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"Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy."

-- Eduardo Galeano

News and Opinion

Guaido urges troops to unite against Maduro, violence erupts

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday made his strongest call yet to the military to help him oust President Nicolas Maduro, and violence broke out at anti-government protests as the country hit a new crisis point after years of political and economic chaos.

Several dozen armed troops accompanying Guaido clashed with soldiers supporting Maduro at a rally outside the La Carlota air base in Caracas, but the incident fizzled out and did not appear to be part of an immediate attempt by the opposition to take power through military force.

Guaido, in Twitter posts, wrote that he had begun the “final phase” of his campaign to topple Maduro, calling on Venezuelans and the armed forces to back him ahead of May Day mass street protests planned for Wednesday. ...

Tens of thousands of people were marching in Caracas in support of Guaido on Tuesday, clashing with riot police along the main Francisco Fajardo thoroughfare. A National Guard armored car slammed into protesters who were throwing stones and hitting the vehicle.

Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino called the latest instability a “coup movement” but several hours after Guaido’s announcement there was no sign of any other anti-Maduro military activity. Guaido later left a rally he was holding with military supporters at the air base.

Doctor Maggi Santi of the Salud Chacao health center in eastern Caracas said there were 36 people injured in Tuesday’s incidents, most of them hit with pellets or rubber bullets.

With U.S. Support, Venezuelan Opposition Launch a Coup in Latest Attempt to Oust Maduro

Venezuela foreign minister denies military coup under way, blames US

Venezuela's Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza denied there was a military coup attempt under way to oust Maduro and accused Guaido of operating under orders from the United States.

"It is not a coup attempt from the military. This is directly planned in Washington, in the Pentagon and Department of State, and by Bolton," Arreaza told Reuters in a phone interview from Caracas, referring to US National Security Adviser John Bolton.

"They are leading this coup and giving orders to this man (Juan) Guaido," he said.

He said Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, was in full control of the country with the backing of the military.

"He is in his place of command as always, and he is in control of the situation. He is making government decisions as he does every day," said Arreaza, adding that he had spoken to Maduro four or five times on Tuesday.

Blackwater founder’s latest sales pitch: mercenaries for Venezuela

Erik Prince - the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater and a prominent supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump - has been pushing a plan to deploy a private army to help topple Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, four sources with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

Over the last several months, the sources said, Prince has sought investment and political support for such an operation from influential Trump supporters and wealthy Venezuelan exiles. In private meetings in the United States and Europe, Prince sketched out a plan to field up to 5,000 soldiers-for-hire on behalf of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, according to two sources with direct knowledge of Prince’s pitch.

One source said Prince has conducted meetings about the issue as recently as mid-April.

Pompeo Claims Maduro’s Inner Circle Is Seeking an Exit Strategy

In comments on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that
members of Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro are looking for an exit
strategy, and that it’s inevitable some will decide to stop supporting Maduro. Pompeo said he was sure the inner circle were asking these questions, though he offered no actual evidence that this was the case. ...

Ponpeo reiterated that the US remains determined to see regime change, warning Cuba, Iran, and Russia that supporting Maduro is therefore the “wrong foreign policy.”

The US Moves on Iran’s Oil Market as an Expression of an Irrational Foreign Policy

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement last week that no importer of Iranian oil will henceforth be exempt from U.S. sanctions is as risky as it is misguided. ... “We are going to zero,” Pompeo said as he disclosed the new policy.

Nobody is going to zero. The administration’s move will further damage the Iranian economy, certainly, but few outside the administration think it is possible to isolate Iran as comprehensively as Pompeo seems to expect. Turkey immediately rejected “unilateral sanctions and impositions on how to conduct relations with neighbors,” as Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu put it in a Twitter message. China could do the same, if less bluntly. Other oil importers are likely to consider barter deals, local-currency transactions, and similar “workarounds.” In the immediate neighborhood, Iraq is so far ignoring U.S. demands that it cease purchasing natural gas and electricity from Iran.

There are a couple of insights to be gleaned from this unusually aggressive case of policy overreach.

First, the new turn in the administration’s Iran policy appears to mark a decisive defeat for President Donald Trump in his long-running battle with his foreign policy minders. It is now very unlikely Trump will achieve any of his policy objectives, a number of which represent useful alternatives to the stunningly shambolic strategies advanced by Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and other zealots in the administration. Weakened by relentless “Russia-gate” investigations, for instance, the president has little chance now of improving ties with Moscow or negotiating with adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, as he has long advocated. ...

