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“Only a psychopath would ever think of doing these things, only a psychopath would dream of abusing other people in such a way, only a psychopath would treat people as less than human just for money. The shocking truth is, even though they now have most if not all of the money, they want still more, they want all of the money that you have left in your pockets, they want it all because they have no empathy with other people, with other creatures, they have no feeling for the world which they exploit, they have no love or sense of being or belonging for their souls are dead, dead to all things but greed and a desire to rule over others.”

-- Arun D. Ellis

News and Opinion

If Inequality Continues to Grow at Current Rate, Richest Americans Will Own 100% of US Wealth in 33 Years: Analysis

If wealth inequality in the United States continues to soar at its current rate, the top 10 percent of Americans could own 100 percent of the nation's net worth by 2052.

That's according to an analysis by Dallas Morning News finance columnist Scott Burns, who wrote Sunday that the wealthiest Americans "will truly 'have it all' just 33 years from now."

"However you slice it, the rich have been getting richer. Lots richer," wrote Burns, citing Federal Reserve data. "Here are the basics. From 2013 to 2016, the top 10 percent of households increased their share of total wealth from an amazing 75.3 percent to a stunning 77.2 percent. That's a share gain of 1.87 percent in just three years."

"If they continue to gain share at that rate," Burns added, "they'll have the remaining 22.8 percent of net worth held by the other 90 percent in just 12 more surveys, give or take an upheaval or two."

Burns's analysis is just the latest evidence that wealth inequality in the United States, juiced by President Donald Trump's massive tax cuts for the rich, is reaching unprecedented heights.

In February, University of California, Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman published research showing the top 0.00025 percent—just 400 Americans—owns more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

As Common Dreams reported in June, Matt Bruenig, founder of the left-wing think tank People's Policy Project, pointed to Federal Reserve data to show that the bottom half of Americans lost $900 billion in wealth between 1989 and 2018. Over that same period, Bruenig found, "the top one percent increased its total net worth by $21 trillion."

A flavor of somewhat doctrinaire socialist view, not to be read uncritically and not worth swallowing whole, but also not without value:

Fascist violence and the politics of race and racism

In the headline to its lead editorial on Monday, the Times declares, “We Have a White Nationalist Terrorist Problem.” The Term “white nationalist” or “white nationalism” appears 20 times in an editorial devoted to demands for a “war on terror”-style campaign. However, there is only a passing and incidental reference to fascism and Nazism. A racialist appraisal of the source of the violence takes the place of a political explanation. The same issue of the Times contains an opinion piece by Melanye Price, author or The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race. Under the headline, “Racism is Everyone’s problem,” Price writes that Trump has “chosen to use issues like immigration, crime and the census to foment racial fears among whites.” Real remedies to the situation “require a frank discussion with people who perpetrate racism and who benefit from racist policies.”

Those who “benefit” from racist policies, according to Price, are what she repeatedly refers to as “white people.” She expresses hope that presidential candidates will discuss “how white privilege and racism have shaped this country so profoundly that some whites cannot even see the ways that they are recipients of racist benefits.” That is, “white people” are universal beneficiaries of “white privilege” and racism, even if they proclaim their opposition to racism. Of course, racism exists, as do white supremacists, but the concept of a “white race” or a “white nation” is nonsensical from either a biological or historically informed standpoint. There are no interests that unify all “white people,” a category that obscures the immense class divisions that characterize American society.

While fascistic organizations have as yet very limited support, the racialist narrative of the Times serves to provide them with political legitimacy and present them as genuine representatives of “white people.” This is accompanied by the promotion of the myth of “white privilege,” which is intended to cut across and undermine a sense of class-based solidarity. This is hardly a new theme for the Times, though it has been advanced with increasing ferocity over the past five years. In November 2016, five days before Trump’s election, the Times’ Amanda Taub declared that the Trump campaign was the product of a “crisis of white identity” brought on by the fact that “working-class whites,” who had previously been “doubly blessed,” were now seeing their privileges revoked.

