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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: James Booker

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features New Orleans piano player James Booker. Enjoy!

^{James Booker - Junco Partner}

"It remains our policy to change the regime until such time as the regime changes itself. So far, we cannot be sure that he is cooperating or he [Saddam Hussein] is acting in a way that could give us comfort, or should give the international community comfort, that he is giving up his weapons of mass destruction. He continues to give us statements that suggest he is not in possession of weapons of mass destruction when we know he is."

-- Colin Powell

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News and Opinion

The USA’s History Of Controlling The OPCW To Promote Regime Change

You wouldn’t know it from today’s news headlines, but there’s a major scandal unfolding with potentially far-reaching consequences for the entire international community. The political/media class has been dead silent about the fact that there are now two whistleblowers whose revelations have cast serious doubts on a chemical weapons watchdog group that is widely regarded as authoritative, despite the fact that this same political/media class has been crowing all month about how important whistleblowers are and how they need to be protected ever since a CIA spook exposed some dirt on the Trump administration.

When the Courage Foundation and WikiLeaks published the findings of an interdisciplinary panel which received an extensive presentation from a whistleblower from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation of an alleged 2018 chlorine gas attack in Douma, Syria, it was left unclear (perhaps intentionally) whether this was the same whistleblower who leaked a dissenting Engineering Assessment to the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media this past May or a different one. Subsequent comments from British journalist Jonathan Steele assert that there are indeed two separate whistleblowers from within the OPCW’s Douma investigation, both of whom claim that their investigative findings differed widely from the final OPCW Douma report and were suppressed from the public by the organization.

The official final report aligned with the mainstream narrative promulgated by America’s political/media class that the Syrian government killed dozens of civilians in Douma using cylinders of chlorine gas dropped from the air, while the two whistleblowers found that this is unlikely to have been the case. The official report did not explicitly assign blame to Assad, but it said its findings were in alignment with a chlorine gas attack and included a ballistics report which strongly implied an air strike (opposition fighters in Syria have no air force). The whistleblowers dispute both of these conclusions. ... It is also not at all unreasonable to question whether the OPCW could have been influenced in some way by the United States behind the scenes, given how its now-dubious final report aligns so nicely with the narratives promoted by the CIA and US State Department, and given how we know for a fact that the US has aggressively manipulated the OPCW before in order to advance its regime change agendas.

In June of 2002, as the United States was preparing to invade Iraq, Mother Jones published an article titled “A Coup in The Hague” about the US government’s campaign to oust the OPCW’s very first Director General, José Bustani. If you’ve been following the recent OPCW revelations you will recall that Bustani was one of the panelists at the Courage Foundation whistleblower presentation in Brussels on October 15, after which he wrote the following: “The convincing evidence of irregular behavior in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing.”

Mother Jones (which used to be a decent outlet for the record) breaks down how the US government was able to successfully bully the OPCW into ousting the very popular Bustani from his position as Director General in April 2002 by threatening to withdraw funding from the organization. This was done because Bustani was having an uncomfortable amount of success bringing the Saddam Hussein government to the negotiating table, and his efforts were perceived as a threat to the war agenda. “Indeed, US officials have offered little reason for its opposition to Bustani, saying only that they questioned his ‘management style’ and differed with several of Bustani’s decisions,” Mother Jones reports. “Despite this, Washington waged an unusually public and vocal campaign to unseat Bustani, who had been unanimously reelected to lead the 145-nation body in May, 2000. Finally, at a ‘special session’ called after the US had threatened to cut off all funding for the organization, Bustani was sent packing.” ...

Indeed, we’ve learned since that John Bolton took it much further than that. Bustani reported to The Intercept last year that Bolton literally threatened to harm his children if he didn’t resign from his position as Director General. “You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you don’t comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you,” Bolton reportedly told him, adding after a pause, “We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.” ...