Second, this administration’s foreign policy has steadily assumed an irrational character that may be unprecedented in U.S. history. This is perilous. The administration’s near-paranoiac hostility toward Pyongyang and Moscow are cases in point. So is its evident indifference to alienating longstanding allies across the Atlantic and in Asia. As of this week, however, Pompeo’s “down to zero” policy makes Iran the most immediate danger.

Iranian officials, including Zarif, now threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, chokepoint of the Persian Gulf, if Iranian tankers are prevented from passing through it. This is an indirect warning that the Iranian military could confront the U.S. Fifth Fleet, which operates in the Gulf and adjacent waters. A sharp spike in oil prices is another danger with which the administration now lands itself. Taken together, U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and Iran are intended to take roughly 2 million barrels of oil a day out of the market. Saudi Arabia has pledged to make up the lost supply, but many analysts question its ability to sustain an increase in output given the advancing depletion of its long-productive Ghawar field. Spare capacity among producers is already wafer-thin. Do we need to risk another oil crisis, given the flagging global economy?

U.S. sanctions on Iran, Venezuela set up crunch for heavier oil

Tighter U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil planned for May are adding to a wealth of factors curbing global supply of heavy-medium crude, driving up prices for scarcer barrels and setting up a stand-off between buyers and sellers. The new curbs on Iranian exports come on top of Washington’s earlier ban on Venezuelan crude and output snags in Angola, another big producer of the dense crude grades that best yield lucrative refined products like jet fuel.

U.S. officials say overall global oil supply will remain plentiful despite its sanctions, not least from the boom in U.S. shale. But much of the profusion in supply, led by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia, is in lighter grades. ...

Refiners are also seeking more of the heavy sweet crude Iran and Venezuela once provided in abundance to produce low-sulfur fuel oil ahead of new shipping emissions rules due next year.

U.S. Protecting Saudi Fugitives Accused of Serious Crimes

The government of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly helped Saudi citizens evade prosecutors and the police in the United States and flee back to their homeland after being accused of serious crimes here, current and former U.S. officials said.

The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies have been aware of the Saudi actions for at least a decade, officials said. But successive American administrations have avoided confronting the government in Riyadh out of concern that doing so might jeopardize U.S. interests, particularly Saudi cooperation in the fight against Islamist terrorism, current and former officials said. ...

American officials said Saudi diplomats, intelligence officers and other operatives have assisted in the illegal flight of Saudi fugitives, most of them university students, after they were charged with crimes including rape and manslaughter. The Saudis have bailed the suspects out of jail, hired lawyers to defend them, arranged their travel home and covered their forfeited bonds, the officials said. ...

The repeated flight of Saudi students from U.S. justice was revealed in a series of recent articles in The Oregonian/OregonLive, with which ProPublica is now collaborating to report on the issue. Those articles have identified more than 20 cases since 1988 in which Saudis have fled from legal troubles — before and often after being charged with crimes — in the United States and Canada. The extent of the Saudi government’s role in helping such fugitives and the fact that U.S. national security agencies have long known of it have not previously been reported.

Led by US Under Trump, Global Military Spending Soared to Highest Level in Recorded History Last Year

Global military spending reached its highest level since the records began two decades ago, according to a new analysis released Monday—an increase led by the United States and China.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealed in its latest annual report that countries around the world collectively poured $1.82 trillion into their militaries in 2018, a 2.6 percent rise from the previous year. Together, the top two spenders, the United States and China, accounted for about half of all spending.

7 of the 15 highest military spenders are members of #NATO:

Canada
France
Germany
Italy
Turkey
UK
USA

Comparison in the graphic below and in SIPRI’s latest report https://t.co/vkhLyUZ155#MILEX #GDAMS pic.twitter.com/gxAZ2Mi10B

— SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) April 29, 2019

"The increase in U.S. spending was driven by the implementation from 2017 of new arms procurement program under the Trump administration," Aude Fleurant, director of SIPRI's Arms and Military Expenditure (AMEX) program, said in a statement.

