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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Bo Diddley

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and rock and roll singer and guitarist Bo Diddley. Enjoy!

^{Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley}

"One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

-- John Paul Stevens

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News and Opinion

Worth a click and a full read. Hedges interviews Bruce Fein who lays out 12 impeachable offenses committed by Trump. I can think of some that he missed.

Chris Hedges: The End of the Rule of Law

Bruce Fein, a former senior official in the Department of Justice and a constitutional scholar, has identified 12 impeachable offenses committed by Donald Trump. But, as he notes, many of these constitutional violations are not unique to the Trump administration. They have been normalized by Democratic and Republican administrations. These long-standing violations are, for this reason, ignored by Democratic Party leaders seeking to impeach the president. They have chosen to focus exclusively on Trump’s attempt to get the Ukrainian president to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for $400 million in U.S. military aid and a visit by the Ukrainian leader to the White House. Ignoring these institutionalized violations during the impeachment inquiry, Fein fears, would legitimate them and lead to the death of democracy.

In a letter on Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also signed by Ralph Nader and Louis Fisher, Fein warns that Trump is “shattering our entire constitutional order.” He lists as the president’s most serious constitutional violations the “defiance of congressional subpoenas and oversight; spending billions of dollars on a southern border wall not appropriated for that purpose; continuing or expanding presidential wars not declared by Congress; exercising line-item veto power; flouting the Emoluments Clause; and, playing prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on secret, unsubstantiated information.” But he also notes that many of these violations are not unique to Trump and were also carried out by Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

“Many of the Democrats in the past have been complicit in these violations,” Fein said when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “They have unclean hands. They have acquiesced in illegal surveillance, as revealed by Edward Snowden. The most serious constitutional violations are the ones that are institutional usurpations. These usurpations [by both parties] have permanently weakened, if not eviscerated, the power of the legislature versus the executive.”

“We have a Congress whose members, by and large, do not want the responsibilities the Constitution entrusts them with,” Fein continued. “They like to give away everything to the president and then clamor if something goes bad. The most worrisome constitutional violations are, unfortunately, ones many members of Congress rejoice in. It enables them to escape making hard choices that might compromise their ability to win reelection. But you can’t rely on a past dereliction to justify its perpetuation indefinitely.”

Evo Morales: 'I have nothing to regret … this is an age-old fight'

Bolivia’s ousted and exiled president, Evo Morales, says he has ruled out standing in his country’s next elections to stop the existing crisis sliding into a broader civil or ethnic conflict. He told the Guardian: “This is what I am afraid of and it is what we have to avoid, which is why I am renouncing my candidacy. In the name of peace, sacrifices have to be made and I am sacrificing my candidacy even though I have every right to it.” ...

From his new temporary home in Mexico City, Morales blamed the crisis in Bolivia on the “racist and vengeful” old elite he insisted has mounted a coup with the help of the US, which he described as the “empire in the north”. But he said his priority must now be helping to get the “de facto government” out by pushing it towards elections.

“They say no to Evo, and so I say OK, no problem,” he said.

Morales was speaking as Bolivia’s legislature, which is dominated by his Movement Towards Socialism party, was in the process of approving a law that would pave the way for new elections within a few months. It would also ban him from participating in them. Áñez signed the bill into law on Sunday. ... Talks between protest leaders and the interim government led to a promise on Sunday from Áñez to withdraw the military in exchange for lifting road blockades that had left several major cities hit by fuel and food shortages.

“They are not renouncing their struggle against the coup,” said Morales, who is living inside a Mexican military base and accompanied by plainclothes soldiers everywhere he goes. “But the truth is that of course people get tired after two weeks of resistance and so many dead.” At the same time, the longtime icon of the Latin American left is facing efforts to prosecute him for terrorism and sedition. He insisted, however, that his long and extraordinary political career is littered with such “made-up” charges that have never deterred him before. ...

“I have nothing to regret because we won in the first round,” he said, repeating his dismissal of the fraud charges that were backed by the Organization of American States. “I have fulfilled the mandate of the people but these reactionaries can’t deal with an indigenous candidate supported by the workers. That is class struggle. This is an age-old fight.”