It is perfectly reasonable, given all this, to suspect that the US government may have exerted some influence over the OPCW’s Douma investigation. If they were depraved enough to not only threaten to withdraw funding from a chemical weapons watchdog in order to attain their warmongering agendas but actually threaten a diplomat’s family, they’re certainly depraved enough to manipulate an investigation into an alleged chemical weapons attack. This would explain the highly suspicious omissions and discrepancies in its report. ...

So to recap, we know that the US government has manipulated the OPCW in order to advance regime change agendas in the past, and we know that the US government has long had a regime change agenda against Syria. Many questions will need to be answered before we can rule out the possibility that these two facts converged in an ugly way upon the OPCW’s Douma investigation.

More than a hundred years late and sad that a non-binding resolution was the best that could be mustered, but better late than never, I suppose.

US House overwhelmingly votes to recognize Armenian genocide

The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to recognize the 1915 Armenian genocide of a century ago, stepping into a fraught historical debate at a particularly tense moment for the US-Turkey relationship.

The House voted 405-11 in favor of the resolution, which is not legally binding, to formally recognize the systematic killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, modern-day Turkey, as a “genocide”. ...

The Turkish government has long denied the term genocide to describe the slaughter and has waged a lobbying campaign in the US and around the world to discourage the use of that word in reference to the killings.

Many countries and nearly all US states officially recognize the killings as genocide. But the US Congress has resisted pressure in recent years by activists out of a desire not to inflame tensions with a Nato ally. Support for a resolution grew, particularly among Democrats, after Trump enabled the Turkish offensive against the Kurdish groups.

The vote on the bipartisan resolution came on the heels of House passage of economic sanctions against Turkey. There is a bipartisan resolution in the Senate but it is unclear if the chamber will bring the measure to the floor.

Turkish Troops Kill Six Syrian Soldiers in North Syria, Capture 18 Others

In a potentially huge complication for the Turkey-Russia ceasefire, Turkey has gotten into combat with Syrian troops in northern Syria, as fighting around Ras al-Ayn, a town in north Syria, turns deadly.

An exchange of Syrian and Turkish gunfire has left at least six Syrian soldiers dead, and 18 others were reportedly captured alive. Turkey reported they are coordinating this matter with Russia.

Capturing Syrian troops in a Syrian town, inside Syria, during an illegal invasion is going to be a difficult situation for Turkey to deal with.

Baghdadi Story Reveals Divided — and Broken — News Media

Two sets of headlines over the weekend described the suicide of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. From the Washington Post Sunday morning:

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State, dies at 48

The Post has since rewritten that, though the description of an “austere religious scholar with wire-rimmed glasses” remains in the lead paragraph. Meanwhile, the headline on Foxnews.com:

Al-Baghdadi kill: how the daring military operation went down

The Post headline would fit a quiet academic who died in his sleep, not a genocidal jihadist leader. The Fox headline is less nuts, but still not quite right: al-Baghdadi wasn’t killed but reportedly committed suicide, while pursued by American “military dogs.”

Donald Trump was correct when he tweeted Saturday night that something “big” had happened, but from there, America received two almost completely different versions of the story of al-Baghdadi’s pursuit and suicide. It was a vivid demonstration of how dysfunctional the modern news landscape has become. When important events take place now, commercial news outlets instantly slice up the facts and commoditize them for consumption by their respective political demographics. We always had this process, to some degree, but it no longer takes days to sift into the op-ed pages.

Now news is packaged for Republicans or Democrats on the first reporting pass. Moreover, it’s no longer true that Fox is more blatant about its slant than the Democrat-friendly press, which in the Trump years has become a bullhorn of caricatured bellyaching in the same way Fox was in the Clinton years. ...

This ought to have been a moment to reflect on what’s happened in the last twenty years, and if our policies across multiple administrations have been the right ones. Would we even be launching operations against such a person if we hadn’t invaded Iraq all those years ago? What’s the endgame? What do the people of the region think? All of this has been subsumed to the only story left that matters in the United States – who’s winning Twitter at any given moment, Trumpers or anti-Trumpers? News outlets are now so committed to pushing one or the other narrative that they are falling prey to absurdities like the Post’s “austere cleric” headline.