From Jim Crow Kentucky to Red Square – RAI with Stephen Cohen (4/5)

Russia is open to possible new arms control deals with U.S.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, commenting on a media report that U.S. President Donald Trump wants a new arms control deal with Moscow and Beijing, said Russia was open to the possibility of new arms control deals, but that there were no ongoing talks.

Citing administration officials, The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Trump has ordered his administration to prepare a push for a new arms control agreement with Russia and China due to the mounting cost of the 21st-century nuclear arms race. ...

“Firstly, what exists already (by way of arms control agreements) needs to be honored,” said Ushakov. “We are also ready for new ones, but for that serious negotiations are needed and unfortunately so far nobody has embarked on any.”

Assange may have been victim of 'espionage' in embassy: lawyers

Julian Assange's lawyers have filed a court complaint in Spain against a group of Spaniards they allege extorted the WikiLeaks founder whom they say may have been the victim of "espionage", a source in his defence team said Saturday. ...

The source told AFP the complaint was also against various employees of the embassy and Ecuador's foreign ministry "who could be responsible," without detailing how. ...

According to online daily eldiario.es, four Spaniards have videos and personal documents of Assange which they somehow obtained via an alleged spying system that included security cameras set up in the embassy in London. The Spaniards allegedly tried to extort three million euros ($3.3 million) out of WikiLeaks not to publish any of it, the report says.

If confirmed, it is unclear how the Spaniards got access to the alleged spying system and were able to get the information about Assange. It is also unclear whether his lawyers accuse the embassy and ministry employees targeted in the complaint, reportedly made to Spain's top-level National Court, of being behind the alleged espionage.

‘Loaded gun’: US cyber officials warn UK over Huawei 5G network

Huawei tech would put UK-US intelligence ties at risk, official says

A US official has warned that the UK’s leaked proposal to adopt Huawei technology for 5G mobile phone networks risks affecting intelligence cooperation with the US, prompting further criticism from Conservatives opposed to the plan.

Robert Strayer, a deputy assistant secretary at the US state department, said on Monday that Huawei “was not a trusted vendor” and any use of its technology in 5G networks was a risk, contradicting the British stance.

The official said if an “untrusted vendor” was used by the UK or another western country, the US would “have to reassess the ability for us to share information and be interconnected” – implying that intelligence-sharing arrangements could be at risk.

Last week, a tense UK national security council (NSC) meeting narrowly approved in principle allowing Huawei to supply “non-core” 5G technology, despite objections from five of the cabinet ministers present and months of US lobbying.

Brexit talks take positive turn towards possible compromise

Cross-party talks on Brexit between the government and Labour have moved on to the “nuts and bolts” of a possible compromise, Labour’s Sue Hayman has said, with sources on both sides suggesting discussions were taking a more positive tone.

Talks with senior shadow ministers and officials are likely to continue this week, including on key areas of previous disagreement that had previously been swerved, including a customs union, single market alignment and dynamic alignment of workers’ rights and environmental protections.

It is understood no new offer from the government has been put on the table but participants emerged with a new optimism about a change in tone and a feeling that there were grounds to continue discussions, a marked contrast to last week’s talks. ...

Hayman, the shadow environment secretary, said it was “a really constructive discussion” that had been “getting much more into the nuts and bolts of the detail.” She said she now believed the government was “open to moving forward in our direction”.

It's just common sense. pic.twitter.com/ULko6MjPXW

— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) April 29, 2019

Democrats are about to go to war with Trump over aid to Puerto Rico

Later this week, the House will vote on a $17.2 billion disaster relief bill that would provide billions for Puerto Rico, as opposed to the mere $600 million President Trump wants to send the island to restart a nutrition program that faced a funding lapse last month. ... The partisan gridlock in Washington that’s crippled that nutrition program has left 100,000 Puerto Ricans who enrolled for benefits after the hurricane, while more than a million people have seen their food aid cut by hundreds of dollars each month, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are backing the president’s position that Puerto Rico has already been helped, but Democrats still blame the administration for its inept response that left many powerless, hungry or dead. That’s why this resistance to funding fellow American citizens has infuriated Democrats. ...

It’s not just Puerto Ricans who are suffering from this partisan stalemate. Californians who lost most everything in raging wildfires, Midwestern farmers devastated by floods, and residents of Florida and Georgia battered by hurricanes are ensnared in the standoff as they wait for Trump and Democrats to work out a deal.