Hillary Clinton based her 2016 election campaign on reactionary racialist identity politics, along with the associated claims of irreconcilable divisions along the lines of gender and sexual orientation. The claims about “rape culture” prevailing among men, of patriarchy, which have developed into the #MeToo campaign, serve a similar function. It is a perspective that is contemptuous of the interests of the working class as a whole. It was Clinton’s refusal to make any appeal to the interests of the working class during the 2016 elections that paved the way for the election of Trump. The racialist politics of the Democrats blew up in their face in 2016, but they are doubling down now.

At an earlier stage of American liberalism, Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed widely held views when he noted in 1961 that the idea of “intrinsic differences” between the races “has been contrived by outsiders who seek to impose disunity by dividing brothers because the color of their skin has a different shade.” Ideas have consequences, and the promotion of the politics of race—from both sides of the political establishment—is metastasizing into overt acts of violence. If the Times is right, that the world is divided into separate races with distinct and antagonistic interests, the logical conclusion would be some form of racial separatism, which is precisely what Patrick Crusius, the fascist-minded EL Paso shooter, himself proposes. ...

The politics of race is the politics of oligarchy. Neither the racism of Trump nor the identity politics of the Times represents the interests of the working class, of any race. It is the politics of a ruling class that is, in one form or another, seeking to divide workers against each other. The fight against fascism and racism is the fight to unify all sections of the working class against capitalism. All efforts to deny this basic truth are politically reactionary.

“Fascism Will Not Go Away by Itself”: George Ciccariello-Maher on Confronting White Supremacy

'Completely Inconsistent With Everything He's Ever Said and Done': Trump's Teleprompter Speech on Mass Shootings Pilloried

The hashtag #WhiteSupremacistinChief trended nationwide on Monday morning as observers on social media reacted harshly to President Donald Trump's televised remarks to the nation about a pair of mass shootings that occurred over the weekend. Critics pointed to the jarring disconnect between the content of Trump's speech and the racism and violence he has stoked while in office.

"It's like this speech was written in an alternative universe where none of the things Trump did over the last month happened," tweeted HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic.

Trump delivered the speech—his first public appearance since the tragedies—Monday morning from the White House flanked by Vice President Mike Pence. "In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy," Trump said.

"These sinister ideologies must be defeated," he continued. "Hate has no place in America."

Two and a half hours ago Donald Trump was blaming the media for the slaughter of Americans he’d inspired. Now he’s reading an empty speech decrying his entire worldview. He’ll probably get back to sowing seeds of destruction by the afternoon.

This is madness.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) August 5, 2019

The remarks—in which Trump also mistakenly referred to Toledo and advocated the death penalty—mark a shift from his tweet earlier in the morning placing place on media for contributing to mass shootings and mark a 180 from instances in which he's stoked white nationalism at rallies, in speeches, and tweets, as well as with policies and his cabinet.

In El Paso, scared Hispanic Americans rush to buy guns

The mural on the side of the gun store proclaims: “A Savior is Born.” There’s a manger scene below the star of Bethlehem and windows festooned with red, white and blue bunting. And above it all a looming AR-15 assault rifle spewing fire. Yet inside Gun Central on Sunday, barely 24 hours after a terrorist gunman killed 22 people and wounded dozens of others in a local Walmart, the expected white Christian nationalists defending the second amendment were not there. Instead there were terrified El Pasoans, mostly Hispanic, buying firearms for the first time.

The scene on Sunday at Gun Central, located along Interstate 10 and two miles from where bodies are still being recovered, was more reminiscent of Black Friday than the wake of a national tragedy. People crowded shoulder to shoulder to consult with harried employees, pondering over pistols and assault rifles, banana clips and ammo. Others lined up for their turn inside the store’s indoor shooting range. Staccato gunfire thundered behind the thin walls.

“I’m on high alert,” said April Sanchez, a marketing executive who along with her husband was buying her first weapon. “I never thought I’d carry a gun, but now I want something to defend myself, to defend my fellow El Pasoans.” To that end she picked out a 9mm Taurus and her husband a .40 Ruger; their son had purchased his first handgun the previous evening. They sat near a Coke machine with several others awaiting their background checks. Before that day, Sanchez had never even held a gun. Now she’s registering for classes that will allow her to legally carry her firearm in public.