If papers are going to go this far in an obituary to avoid even the implication of a favorable Trump narrative, how are audiences supposed to trust reporting on super-charged partisan stories like impeachment?

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hariri Resigns, But Protests and Demands For a New Government Continue

'Children of the Financial Crash' Credited for Global Uprising Against Neoliberalism and Austerity

The demonstrations which have exploded in recent months around the world are focused on a number of issues, including climate inaction, economic crises, and government corruption—but the protests share at least one thing in common: they're being led by young people who have spent the first two decades of the 21st century watching their governments prioritize corporate profits over the needs, rights, and futures of working people.

As Jack Shenker wrote in The Guardian on Tuesday, demonstrations in countries including Chile, Lebanon, Iraq, Haiti, Spain, Hong Kong, and Ecuador are being led by "the children of the financial crisis" of 2008, which came to a head in the U.S. with the Wall Street collapse and had long-term effects on economies around the world.

The young people demanding an end to austerity and the pressures of neoliberal capitalism have "come of age during the strange and febrile years after the collapse of a broken economic and political orthodoxy, and before its replacement has emerged," wrote Shenker. "One direct impact of the crash has been a rapid diminishment of opportunity for millions of young people in rich countries—who now regard precarious work and rising inequality as the norm," he added. "All this has produced a generation charged with hopelessness and hope."

The Age of Anger Exploding in Serial Geysers

The presidential election in Argentina was no less than a game-changer and a graphic lesson for the whole Global South. It pitted, in a nutshell, the people versus neoliberalism. The people won – with new President Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) as his VP. Neoliberalism was represented by Mauricio Macri: a marketing product, former millionaire playboy, president of football legends Boca Juniors, fanatic of New Age superstitions, and CEO obsessed with spending cuts, who was unanimously sold by Western mainstream media as the new paradigm of a post-modern, efficient politician.

Well, the paradigm will soon be evacuated, leaving behind a wasteland: $250 billion in foreign debt; less than $50 billion in reserves; inflation at 55 percent; the U.S. dollar at over 60 pesos (a family needs roughly $500 to spend in a month; 35.4 percent of Argentine homes can’t make it); and, incredible as it may seem in a self-sufficient nation, a food emergency. ... It took less than four years for neoliberal barbarism, implemented by Macri, to virtually destroy Argentina. For the first time in its history Argentina is experiencing mass hunger. ...

Beyond Argentina, South America is fighting neoliberal barbarism in its crucial axis, Chile, while destroying the possibility of an irreversible neoliberal take over in Ecuador. Chile was the model adopted by Macri, and also by Bolsonaro’s Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist fan. In a glaring instance of historical regression, the destruction of Brazil is being operated by a model now denounced in Chile as a dismal failure.

Across the West, usual suspects have been trying to impose the narrative that protests from Barcelona to Santiago have been inspired by Hong Kong. That’s nonsense. Hong Kong is a complex, very specific situation, which I have analyzed, for instance, here, mixing anger against political non-representation with a ghostly image of China. Each of the outbursts – Catalonia, Lebanon, Iraq, the Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests for nearly a year now – are due to very specific reasons. Lebanese and Iraqis are not specifically targeting neoliberalism, but they do target a crucial subplot: political corruption. ...

The Yellow Vests are targeting essentially President Emmanuel Macron’s drive to implement neoliberalism in France – thus the movement’s demonization by hegemonic media. But it’s in South America that protests go straight to the point: it’s the economy, stupid. We are being strangled and we’re not gonna take it anymore. ... What’s happening is the Age of Anger exploding in serial geysers that simply cannot be contained by the same, old, tired, corrupt forms of political representation allowed by that fiction, Western liberal democracy.