Worth a full read:

Now the Interim of US Self-Deception Over Bolivia

Years from now, maybe a generation from now, it will be permissible to describe Evo Morales’s resignation-at-gunpoint two weeks ago as what it was: a coup the U.S. cultivated just as it has dozens of others since it emerged as a superpower in 1945. The acknowledgement will not matter then. The events in question will be comfortably distant in time. Those responsible for deposing the Bolivian president will be either retired or deceased. Americans will not have fooled any Bolivians, for this autumn will be etched in their memories, but Americans will have once again fooled themselves.

This is how it often goes when Washington crushes the democratic aspirations of others by toppling legitimately elected leaders and replacing them with figures — usually corrupt, often dictatorial, by definition undemocratic — to its liking. It took decades for the U.S. to acknowledge the C.I.A.–directed coup in 1953 against the Mossadegh government in Iran: President Barack Obama did so (without apologizing) in 2009. Forty-five years after the fact, Bill Clinton spent half a day in Guatemala expressing regret for the coup that brought down President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954.

This is what awaits us now in the case of Bolivia — a long interim of self-deception, ending only when the truth makes little difference and responsibility can no longer be assigned. ...

To read the mainstream press on Bolivia is to enter a hall of mirrors. The violent overthrow of an elected president struck a blow for the restoration of order and the rule of law. Christian fundamentalists of European descent, racist to the core and explicitly contemptuous of Bolivia’s indigenous majority, are “democrats” worthy of our support. Bolivia’s first indigenous president, highly popular for lifting an impressive percentage of Bolivians out of poverty, was a hated, “tyrannical dictator.”

This, the Orwellian touch, is routine — and is routinely reported in the American press. When the murderous General Abdul–Fattah al–Sisi took power in Egypt in a coup six years ago, John Kerry, as U.S. secretary of state, applauded him for “restoring democracy.” For good measure the secretary of state added, “The military did not take over.” ...

What just happened in Bolivia happened in Guatemala 65 years ago, 66 in Iran, and so on. Coups were conducted in more or less the same fashion, without so much as a procedural update. Now as on previous occasions, most Americans are kept ignorant of what has been done in their name — and, atop this, remain indifferent to their ignorance. This is a media failure as much as a moral failure. When Bolton openly promises coups across Latin America, and liberal magazines such as FP cheer on such plans in banner headlines, we must conclude that in our late-imperial phase we are a numbed nation.

Washington has just degraded Bolivia’s long effort to climb out of poverty, to take control of its resources and its destiny, and to escape from centuries of exploitation at the hands of Westerners. This is shameful. The silent consent of most Americans after many decades of unlearned lessons is equally so.

Iraqi Children Born Near U.S. Military Base Show Elevated Rates of “Serious Congenital Deformities,” Study Finds

More than a decade and a half after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a new study found that babies are being born today with gruesome birth defects connected to the ongoing American military presence there. The report, issued by a team of independent medical researchers and published in the journal Environmental Pollution, examined congenital anomalies recorded in Iraqi babies born near Tallil Air Base, a base operated by the U.S.-led foreign military coalition. According to the study, babies showing severe birth defects — including neurological problems, congenital heart disease, and paralyzed or missing limbs — also had corresponding elevated levels of a radioactive compound known as thorium in their bodies.

“We collected hair samples, deciduous (baby) teeth, and bone marrow from subjects living in proximity to the base,” said Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the study’s lead researchers. “In all three tissues we see the same trend: higher levels of thorium.” Savabieasfahani, who has authored studies on the radioactive footprint of the U.S. military presence in Iraq for years, says that the new findings contribute to a growing body of evidence about the serious long-term health impact of U.S. military operations on Iraqi civilians. “The closer that you live to a U.S. military base in Iraq,” she said, “the higher the thorium in your body and the more likely you are to suffer serious congenital deformities and birth defects.”

The new study piles onto a growing wealth of knowledge about severe ill effects of the U.S. military on the environments in which it operates. All industrialized military activity is bad for ecological systems, but the U.S., with its enormous military engaged in activities spanning the globe has a particular large environmental footprint. Not only does the U.S. military lead the world in carbon output, but its prodigious presence around the globe leaves a toxic trail of chemicals that local communities have to deal with, from so-called burn pits on bases releasing poisonous smoke to the radiation of depleted uranium rounds mutating the DNA of nearby populations.