“This isn’t something I’m proud of,” she added. “It makes me sad and angry that I’m even here. I’m heartbroken, but I’m also afraid.”

Trump paid for 2,000 Facebook ads referring to immigrant invasion since January. Those ads have been viewed between 1,059,000 and 5,559,801 times.

“We Have an Invasion!” Trump’s Facebook Ads Sound a Lot Like the El Paso Suspect’s Manifesto

With news cameras rolling in the White House Monday morning, President Donald Trump condemned a white nationalist “manifesto” that an alleged terrorist published just minutes before killing at least 22 people in an El Paso Walmart on Saturday. But the president’s own messaging to his followers has repeatedly echoed the core theme of the alleged shooter’s racist, anti-immigrant screed. In thousands of ads plastered across Facebook and Google, Trump’s re-election campaign is regularly stoking fears of a Latino “invasion” of the United States.

“We have an INVASION!” one Facebook ad reads. “So we are BUILDING THE WALL to STOP IT. Dems will sue us. But we want a SAFE COUNTRY! It’s CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION.”

Many Facebook users will never see such inflammatory content, underscoring how campaigns can now target specific segments of voters with wildly divergent messages on a mass scale. And Trump has proven more than willing to take advantage of that capability through a digital media onslaught that has largely zeroed in on immigration. ...

El Paso suspect Patrick Crusius, in his angry essay posted to the extremist forum 8chan Saturday morning, distanced himself from the president’s rhetoric. But the general thrust of his post channeled many on the far right who see immigration and globalization as existential threats to white America.

There are literally straight lines between what the terrorist believes and what is repeated daily by conservative media outlets and the U.S. president.

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) August 4, 2019

Lots of smart people are saying don't share the manifesto, but it's important to show exactly where this hatred is coming from. It's not video games.

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) August 4, 2019

Trump Is Already Trying To Hold Gun Law Reform Hostage

President Donald Trump is already trying to hold gun-law reform hostage to his anti-immigration agenda. On Monday morning, following a weekend of two horrific mass shootings, including an attack in El Paso that left at least 20 people dead, the president floated an idea for how to prevent mass shootings, tying changes in gun laws to his long-desired immigration reform.

....this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2019

There have been more than 900 mass shootings since 2017, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, including the Las Vegas shooting, which left 58 dead and more than 500 injured. In 2019, there have been more mass shootings than days: Sunday was the 216th day of the year and there had been 251 mass shootings. Still, on Sunday, Trump made a grand and unsubstantiated claim about his administration’s record. “We have done much more than most administrations,” he said, without providing evidence. “We have done actually a lot. But perhaps more has to be done.”

Trump’s attempt to tie gun law reform to immigration restrictions came as leaders in the Hispanic community condemned his anti-immigrant rhetoric, drawing a connection between the president's words and the alleged attackers' actions. The suspected El Paso shooter, who is white, is believed to have posted a hate-filled manifesto shortly before the attack, saying it was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Beto O’Rourke on his way to his car was asked if there’s anything Trump can do now to make this better.

“What do you think? You know the shit he’s been saying. He’s been calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals. I don’t know, like, members of the press, what the fuck?” pic.twitter.com/zjLYf4mzBr

— Eric Bradner (@ericbradner) August 5, 2019

8chan: far-right site linked to shootings resurfaces – and is kicked offline again

After being knocked offline Sunday by the internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, the far-right message board 8chan resurfaced hours later using a new online provider. On Monday morning, 8chan found another service to provide it online protection: Epik.com, which advertises itself as a “non-discriminatory provider” with “a proven commitment to liberty”. Cloudflare finally stopped servicing 8chan after a shooting suspect allegedly posted a white nationalist rant on the site before killing more than 20 people in El Paso.