Sanders Says $3.8B in Annual US Military Aid to Israel Should Be Leveraged to End Horrific Treatment of Palestinians

Speaking at a conference Monday hosted by the liberal-leaning Jewish organization J Street, Sen. Bernie Sanders expressed support for leveraging billions of dollars in annual U.S. military aid to stop Israel's horrific treatment and occupation of the Palestinian people. "My solution is to say to Israel: You get $3.8 billion every single year. If you want military aid you're going to have to fundamentally change your relationship to the people of Gaza," said Sanders, who is vying to become the first Jewish president in U.S. history.

"In fact," Sanders added, "I think it is fair to say that some of that $3.8 billion should go right now into humanitarian aid in Gaza."

The Vermont senator also took aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who he said is pursuing a racist and authoritarian agenda. "It is not anti-Semitism to say that the Netanyahu government has been racist," Sanders said to applause. "That's a fact."

"We have a right to say to the Israeli government that the U.S. and our taxpayers believe in human rights and democracy and we will not accept authoritarianism or racism," said the senator.

Parliament breaks Brexit deadlock with vote for 12 December election

MPs voted on Tuesday night to finally resolve their Brexit deadlock by calling a general election, setting the stage for a 12 December contest that could be the most unpredictable in a generation.

Boris Johnson won his fourth bid to go to the polls by 438 to 20 after Jeremy Corbyn declared that Labour would support an election as a “once-in-a-generation chance to transform our country”. The pre-Christmas vote will be the first December poll since 1923.

The Liberal Democrats and Scottish National party abstained, after their preferred day for it to be held – 9 December – was rejected. Almost half of all Labour MPs were absent or voted against the legislation in a sign of unhappiness about a snap election, although some blamed a mix-up by the whips for their failure to attend.

Parliament will dissolve next Wednesday for a short campaign of five weeks, so long as the House of Lords passes Johnson’s legislation as expected in the coming days.

WhatsApp sues Israeli firm, accusing it of hacking activists' phones

WhatsApp has launched an unprecedented lawsuit against a cyber weapons firm which it has accused of being behind secret attacks on more than 100 human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, and academics in just two weeks earlier this year. The social media firm is suing NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance company, saying it is responsible for a series of highly sophisticated cyber-attacks which it claims violated American law in an “unmistakeable pattern of abuse”.

WhatsApp said it believed the technology sold by NSO was used to target the mobile phones of more than 1,400 of its users in 20 different countries during a 14-day period from the end of April to the middle of May. In this brief period, WhatsApp believes those who were the subject of the cyber-attacks included leading human rights defenders and lawyers, prominent religious figures, well-known journalists and officials in humanitarian organisations. A number of women previously targeted by cyber-violence, and individuals who have faced assassination attempts and threats of violence, as well as their relatives, were also the victims of the attacks, the company believes.

WhatsApp’s lawsuit, filed in a California court on Tuesday, has demanded a permanent injunction blocking NSO from attempting to access WhatsApp computer systems and those of its parent company, Facebook. It has also asked the court to rule that NSO violated US federal law and California state law against computer fraud, breached their contracts with WhatsApp and “wrongfully trespassed” on Facebook’s property.

“This is the first time that an encrypted messaging provider is taking legal action against a private entity that has carried out this type of attack against its users,” said a WhatsApp spokesman. “In our complaint, we explain how NSO carried out this attack, including acknowledgement from an NSO employee that our steps to remediate the attack were effective.”

Ukrainegate reaches fever pitch

'A Full on Cover-Up': Official Testifies That Ukraine Call Transcript Trump Said Was 'Perfect' Left Out Key Details

Bolstering allegations that the White House engaged in a cover-up to suppress evidence of wrongdoing by President Donald Trump, a National Security Council official who listened to Trump's July conversation with Ukraine's leader reportedly told House impeachment investigators Tuesday that the administration intentionally omitted key details from the rough transcript of the call it released last month.

The New York Times reported that Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the NSC's top Ukraine expert, told House committees during his sworn deposition that the transcript left out "crucial words and phrases" that he unsuccessfully attempted to reinsert.