“It’s a simple proposition: The 3.5 million Americans who live in Puerto Rico are exactly that: Americans. They deserve from their country no less than any other citizen whether they be in Florida, Georgia or any other place,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said. “And so at the end of the day, I’m for disaster assistance for everybody — always have been, always will be — but that means everybody. And that means Puerto Rico as well.”

Demanding Medicare for All, Nurses Use Band-Aids to Plaster GoFundMe Pages to Big Pharma Headquarters

Hundreds of nurses and their allies from across the country rallied Monday outside the headquarters of the pharmaceutical industry's top lobbying group and plastered the GoFundMe pages of Americans "suffering in an immoral healthcare system" to the building's walls and windows. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, spends tens of millions of dollars a year lobbying on a variety of healthcare issues, and it is currently bankrolling efforts to crush Medicare for All.

"We are here today—at the headquarters of PhRMA—because this is the scene of a crime," said Zenei Cortez, president of National Nurses United (NNU), which organized the demonstration in Washington, D.C. "The people inside this building spent $28 million on lobbying last year to keep prescription drug prices so unaffordable that some of our patients needlessly die," said Cortez.

These placards depicting GoFundMe pages represent the millions suffering in an immoral #healthcare system. 2/3 of all GoFundMe fundraisers are for medical debt. The people demand #MedicareForAll! pic.twitter.com/YE6BxXEpOb

— NationalNursesUnited (@NationalNurses) April 29, 2019

Following their rally, nurses used Band-Aids to cover the walls of PhRMA's headquarters with the GoFundMe pages of Americans who have been forced to crowdsource their medical expenses under the for-profit healthcare system. According to GoFundMe's CEO, a third of all donations on the fundraising platform go toward healthcare costs.

Poor bear the brunt as global justice system fails 5.1 billion people

Across the world, an estimated 5.1 billion people – two-thirds of the global population – are being failed by the justice system, a study has found. But providing universal access to basic justice could save the global economy billions of dollars every year, as lost income and stress-related illness due to seeking legal redress can cost countries up to 3% of their annual GDP, according to a report published today by the Task Force on Justice.

The report said that of the 5.1 billion people with no meaningful access to justice, an estimated 1.5 billion – one in five people worldwide – have been left with justice problems they cannot solve, whether that involves a land dispute, consumer debt or being the vicim of crime.

An estimated 253 million people live in extreme conditions of injustice and are deprived of any meaningful legal protections: 40 million people are modern-day slaves, 12 million people are stateless, and 200 million live in countries or communities where levels of insecurity are so high that they are unable to seek justice, the team found.

Former DHS Analyst: Trump Administration Not Taking White Nationalist Threat Seriously Enough

A self-proclaimed Islamophobe allegedly shot up a synagogue. Some Republicans are blaming Ilhan Omar.

The main suspect in Saturday’s deadly shooting at a San Diego synagogue is also being investigated for setting fire to a mosque last month. But Republican congressmen and pundits are somehow attempting to blame Rep. Ilhan Omar for what he allegedly did. The suspected shooter, a 19-year-old white male who posted his manifesto online, said he was inspired by the Christchurch mosque attacks and the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. The writer also said he set fire to a mosque in California last month.

But in the wake of shooting at the synagogue at Congregation Chabad in Poway, north of San Diego, that killed one and injured three others, Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Chip Roy, both of Texas, as well as “The View” co-host Meghan McCain, have all piled onto Omar, one of only two Muslim women ever elected to Congress.

Some Jewish organizations came to Omar’s defense. IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish organization, tweeted in response to Roy that the right was using anti-Semitism to silence all criticism of Israel while simultaneously emboldening perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence.

“The right is weaponizing anti-Semitism to divide the progressive movement, silence criticism of Israel, and distract from the ways they have emboldened the white nationalists causing the violence,” IfNotNow tweeted Saturday.

Angela Davis & Barbara Ransby: We Stand with Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Courageous, Bold Black Woman

Rod Rosenstein: Trump's deputy attorney general resigns

The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, has resigned, after a fraught two-year relationship with a president who resented his decision to appoint a special counsel to investigate possible ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.

His resignation is effective 11 May.