This year, Epik acquired BitMitigate, the same security firm that the neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer moved to in 2017 after Cloudflare dropped it. Epik also chose to serve as the registrar for Gab.com, the “free speech” social media site used by a terrorist who killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018, after GoDaddy kicked it off following the attack. The Seattle-based firm is helmed by Rob Monster, who says he believes in “digital sovereignty” and considers Epik “the Swiss Bank of Domains”.

“The danger of not proactively embracing digital sovereignty, in all its forms, is that the digital world will inevitably find a way to achieve it, with or without domain names,” said Monster when defending the decision to take on Gab.com. Epik, however, relies heavily on the infrastructure provider Voxility, which quickly cut off the company – and the Daily Stormer – when alerted of 8chan’s move. As of publication of this article, 8chan remained offline. An administrator for 8chan tweeted on Monday that the site promised to “stay the course” and bring services back online as soon as possible. ...

Meanwhile, free speech advocates worry platforms and online content services removing 8chan could lead to other sites being censored – and note that hate speech will still exist regardless of how many websites are de-platformed. Internet infrastructure services should “tread carefully” when determining what to remove from the internet, said Cindy Cohn, executive director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a not-for-profit digital privacy and free speech organization. “Otherwise, we will be establishing a powerful tool for censorship that will inevitably be exploited by repressive governments and other powerful actors,” she said.

Mexico Is Furious About the El Paso Shooting and Is Making Sure Trump Knows It

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has stood quietly for months in the face of U.S. President Trump’s threats, bullying, and insults. But the mass shooting in El Paso, which killed at least 22 people, including eight Mexican nationals, has inspired a role reversal. Now, López Obrador and other leaders in his administration are the ones talking tough, forcefully shaming the U.S. for the rise of xenophobic language emanating from its borders and its inaction on gun control.

This act of violence “has to do with the hatred, the phobia, the inequality that gives rise to and causes so much damage,” López Obrador said on Sunday night in a publicly televised address. “Nothing is resolved with violence, and nothing is resolved with what we know as xenophobia, hatred of foreigners, hatred of migrants.” López Obrador’s speech followed similarly strong rhetoric from his foreign minister, who vowed to pursue the shooter’s extradition to Mexico and take legal actions against the company that sold the gun he used.

The immediate outpouring from Mexico's leaders, which appeared aimed at Trump despite not mentioning him by name, could mark a turning point in the evolving relationship between Mexico and the U.S., experts say, one that could push Mexico to have a more aggressive response to its northern neighbor.

Is Jair Bolsonaro just Rodrigo Duterte in a bad suit?

Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro says criminals will 'die like cockroaches' under proposed new laws

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has said he hopes criminals will “die in the streets like cockroaches” as a result of hard-line legislation he is pushing to shield security forces and citizens who shoot alleged offenders from prosecution. In an interview broadcast on Monday, Bolsonaro said he hoped Congress would approve his controversial plans to expand the so-called excludente de ilicitude – an article in Brazil’s criminal code that makes some normally illegal acts permissible.

Activists fear that could cause a bloodbath, but Bolsonaro claimed it would provide much-needed “legal cover” to police officers who used lethal force in the line of duty and bring a “dramatic” drop in violence. “These guys [criminals] are going to die in the streets like cockroaches [if such protections are approved] – and that’s how it should be,” he said.

Bolsonaro argued Brazilian police were fighting an “unequal” battle against crime and should be decorated for using their guns, not taken to court. “Upstanding citizens” also deserved protection if they needed to use lethal force to protect their lives or properties. The remarks, inflammatory even by Bolsonarian standards, were applauded by supporters but sparked outrage among campaigners and the opposition.

Petulant frenzy or hissy fit? You be the judge.

Trump freezes all Venezuelan government assets in US

The Trump administration has frozen all Venezuelan government assets in a significant escalation of tensions with socialist leader Nicolás Maduro. It places Washington’s trade relations with the South American country on a par with Cuba, Syria, Iran and North Korea.

The ban on Americans doing business with Venezuela’s government takes effect immediately. “All property and interests in property of the Government of Venezuela that are in the United States ... are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in,” the executive order says.