"The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump's assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden's son Hunter," according to the Times.

"Colonel Vindman did not testify to a motive behind the White House editing process," the Times added. "But his testimony is likely to drive investigators to ask further questions about how officials handled the call, including changes to the transcript and the decision to put it into the White House's most classified computer system."

The details emerging from Vindman's testimony, which lasted more than 10 hours, were viewed by lawmakers and legal experts as more damning evidence of Trump's misconduct and of his administration's deliberate efforts to hide the wrongdoing from the public. "Wow. This is just stunningly bad for the White House. A full on cover-up," tweeted CNN legal analyst Susan Hennessey. "How much longer are congressional Republicans going to continue to go along with this?"

Kyiv doesn't want to get involved in the internal affairs of another country? It's a little late for that.

Ukraine wants to stay out of Trump impeachment inquiry, says official

Ukrainian officials will not testify in the US Congress in the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump without an official summons because Kyiv does not want to get involved in the internal affairs of another country, Ukraine’s foreign minister has said.

“We don’t have any connection to this,” Vadym Prystaiko told reporters on the sidelines of an investment conference in Mariupol on Tuesday. “They should deal with it themselves. We won’t go there, we won’t comment.” ...

Asked whether Kyiv would share information about contacts between Ukrainian and American officials, Prystaiko said: “We could tell them if they ask us.” ...

Prystaiko downplayed the scandal, saying that it was normal for two countries to use informal channels in diplomacy and that relations between the two countries have not been negatively affected.

He also sought to distance Ukraine’s presidential administration from questions about a potential investigation into Burisma, the company where Biden’s son Hunter was a board member, saying questions should be addressed to Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office.

ICE Has Been Ramping Up Its Work With a Private Prison Company Connected to Horrific Allegations

Migrants held in detention centers owned by a private prison company in Louisiana say they’re berated by guards, given moldy food, and placed in solitary confinement for protesting against the conditions they face. Despite years of documented and alleged abuse at its facilities, Ruston, Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections has experienced a boom thanks to the Trump administration's immigration policies. Over the past year, the Department of Homeland Security has contracted eight new immigrant detention facilities in Louisiana, six of which are former prisons or jails owned and operated by LaSalle.

Earlier this month, a migrant held at LaSalle’s Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe died by suicide after being put in solitary confinement as punishment for participating in a hunger strike. Another migrant detained at the same facility, a Venezuelan asylum-seeker with diabetes and hypertension, has seen his health deteriorate because of the food served in the facility, his lawyer told VICE News. ...

Richwood isn’t the only LaSalle-owned facility where detainees say they aren’t treated well. Yuselys, a Cuban asylum-seeker whose partner is detained at LaSalle’s Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield, Louisiana, said the people held there are in physical and psychological distress. ... Winn, a former prison, started detaining migrants for ICE in May. The federal government pays the county $70 a day for each migrant detained in the facility, the Winnfield County sheriff told the Associated Press in October. That’s more than twice what the state paid. ...

Many asylum-seekers have been detained at facilities in Louisiana and across the Southeast for months. Even migrants who have passed their initial asylum interviews, known as “credible fear” screenings, and proven they aren’t a flight risk or a danger to the community have been denied parole, advocates say. ICE was detaining nearly 9,000 migrants who had passed these interviews in facilities across the country as of August.

Central Bank Independence Is a Myth. They Need to Be Democratized.

Republican's mockery of Sanders and socialism backfires

Poking fun at Senator Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail in Detroit with Representative Rashida Tlaib – both self-proclaimed socialists – former Republican governor Scott Walker joked:

Anyone notice the backdrop behind @BernieSanders and @RashidaTlaib looked like the empty shelves of grocery stores in many socialist countries?

Irony. pic.twitter.com/rHuXGMhDX9

— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) October 28, 2019

The rightwing blog Gateway Pundit also ran a piece mocking their poor choice of location for a photo opportunity, titled “PERFECT! Two Radicals Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib Stand in Front of Empty Grocery Store Shelves and Push Socialism.” ...