“I am grateful to you for the opportunity to serve; for the courtesy and humor you often display in our personal conversations; and for the goals you set in your inaugural address: patriotism, unity, safety, education and prosperity,” Rosenstein said in a letter delivered to the White House.

The man nominated to succeed him, Jeffrey Rosen, is currently awaiting confirmation by the Senate.

Homeland Security Used a Private Intelligence Firm to Monitor Family Separation Protests

The calls for action were mounting. It was mid-June, and the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which saw thousands of migrant children separated from their parents, was producing waves of outrage. By the end of the month, hundreds of protests were planned in towns and cities across the country. As the plans moved forward, others took notice.

In the days leading up to the protests, a private intelligence company that works with the Department of Homeland Security was monitoring the activity on the ground. Documents shared with The Intercept by the American Immigration Council, obtained through a freedom of information request, show that LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm, gathered information on more than 600 demonstrations across the country, information that was then shared with DHS and state-level law enforcement agencies.

Tracking Facebook accounts affiliated with the protests and disseminating the intelligence to law enforcement fusion centers nationwide, the operation drilled down on physical locations where demonstrations were planned: a high school in Sebring, Florida; a church in Carbondale, Illinois; the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City; a Denny’s in Carlsbad, California; and “the old Kmart parking lot” in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. All were logged by street address and the time of the planned demonstrations. A “Threat Analyst” in Reston, Virginia, sent the finished intelligence to a “LookingGlass Shared Services” address on June 28, two days before the protests were set to begin. ...

The following morning, the headquarters of DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis disseminated the information to its staff, which was later circulated among Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel. ...

Jess Morales Rocketto, co-chair of Families Belong Together and a lead organizer of last year’s protests, condemned the monitoring of the demonstrations. “Those protests represented the best of democracy,” she told The Intercept. “It’s especially concerning given that these protests were basically thousands of moms and their kids, thousands of families, and that the Trump administration’s response to that was to put them on a watch list." ...

“The public rightly expressed outrage when they learned of the Trump administration’s shocking policy of ripping children away from their parents,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in a lawsuit challenging family separation, told The Intercept. “They’ll again be outraged to learn that, rather than focusing resources on reuniting these families, the administration was instead spying on them for expressing themselves.”

Joe Biden Kicks Off Campaign with Union Facing Pension Cuts Driven by Obama-Era Law

Joe Biden is kicking off his presidential campaign Monday afternoon alongside a local labor union in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as part of his strategy to engage working-class voters in states that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. But even as Biden basks in their image, the workers in the local union are locked in a battle with their bosses over cuts to their pensions — cuts enabled by a law passed during the former vice president’s time in the Obama White House.

Biden will speak to members of the Teamsters Local 249 alongside United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, a man Biden has previously said he “work[s] for.” Gerard himself opposed the Obama bill, and the USW has since called on Congress to pass legislation to protect benefits with alternative funding. Gerard did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ... Thanks to that Obama-era law, members of the Teamsters Local 249 are facing up to 30 percent reductions in their retirement benefits — the type of economic setback prone to produce the anxiety so heavily discussed in 2016. ...

Biden’s campaign and his supporters peddle the former vice president as an antidote to President Donald Trump’s right-wing populism, a role he plays not with sweeping policy proposals designed to take on the malefactors of great wealth, but largely through tough-sounding rhetoric. He famously threatened to take Trump “behind the gym.” His trip to Pittsburg fits with an archetypal tour of working-class areas that conjure Biden’s nostalgic image of the United States, a journey that has also included Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Youngstown, Ohio, where Trump won in 2016. Biden situates himself in the rust belt by citing his ties to Scranton, Pennsylvania; his working-class upbringing and Irish Catholic heritage. The idea is that the six-term Delaware senator can use that special connection to repurpose the burgeoning class anxiety Trump was able to tap into and translate it back into energy for the Democratic Party. But in the same way that Trump styled himself as a working-class hero despite his massive inheritance and a career of reckless investing and wage theft, Biden’s desired image stands in stark contrast with his political record — and the elite and anti-labor interests backing his 2020 bid.

Joe Biden tried another Anita Hill apology. Here’s how it went.

Days after Anita Hill rejected former Vice President Joe Biden’s apology, he’s trying again.

“I apologize for it,” he told Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts during a Monday interview, in a bid to take responsibility for how Hill was treated during her testimony before the U.S. Senate about the sexual harassment she said she endured at the hands of now-Justice Clarence Thomas.