The order, signed by President Trump on Monday, cited Maduro’s continued “usurpation” of power and human rights abuses by those loyal to him. ...

As part of the executive order, Americans will be banned from engaging in transactions with anyone determined to be assisting Maduro or his government. The same Maduro supporters will also be banned from entering the US.

In Wake of Nuclear Treaty Collapse, Putin Says if US Pursues Previously Banned Missiles, Russia Will Also

Days after the U.S. ditched a Cold War-era weapons treaty with Russia, President Vladimir Putin on Monday said his country would move to develop new intermediate-range nuclear missiles if the U.S. did so first.
"If Russia obtains reliable information that the United States has finished developing these systems and started to produce them," Putin said in a statement, "Russia will have no option other than to engage in a full-scale effort to develop similar missiles."

The Russian leader blasted Washington's Friday exit from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was inked in 1987 by former President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin said the move "seriously exacerbated the situation in the world and raised fundamental risks for all."

The collapse of the #INFTreaty last Friday opens up a Pandora's Box of dangerous possibilities, including a new and dangerous arms race and destabilizing deployments that will only increase tension between the world's two largest nuclear powers, the U.S. and Russia. pic.twitter.com/j1NsxDjihD

— Nukes of Hazard (@nukes_of_hazard) August 5, 2019

The INF Treaty, as Reuters reported "banned land-based missiles with a range of between 310 and 3,400 miles (500-5,500 km), reducing the ability of both countries to launch a nuclear strike on short notice." The U.S. accuses Russia of violating the agreement, while Russia has said the violations lie with Washington.

Given the new context, Putin said that to "avert chaos," the two nations should "start serious dialogue without any ambiguities."

North Korea fires more projectiles, says it may be 'compelled to seek new road'

North Korea has fired two unidentified projectiles into the sea from South Hwanghae province, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. The launches came as Pyongyang described Washington and Seoul’s war games as a “flagrant violation” of efforts to reach peace on the Korean peninsula which reflected a lack of “political will” to improve relations.

“Despite our repeated warnings, the United States and South Korean authorities have finally started the joint military exercise targeting the DPRK,” the foreign ministry spokesman for the nuclear-armed North said, according to the state news agency, KCNA.

The foreign ministry said the military drills were violations of diplomatic agreements and added that North Korea had remained unchanged in its commitment to resolve the issues through dialogue, but “will be compelled to seek a new road as we have already indicated,” if South Korea and the United States continue with hostile military moves. ...

Trump has played down the recent projectile launches, saying they did not break any agreement he had with Kim, but the talks are yet to resume, and analysts believe the missiles are designed both to improve North Korean military capabilities and to pressure Washington to offer more concessions.

"Protesters are likely not to be intimidated by latest rhetoric from Beijing"

Hong Kong’s Massive General Strike Protest Has Paralyzed the City

Hong Kong's embattled leader Carrie Lam warned that the city was on “the verge of a very dangerous situation” as a general strike and coordinated protests paralyzed the city Monday. As tensions boiled over, two cars drove through crowds of protesters, and an armed mob attacked demonstrators with wooden poles.

The city was plunged further into chaos as workers from across about 20 sectors, including the civil service, went on strike. Coordinated and simultaneous rallies were held in seven locations, shutting down transport links and spreading the protest movement to virtually every corner of the city. Protesters occupied and barricaded key arterial roads and shut down metro lines. Workers from the aviation sector joined the strike, forcing the cancellation of more than 200 flights at the city’s busy international airport.

Monday’s protests, the most ambitious and wide-reaching in nine weeks of demonstrations, were met with clashes with police in at least six main locations around the city, and provoked a violent backlash from some frustrated locals. For the second time since the movement began, peaceful protesters were attacked by an armed mob, who rushed the demonstrators and beat them with wooden poles. The protesters outnumbered the mob, and they fought back. As in last month’s attack by suspected triads on protesters in Yuen Long, many of the attackers wore white T-shirts.

The escalating standoff led Lam, the city’s Chief Executive, to hold a press conference Monday after two weeks out of the public eye. At the press conference, she warned that protesters were challenging China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong, and jeopardizing the city’s prosperity and stability. “The government will be resolute in maintaining law and order in Hong Kong and restoring confidence,” she said.