But what they didn’t realize was that the photo was taken at the last stop of a “corporate greed tour” which Representative Tlaib takes Detroit visitors on. Sanders and Tlaib’s final stop was at a food pantry where free food, water and clothes are given to low-income families in Detroit. ...

The Rev Roslyn Bouier, the executive director of the Brightmoor Pantry, pointed out that the shelves were empty because of the overwhelming demand there is for food and water in Detroit. The pantry sees around 1,700 families a month. “The pantry shelves are so empty because we are doing our job. Because people need the food. That shows the inhumanity. America needs to do better. That’s the sadness of it.” The Rev Bouier pointed out that many people in need of food in the US are employed, but with wages so low they don’t cover the bills. She said it was evil that someone who had once held public office could laugh about that fact. ...

One in nine Americans lives with insecure access to food. In Wisconsin, where Walker was formerly governor, one in five children live with food insecurity.

Will some decent human being please primary this corrupt jackass, Cheri Bustos, and put her out of our misery?

Centrist Democrats Have a New Idea to Win Reelection: Ignore Labor and Give Trump a Major Trade Deal

Rep. Cheri Bustos, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is advocating internally for Democrats to wave through the House President Donald Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA, without any of the revisions demanded by labor unions and environmentalists — and despite concerns that it locks in high prescription drug prices. Bustos has argued to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that approving Trump’s free trade deal is important for vulnerable House Democrats who recently flipped Republicans seats, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the Bustos strategy. The argument goes that those vulnerable Democrats would be able to demonstrate to constituents that while they may be pursuing impeachment, they are also willing to work across party lines with the president. Inside the House caucus, the messaging is referred to as showing the ability to “walk and chew gum at the same time.” ...

[Like Hillary Clinton, apparently Bustos has a public position and a private position. - js]

Publicly, Bustos has called for the trade deal to be strengthened in the key areas where progressives are pushing. “We’ve got to make sure that our workers are treated fairly and we have to make sure that the environmental concerns are addressed … and the enforcement of all of this,” Bustos said at a public event this summer. “If those things can get worked out, I think we can get to a ‘yes.’” A House leadership aide suggested that Bustos and the centrists pushing for a vote have an uphill climb, because the fall and spring floor schedule is crowded, and Bustos currently lacks the sway to work her will. ...

Bustos has been blunt in speaking about USMCA to corporate allies at fundraisers, saying that labor unions and progressive Democrats “will have to get over it,” sources said. That posture, though, has put her at odds not only with progressives, but also with the Congressional Black Caucus. At a recent private meeting between CBC members and Bustos, focused largely on how the DCCC can do better when it comes to diversity and advocacy for people of color, CBC members raised Bustos’s aggressive push for an unrevised USMCA. Enflaming the left, they argued, gives energy to progressive primary challengers, who many of them are currently facing or worried about potentially facing. The message to House leadership, said one source close to the CBC, was: “We get what your focus is” — fortifying moderates in swing districts — ”but you have to take into consideration other folks who are getting primaried from the left.” The reticence of the CBC to embrace the leadership push for a quick vote is another indicator of the power of primary challenges to reshape the political terrain, even if most of them fail. ...

The push represents a remarkable gamble: that it is worth undermining key constituencies by signing a subpar agreement on the chance that it could help a handful of Democrats in swing districts win reelection. In addition, the assessment itself is questionable; if a voter is angry that a Democrat voted to impeach Trump, it’s difficult to see how that anger would be lessened by learning that the representative also voted for Trump’s trade deal. Endorsing bad Republican policy for uncertain political gain may be a hallmark of Democratic centrism, but supporting Trump’s unrevised trade deal is an unusually extreme example.

House Dems After Meeting With Richard Trumka: No Vote on Trump’s NAFTA if Worker Concerns Go Unaddressed

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka met Monday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal to hash out labor’s concerns in ongoing discussions over President Donald Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA deal. Trumka also met Tuesday with the Congressional Progressive Caucus and assured members he and House leadership were now on the same page.

