walker signed the bills just 24 days before he leaves office.

Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are expected to sue within days over the bills.

Republican leaders and Walker moved forward with the proposals immediately after Evers defeated the governor as part of a Democratic sweep of statewide offices. The push is aimed at safeguarding conservative policies put in place during Walker’s eight years as governor and mirrors tactics used by Republicans in North Carolina in 2016. Republicans in Michigan are weighing similar moves.

Bombshell! Video Mashup Reveals Pathetic RussiaGate Coverage

From Obama to Trump, Climate Negotiations Are Being Run by the Same Crew of American Technocrats

On Monday, the Trump administration hosted an event on behalf of the fossil fuel industry at the United Nations climate talks in Poland, known as COP24. It was almost identical to the one it hosted at last year’s climate talks in Germany: trying to write coal, oil, and gas into the world’s response to climate change, and bemoaning “alarmism” on climate. Both were disrupted by organizers from the United States voicing their opposition, and both received more media coverage than just about anything else happening at either talks, which this year are focused on arriving at a deeply technical rulebook to implement the Paris agreement.

What the flashy White House sideshow obscured, though, is that the U.S. position in Poland, when it comes to the substance of the talks, is indistinguishable on many fronts from the approach taken by the Obama administration. In fact, that agenda is being carried out by many of the very same people, a largely overlapping crew of career technical negotiators keeping a lower profile than Donald Trump team’s at the White House. While the rhetoric coming from the Obama administration was 180 degrees from that of the Trump administration, American negotiators under President Barack Obama were not intent on driving the world toward the most aggressive climate action possible. Quite the opposite.

U.S. negotiators are also hard at work and deep in the weeds of the Paris rulebook-crafting process. “They are actively engaging and they are making sure that the interests of the United States are represented. They are not innocent bystanders. They are active participants,” said Meena Raman, a senior researcher at Third World Network, who has tracked the talks closely for decades. In something of a good cop-bad cop routine, the public campaign being waged against the Paris agreement by top Trump officials plays into the hands of U.S. negotiators, according to negotiation insiders who declined to be named. The loud condemnation of the agreement gives negotiators political room to demand changes that weaken it.

That the U.S. role behind closed doors is mostly the same as it was before Trump’s inauguration is a big problem for those looking for more ambition to come out of the COP24 rulebook discussions. “By putting roadblocks across all different areas of the rulebook, the U.S. is playing a very dangerous game here in negotiations, at a time when the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has sent a stark and scary warning that we have only 12 years and we have to raise ambition,” said Harjeet Singh, with nonprofit ActionAid. “I don’t think we are going to get anywhere with that kind of perspective coming from the U.S. What the U.S. is doing or not doing is affecting its own citizens, its neighbors, and people around the world. I think it’s nothing less than a crime against humanity and nature.”

Extinction Rebellion: UK Protesters Are Supergluing Themselves to Buildings to Fight Climate Crisis

Yellow Vest Uprising Exposes Urgent Need for Rapid Energy Transition That Stiffs Elites, Lifts the Working Class

President Donald Trump looked on approvingly at the chaos that engulfed Paris last weekend as more than 1,000 "Yellow Vest" protesters were arrested in one of their largest demonstrations yet—claiming that 100,000 French people had taken to the streets to protest policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions.

But organizers unequivocally denied that the Yellow Vest movement is anti-climate policy, while analysts have pointed to the demonstrations as an urgent illustration of the fact that world governments, including French President Emmanuel Macron's, must take active steps to transition to a green economy while ensuring that low- and middle-income households don't bear the burden of that transition.

The yellow vests aren’t fighting against climate action. They’re fighting for a just transition and against neoliberalism https://t.co/macrTMT8tf

— Brian L Kahn (@blkahn) December 8, 2018

"This is, first and foremost, a class movement," wrote Karl Stomberg at Medium. "The people protesting are predominately working class, and the people that they are protesting are predominately wealthy elites. While there has been a lot of talk in America about how the working class has turned to the conservative Republicans, the working class in France has always been more prone to left-wing economic ideas and forms of protesting. To put this in a clean anti-tax, anti-climate, or anti-government category would be to reduce the scope of what these protests entail." ...