Puerto Rico in Political Crisis: Senate Sues over Appointment of New Governor Pierluisi

Boris Johnson has no intention of renegotiating Brexit deal, EU told

Boris Johnson has no intention of renegotiating the withdrawal agreement and a no-deal Brexit is his “central scenario”, European diplomats have been told, amid hardening evidence in Westminster that the government is expecting to crash out of the EU.

Brussels diplomats briefed after a meeting between the prime minister’s chief envoy and senior EU figures in Brussels said that Britain’s refusal to compromise was understood to have been clear to those attending. Instead David Frost, the government’s new chief Europe adviser, is said to have sought discussions on how negotiations could be reset after the UK crashes out on 31 October. ...

The disclosure came as No 10 insisted the government was “ready to negotiate in good faith” but made clear that Johnson would only agree to a deal without what he refers to as the “undemocratic backstop” – the mechanism to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland that could keep the UK in a customs union. The EU has repeatedly said the backstop is not up for negotiation.

The UK’s failure to provide any proposals on how to deal with the controversial Irish backstop was felt to be significant by EU officials who spoke to the Guardian.

Keiser Report: Fed Chaos & Gold’s Breakout

US labels China a currency manipulator as tensions flare

The US has labeled China a currency manipulator, in a move that brings already tense relations between the two countries to a boil.

On Monday, the US treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, accused China of manipulating its currency “to gain unfair competitive advantage in international trade”. The US will now ask the International Monetary Fund to “eliminate the unfair competitive advantage created by China’s latest actions”.

It is the first such move since 1994 and came as international stock markets fell on fears of an escalation in the simmering conflict between the two trading superpowers. The Dow Jones index lost close to 3% on Monday following similar falls in Asia and Europe. ...

The US action comes after China allowed its yuan to weaken past the key seven-per-dollar level on Monday for the first time in more than a decade. China’s central bank said the depreciation was “due to the effects of unilateralist and trade-protectionist measures and the expectations for tariffs against China”.

Beijing later said it would stop buying US agricultural products and “will not rule out import tariffs on newly purchased US agricultural products”. The announcement will inflame a year-long trade war with the US.

Tulsi Shuts Down MSNBC Host Mid-Smear

Worth a full read:

The El Paso Shooter Embraced Eco-Fascism

The four-page manifesto believed to be written by suspected El Paso mass shooter Patrick Crusius abounds with Trumpian racist nationalism. “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” notes the text, published shortly before Saturday’s massacre. The manifesto, which decries “race-mixing,” states, “some people will blame the president or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case,” noting that the author’s convictions “predate Trump.” Commentators such as my colleague Mehdi Hasan are nonetheless right to place blame at the feet of President Donald Trump, whose putrid anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies have emboldened violent white supremacists.

Yet a number of motivations cited by the suspected attacker sit outside the typical remit of racist MAGA fearmongering. An entire paragraph of the manifesto is dedicated to environmental degradation and Malthusian claims about the need to “get rid of enough people” to protect ever dwindling resources. The author cites the Christchurch shooter’s lengthy manifesto, titled “The Great Replacement,” as an inspiration, reiterating the paranoid fears of demographic shift and white decline. The Christchurch shooter self-identified as an “eco-fascist,” writing, “there is no nationalism without environmentalism.” ...

“The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country,” the El Paso manifesto notes, adding, “Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. … So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources.” For the attacker, nonwhite immigrants are not the cause of resource depletion, but their demise en masse is the solution. ...

The so-called deep ecology movement, claiming to argue for the intrinsic value of all living things, insists that the flourishing of nonhuman life is impossible without decreasing the human population. Deep ecologists like David Foreman in the 1980s welcomed famine as a means of depopulation; his fellow eco-fascist contemporaries saw a similar boon in the AIDS crisis. Finnish deep ecologist writer Pentti Linkola deploys perverse “lifeboat ethics” to argue for eco-fascist measures, including an end to all immigration. “What to do when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat?” Linkola wrote. “When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.” Yet such cheap metaphors for preservation through decreased population leave unsaid the profound white supremacist undergirding of all such eco-fascist positions. Marginalized, colonized, impoverished, and displaced populations are always the last on the lifeboat. ...