Trumka told The Intercept he was happy with his conversations with leadership on getting enforceable labor standards included in the current text of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. Asked if he thought the pact would come to the floor, Trumka said they weren’t there just yet. “We don’t have an agreement yet,” he said.

CPC Co-Chair Mark Pocan told The Intercept that Trumka “gave a very optimistic presentation” and said that he, Pelosi, and Neal “were absolutely in the same place” on labor’s concerns with the text as it stands and addressing them before it reaches the floor. Trumka expressed “confidence that if those aren’t addressed, the bill’s not coming to the floor,” Pocan said. ...

In a statement to The Intercept, Pelosi’s deputy press secretary Henry Connelly did not provide specifics on the commitments the speaker made to Trumka. “Establishing robust enforcement mechanisms in USMCA to actually protect American workers has been a top priority for Democrats, and we’ve worked closely with President Trumka and organized labor as we push the Administration for these vital changes,” Connelly said. Neal’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Krystal Ball: Bernie Sanders surges post debate, Elizabeth Warren falls

Sanders Tops CNN Poll in New Hampshire: Bernie Edges Warren as Biden Dives

Sen. Bernie Sanders leads the field of hopefuls for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in a new CNN poll released Tuesday, the latest good news for the campaign over the past month.

"As we have said from the beginning, this is a campaign built to win and planning to win," campaign manager Faiz Shakir told Common Dreams. "We've been steadily and consistently executing our strategy, even while the media analysis of our campaign has been in disarray."

Sanders topped the poll (pdf), which was conducted between October 21 and 27, with 21% of voters naming the Vermont senator as their first choice for the nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was close behind with 18%, setting up the possibility of a protracted battle between the two progressive frontrunners—both of whose home states border New Hampshire.

NEW: @CNN Poll of likely NH Dem primary voters
Sanders 21% (+2)
Warren: 18% (-1)
Biden: 15% (-9)
Buttigieg: 10% (E)
No other candidate in double digits.
via @jennagiesta
https://t.co/0MJt4SKtsj

— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) October 29, 2019

The poll found that voters believe Sanders is better suited to handle healthcare and the climate crisis than Warren, his closest competitor on those issues, by 33% to 17% and 30% and 15%, respectively.

Sanders supporter James Zogby, founder of the Arab-American Institute, said on Twitter that the results show that Sanders is on the upswing.

Bernie Sanders Advisor David Sirota: Best 3 weeks of the campaign yet

Aggressively Stupid Defense Of Hillary Clinton’s Attack On Tulsi

Tulsi Gabbard demands end to US aid to Saudi Arabia

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) called for the end of U.S. assistance to Saudi Arabia while speaking at a 9/11 tribute museum in New York City on Tuesday.

“We should not be selling them our weapons. We should not be aiding or providing them with any kind of support so long as they continue with the kind of actions that I’ve just spoken about,” she said of Saudi Arabia.

The Democratic presidential candidate slammed Saudi Arabia for the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its consulate in Istanbul last year as well as for its role in the conflict in Yemen.

She also called for the release of the results of an investigation into whether Saudi Arabia's government or people in its government had any involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

With 330,000 People on Georgia 'Purge List,' Rights Advocates Warn of Massive Voter Suppression

Voting rights advocates in Georgia vowed to fight for the rights of more than 300,000 people in the state whose registrations may be purged from the rolls in the coming weeks by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's administration.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Monday that about 330,000 voter registrations may be canceled in early December if the voters do not confirm that they still live in the state. The purge is targeting people who have not voted in the last five years and could affect about four percent of the state's eligible voters.

"Voters should not lose their right to vote simply because they have decided not to express that right in recent elections," Fair Fight Action's Lauren Groh-Wargo told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The group was founded by Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the state.