According to Kate Aronoff, writing for Jacobin earlier this week, the Yellow Vests movement in France "is raising up a vital message: blame the fossil-fuel industry and the rich for the ecological crisis, not ordinary people." The enemy in France, as it is elsewhere, she argued, "isn't climate policy" but "neoliberalism."

Climate scientists are leaving the U.S. to “Make Our Planet Great Again”

After the United States pulled out of the Paris Agreement in 2017, French president Emmanuel Macron made the world’s climate scientists an offer to work in France. That offer came in the form of a grant with a cheeky name — “Make Our Planet Great Again.” ...

Sanderson, along with his wife and young son, packed up their lives and moved to Toulouse, France. There, Sanderson will work at a French research institute for the next five years.

Meanwhile, some researchers still working in the U.S. are worried that a Trump-era brain drain could stunt America’s role in the field. As climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told VICE News, “...we could end up losing a large number of key people that would really help to advance the research.”

Tackle climate or face financial crash, say world's biggest investors

Global investors managing $32tn issued a stark warning to governments at the UN climate summit on Monday, demanding urgent cuts in carbon emissions and the phasing out of all coal burning. Without these, the world faces a financial crash several times worse than the 2008 crisis, they said. The investors include some of the world’s biggest pension funds, insurers and asset managers and marks the largest such intervention to date. They say fossil fuel subsidies must end and substantial taxes on carbon be introduced. ...

“The long-term nature of the challenge has, in our view, met a zombie-like response by many,” said Chris Newton, of IFM Investors which manages $80bn and is one of the 415 groups that has signed the Global Investor Statement. “This is a recipe for disaster as the impacts of climate change can be sudden, severe and catastrophic.”

Investment firm Schroders said there could be $23tn of global economic losses a year in the long term without rapid action. This permanent economic damage would be almost four times the scale of the impact of the 2008 global financial crisis. Standard and Poor’s rating agency also warned leaders: “Climate change has already started to alter the functioning of our world.”

A key demand of the Global Investor Statement is to phase out coal-fired power stations across the world. Peter Damgaard Jensen, the CEO of Danish pension fund PKA, said: “Investors, including PKA, are moving out of coal in their droves given its devastating effects on the climate and public health, compounded by its poor financial performance.” ... Another investor demand on governments is to introduce “economically meaningful” taxes on carbon. Most are below $10 per tonne, but needed to rise to up to $100 in the next decade or two, the investors said. The French president Emmanuel Macron’s botched attempt to increase fuel taxes and the gilets jaunes protests that followed were a model of how not to do it, said observers in Poland.

Dems Betray Environment - Appoint Neanderthal Joe Manchin

Also of Interest

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

Latest Odds of a Shooting War between NATO and Russia - 70%

A World That Is the Property of the 1%: Wall Street, Banks, and Angry Citizens

How to create a leaderless revolution and win lasting political change

Saudi Arabia Declares War on America’s Muslim Congresswomen

Refugee Caravan: Lots of Coverage, Little Context

Brexit: Endgame

Why We Can't Have Nice Things -- Like A Fighting Green Party

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Rogers w/Little Walter - Act Like You Love Me

Jimmy Rogers - Today Today Blues

Jimmy Rogers w/Little Walter - Little Store Blues

Jimmy Rogers - Going Away Baby

Jimmy Rogers - Blow Wind Blow

Jimmy Rogers - Ludella

Jimmy Rogers And His Rocking Four - Blues Leave Me Alone

Jimmy Rogers - Money Marbles and Chalk

Jimmy Rogers - Gold Tailed Bird

Jimmy Rogers w/Taj Mahal - Bright Lights Big City

Jimmy Rogers - Sloppy Drunk