“She did not get a fair hearing. She did not get treated well,” Biden said. “I take responsibility for that. Because I was the chairman. I was unable to find out a way to how to change it.”

Biden called Hill earlier this month to share “his regret for what she endured,” more than a quarter-century after Hill testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Biden chaired at the time of her testimony about Thomas. Within a month, Biden announced his bid for the 2020 presidential Democratic primary. ... “I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, ‘I’m sorry for what happened to you,’” Hill said. “I will be satisfied when I know that there is real change and real accountability and real purpose.”

New Bernie Sanders App Democratizes Organizing — and Panics People Unfamiliar With Organizing

The Bernie Sanders campaign kicked off its massive volunteer program this weekend by holding nearly 5,000 house parties across the country and unveiling a new organizing app that gives campaign supporters a way to share political information on friends, family, and neighbors. ... The campaign’s new organizing tool, called BERN, helps volunteers track potential supporters and voters, allowing them to log the name and background of anyone they talk to, from friends and family members to a stranger on the street. The app will also help volunteers know how to participate in the Democratic primary or caucus in their state and register voters.

On friend-to-friend mode, supporters are asked to add the name, city, and state of everyone they know, information that is then matched to their voter record. The app also asks about the person’s level of support, union membership, and other candidates they might vote for. Some critics have called the app invasive, arguing that the database of personal information could open non-supporters up to harassment. Though much of the information the app requests is publicly available, critics say that having the data neatly compiled — while not giving people a way to opt out of it — presents safety concerns.

The skepticism appears rooted in (hostility to Sanders and) a basic lack of familiarity with how campaigns work. Voter rolls are public, and the Democratic Party has long been aggregating additional information about voters to aid with fundraising and turnout operations, data that all major campaigns have access to. The difference is that the Sanders app democratizes the process with the goal of expanding the electorate, while the party operations are aimed at identifying existing supporters so they can be motivated to vote. The party data is generally available to campaign volunteers, but because Sanders lowers the bar to volunteering, more people will now have access to the data. The goal, though, is to get more people to vote for Sanders, not to attack Sanders opponents. ...

Sanders has a list of 1.1 million people who’ve pledged to volunteer so far, meaning roughly 6 percent showed up to a house party over the weekend. Sanders told them that the goal is to have volunteers engaging on social media in addition to the “old-fashioned stuff,” like knocking on doors and handing out literature. Unlike the typical political campaign, where volunteers work under the supervision of paid campaign staff, Sanders volunteers will be given the tools to help grow the movement at an exponential scale, free of the restraints of traditional top-down campaigns.

'Call It a Crisis': New Report Details Failure of Cable and Network Outlets to Accurately Describe Climate Emergency

Name and shame.

That's the dual directive from a new report that calls on news organizations to use appropriate language when discussing the climate crisis—even as the report calls them out for inaction.

The report—titled "'Call It a Crisis': The Role of U.S. Network News in Communicating the Urency of Climate Change" (pdf)—analyzed the coverage of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to determine just how much urgency the influential outlets bring to their reporting.

According to David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen's Climate Program, the specific words that journalists and news anchors use—or choose not to use—matters.

"The words we use to characterize an issue make a difference in how it is perceived and prioritized politically," said Arkush.

When outlets with massive nightly audiences like the ones the report studied "consistently fail to use language that conveys that climate change is a crisis or emergency," Arkush added, "they unwittingly put a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of complacency and inaction."

NEW REPORT: In 2018, only 50 of 1,429 national TV news segments used the word “crisis” or “emergency" when discussing climate change. That's a measly 3.5 percent.

Here's how the networks stack up:

MSNBC: 7%
NBC: 6%
CNN: 3%
CBS: 3%
ABC: 2%
Fox: 2%https://t.co/93TwlUFU6F pic.twitter.com/flGtQobdZd

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) April 29, 2019

Wales Declares Climate Emergency

The Welsh government on Monday declared a climate emergency in hopes that doing so would "trigger a wave of action at home and internationally."

The declaration comes a day after the Scottish first minister made a similar pronouncement.

Welsh Government has declared a climate emergency to signal that we will go further and faster to tackle climate change.