While Kemp was serving as secretary of state in 2017, his office oversaw the largest purge of voter registrations in U.S. history, kicking more than 534,000 people off the rolls. Voting rights groups condemned Georgia's Republican leaders for what they saw as massive voter suppression effort—especially after Kemp went on to win the 2018 election by 1.4 percentage points.

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Rising sea levels pose threat to homes of 300m people – study

More than three times more people are at risk from rising sea levels than previously believed, research suggests.

Land that is currently home to 300 million people will flood at least once a year by 2050 unless carbon emissions are cut significantly and coastal defences strengthened, says the study, published in Nature Communications. This is far above the previous estimate of 80 million.

The upward revision is based on a more sophisticated assessment of the topography of coastlines around the world. Previous models used satellite data that overestimated the altitude of land due to tall buildings and trees. The new study used artificial intelligence to compensate for such misreadings.

Researchers said the magnitude of difference from the previous Nasa study came as a shock. “These assessments show the potential of climate change to reshape cities, economies, coastlines and entire global regions within our lifetimes,” said Scott Kulp, the lead author of the study and a senior scientist at Climate Central.

“As the tideline rises higher than the ground people call home, nations will increasingly confront questions about whether, how much and how long coastal defences can protect them.”

California wildfires trigger first-ever extreme red flag warning

California wildfires: fierce winds may spread blazes as millions lose power

Millions of Californians prepared for days of darkness as the United States’ largest utility once again said it was switching off power to prevent powerful winds from damaging its equipment and sparking more fires.

Meanwhile, firefighters were battling wildfires across the state on Tuesday, as winds were expected to pick up again. The Kincade fire in Sonoma county, in the north, had destroyed 124 homes and other structures by Tuesday morning and was threatening 90,000 structures. Crews were also working to control a fierce fire near the Getty Museum in Los Angeles that had prompted evacuations on Monday. ...

Strong winds were expected to complicate firefighting efforts on Tuesday. “The worst of this [weather] is coming later today and tonight,” said Marc Chenard, a forecaster with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center, early on Tuesday. “The winds in the south will really pick up, 50 to 70mph, with some gusts up to 80mph in the Los Angeles mountain area.”

The so-called Santa Ana winds in the south could hit their worst levels of the season and last into late Thursday, Chenard said, adding that northern California will not be spared either. Until at least Wednesday, in the bone-dry wine country about 70 miles north of San Francisco, winds will hit up to 65mph in the mountain areas and 35mph in the valleys and coast, he said. Given the strong winds, authorities said at a press conference that many evacuees will probably be unable to return home today.

The latest blackout by Pacific Gas and Electric Corporation (PG&E) started early on Tuesday and was expected to ultimately affect 605,000 customers, about 1.5 million people. The announcement came even before the last blackout had ended, which shut off power to more than 2.5 million people. It was unclear if power that for many went out Saturday would be restored before the next round of outages.

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Also of Interest

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

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The FBI Spends a Lot of Time Spying on Black Americans

Why Lebanon And Iraq Are At The Brink Of Further Strife

About Trump Wanting Iraq’s Oil Fields

Famed pathologist says Jeffrey Epstein was murdered

House Democrats Release Text of 8-Page Resolution Detailing Public Phase of Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Missouri Health Director Testifies He Kept Spreadsheet of Planned Parenthood Patients' Menstrual Periods

The fight to stop Nestlé from taking America's water to sell in plastic bottles

Has the climate crisis made California too dangerous to live in?

We Need Publicly Owned Utilities

Jonathan Chait smears Tulsi Gabbard

h/t azazello:

The Sanders Plan to Legalize Marijuana Does More Than Legalize Marijuana

2019 weather photographer of the year winners

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A Little Night Music

James Booker - Booker's Boogie

James Booker - Big Nick

James Booker - Ain't Nobody's Business

James Booker - Papa Was A Rascal

James Booker - Sixty Minute Man / You Talk Too Much

James Booker - Put Out The Light

James Booker - Tell Me How Do You Feel

James Booker - Slowly But Surely

James Booker - Gonzo

Little Booker - Open the door

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