Bold climate policies like the Green New Deal, and even bolder challenges to capitalist production in the name of climate justice, must include a commitment to the free movement of people, especially on the part of countries, like the U.S., that bear vast responsibility for global climate degradation. As I have argued, wealthy countries have both the space and the resources to take in many millions of immigrants, if wealth, resources, and land were justly distributed.

Top Scientist Says He Quit USDA Because Trump Admin Tried to Bury His Study on Climate and Nutrition

The exodus of federal scientists in the era of President Donald Trump continued Friday as 62-year-old plant physiologist Lewis Ziska left the U.S. Department of Agriculture "over the Trump administration's efforts to bury his groundbreaking study about how rice loses nutrients due to rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Politico reported Monday.

Ziska—who worked at USDA under five presidents, both Republicans and Democrats—charged in an interview with Politico that he left the department's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) because the USDA tried to block the public dissemination of his research on how the human-caused climate crisis's impact on rice could threaten the nutrition of 600 million people. The study, Politico reported, was internally cleared at the department and peer reviewed prior to its publication in the journal Science Advances last year.

USDA, in a statement to the outlet, said that "this was a joint decision by ARS national program leaders—all career scientists—not to send out a press release on this paper" based on scientific disagreement, and the decisions involving the study weren't politically motivated. Ziska, however, said that "this isn't about the science. It's about something else, but it's not about the science." ...

But it's not just top-down censorship that's impacting U.S. government research on the climate, Ziska told Politico.

The overriding fear among scientists within USDA, Ziska said, was that the administration would take an axe to the department's science budget, and research priorities that perhaps didn't align with the administration's agenda would be the first to go. (The Trump administration has repeatedly proposed significant cuts to ARS' budget, but Congress has so far largely kept funding flat.)

Anything related to climate change was seen as extremely vulnerable, he said.

"We were careful," he explained. "And then it got to the point where language started to change. No one wanted to say climate change, you would say climate uncertainty or you would say extreme events. Or you would use whatever euphemism was available to not draw attention."

"There was a sense that if the science agreed with the politics, then the policymakers would consider it to be 'good science,' and if it didn’t agree with the politics, then it was something that was flawed and needed to be done again," Ziska added. "That was a sea change in how we viewed our role." Ziska told Politico that by politicizing climate science, the administration is jeopardizing the future of agriculture on a global scale, which could have devastating consequences for human health.

Environmentalists say wildfires in Siberia are ecological catastrophe

Also of Interest

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

The 'white replacement theory' motivates alt-right killers the world over

Woman says she was permanently disfigured by Portland police at protest

Jewish Protesters Arrested at LA Office of Private Prison Company That Runs ICE 'Concentration Camps'

CNN's Jake Tapper Uses Racist El Paso Shooter to Attack Palestinians

El Paso Gunman’s Fear of a Migrant “Invasion” Echoes Donald Trump and Fox News

Texas Democratic Senate Candidate M.J. Hegar in 2017 on Gun Control: “You’ll Have to Take Mine First”

The Californians forced to live in cars and RVs

Is Amazon taking revenge on the Seattle socialist Kshama Sawant who took on the retail giant?

A Little Night Music

Little Johnny Jones I May Be Wrong

Little Johnny Jones - Big town Playboy

Little Johnny Jones - Doin' The Best I Can

Little Johnny Jones w/Muddy Waters - Shelby County Blues

Little Johnny Jones w/ Billy Boy Arnold - She Wants To Sell My Monkey

Little Johnny Jones w/ Elmore James - Chicago Blues

Little Johnny Jones w/ Billy Boy Arnold - I Hear My Black Name Ringing

Little Johnny Jones - Hoy Hoy

Little Johnny Jones w/ Billy Boy Arnold - Sloppy Drunk Blues