Wales has the determination and ingenuity to deliver a low carbon economy whilst making our society fairer and healthier.https://t.co/WuKT5Fmz4g pic.twitter.com/iHE88FY6Dz

— Lesley Griffiths (@wgmin_rural) April 29, 2019

Climate Groups Applaud Beto for New Proposal, But Warn Action Plan Would Be 'Too Little, Too Late'

Climate action groups on Monday applauded as Democratic presidential contender Beto O'Rourke released his plan for tackling the climate crisis—while acknowledging that his proposal would not go far enough to keep catastrophic climate change at bay and represented a rollback of his earlier statements about halting the warming of the planet.

O'Rourke traveled to Yosemite National Park to unveil his climate action plan, part of which he explained in a brief video posted to social media. "We will ensure that we are at net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050 and that we are halfway there by 2030, a little more than 10 years from now," O'Rourke said.

A number of climate action leaders pointed out that this stated goal paled in comparison to a statement O'Rourke made just weeks ago in Iowa, when he told a gathering of students that he supported the "goal of getting to 'net-zero' carbon emissions by the year 2030." The latter plan is in line with the Green New Deal, which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced in February and for which the youth-led Sunrise Movement has been instrumental in gathering support.

"We're glad to see Beto release a climate plan as his first policy and commit to making it a day one priority for his administration," Sunrise Movement co-founder Varshini Prakash said in a statement. "He gets a lot right in this plan."

"Unfortunately, Beto gets the science wrong and walks back his commitments from earlier this month in Iowa to move to net-zero emissions by 2030," Prakash added. "Beto claims to support the Green New Deal, but his plan is out of line with the timeline it lays out and the scale of action that scientists say is necessary to take here in the United States to give our generation a livable future."

The Green New Deal's call for net-zero emissions by 2030 is based on a number of independent analyses of last year's findings by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Biodiversity summit: 'We're destroying the biodiversity humanity depends on"

Brazil’s Pesticide Industry Is Creating Massive PFOS Contamination

While much of the world struggles to clean up contamination from the toxic industrial compound PFOS, Brazil is still adding to the massive environmental mess with its large-scale production, use, and export of sulfluramid, a pesticide that degrades into PFOS.

Linked to low birth weight, weakened immune response, liver effects, high cholesterol, thyroid dysfunction, cancer, and other health problems, PFOS is no longer made or used in most countries. The chemical, which was phased out in the U.S. by 2015, was originally developed by 3M and was a critical component of Scotchgard and firefighting foam. In the 182 countries that are party to the Stockholm Convention, an international treaty (unsigned by the U.S.) that governs persistent pollutants, the use of PFOS has been severely restricted since 2009.

But the Stockholm Convention carved out several loopholes for PFOS, including one for its use in killing leaf-cutting ants. Sulfluramid is made from PFOS and breaks down into that and several other chemicals within weeks. Brazil, the only country governed by the treaty that has permission to produce the pesticide, has been able to export it without notifying the convention because the treaty restricts PFOS, but makes no mention of sulfluramid, which is now used widely in Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Colombia, and Venezuela, among other countries.

This week, delegates of the Stockholm Convention are meeting in Geneva to discuss whether to close loopholes in the PFOS ban. Environmentalists are pushing to name sulfluramid in the treaty, which would require Brazil to report its sales outside the country and to put a five-year limit on the loophole allowing its use to kill leaf-cutting ants. Pesticide makers from Brazil are expected to push back. Abraisca, a trade association representing the main manufacturers of the pesticide in Brazil, insists that sulfluramid is necessary “to ensure the safety of people and the environment.” While green organizations point out that there are ways to kill leaf-cutting ants that don’t involve creating persistent toxic waste, the industry group has argued that there are no effective alternatives to sulfluramid.

Also of Interest

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

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Corporate Media Are Here to Warn You: Medicare for All Is a Very Bad Idea

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A Little Night Music

Otis Redding - Something Is Worrying Me

Otis Redding - Chained And Bound

Otis Redding - Down in the Valley

Otis Redding - Ole Man Trouble

Otis Redding - Demonstration

Otis Redding - Lucille

Otis Redding - Free Me (Take 1)

Otis Redding - Loving By The Pound

Otis Redding - Pain in My Heart

Otis Redding - Hawg For You

Otis Redding - Shout Bamalama

Otis Redding - Satisfaction