The suffering of Iraqis has been particularly acute. The results of the new study added to a laundry list of negative impacts of the U.S.’s long war there to the long-term health of the country’s population. Previous studies, including some contributed by a team led by Savabieasfahani, have pointed to elevated rates of cancer, miscarriages, and radiological poisoning in places like Fallujah, where the U.S. military carried out major assaults during its occupation of the country.

Iraqi Scholar Sinan Antoon: Anti-Government Protests Have Led to “Reclaiming of Iraqi Identity”

‘Bloodbath’: Iraq Is Cracking Down on Protesters With Live Ammunition and Military-Grade Tear Gas Grenades

Iraqi security forces killed at least nine people when they opened fire on anti-government protesters Sunday, continuing a brutal crackdown on dissent that has already claimed 339 lives. ... “Security forces have been using live fire and tear gas grenades in a lethal manner since the outset of the protests,” Rand Hammoud, Amnesty International’s research, campaigns and communications assistant for Iraq and Jordan told VICE News. ...

Iraq has been rocked by mass anti-government protests since Oct. 1, when thousands of young Iraqis took to the streets of the capital. Angered by the failures of the ruling class, who they accuse of siphoning off the country’s oil riches, they’ve demanded the reform of the political system to address endemic corruption, high unemployment and failing public services like electricity and clean water. Iraq is ranked the 12th most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International, and has an unemployment rate of 25%. ...

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi took office in Oct. 2018 promising reforms such as tackling corruption, boosting economic investment, and strengthening infrastructure, which have not been delivered. He has made a series of pledges to appease the protesters, including new elections, a cabinet reshuffle and government subsidies for job seekers. But that’s failed to placate the protesters, who are demanding the dissolution of parliament and a complete overhaul of the nation's political system.

Hong Kong local elections: Carrie Lam refuses to give ground after poll setback

China issues warning over Hong Kong after election blow

China’s government has responded to a stunning landslide victory for pro-democracy candidates in the Hong Kong elections by emphasising that the city will always be ruled from Beijing, and warning against further protest violence.

The foreign minister, Wang Yi, warned against “attempts to disrupt Hong Kong”, as a few hundred people took to the streets again in support of protesters holed up in a university that has been under siege by police for over a week. “No matter how the situation in Hong Kong changes, it is very clear that Hong Kong is a part of Chinese territory,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Tokyo. “Any attempts to disrupt Hong Kong or undermine its stability and prosperity will not succeed.”

The election results pose a dilemma for Beijing, and Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam. Hand-picked to rule by party leaders, Lam always insists she rules independently, but is widely accepted to have coordinated her hardline response to protesters with China’s top leadership. Before the vote, Lam often claimed she had the support of a “silent majority”, as she escalated the police response to protests, invoked sweeping colonial-era emergency powers, and ruled out meeting any of the protesters’ main demands.

That argument was clearly untenable after pro-government candidates were swept from power across the city, holding on to barely one in 10 seats on district councils. Nearly 3 million ballots were cast; both in absolute numbers and in turnout rates it was the biggest exercise in democratic participation that Hong Kong has seen. On Monday Lam took a more conciliatory approach, promising to respect the election results and “listen humbly” to the views of the public. Refusing to compromise would almost certainly inflame residents and protesters further, nearly six months into a deep political crisis. ...

The resounding popular rejection of China’s plans for Hong Kong represents one of the most serious challenges to its autocratic president, Xi Jinping, since he took power in 2012. He is not a leader who has shown much appetite for compromise. ...

There will be few immediate political consequences in Hong Kong because the councils have limited powers, only a small budget and a mandate restricted to hyper-local issues such as parks, bus stops and waste collection. But these local election victories may sow the seeds of greater long-term influence for democrats, because the councils play a role in choosing the city’s chief executive and some legislators.

The Prosecution of Julian Assange Calls for Public Defense of Free Speech

On Saturday, The New York Times published a front-page article on the leaked files that exposed the Chinese government’s coordinated crackdown on ethnic minorities. In covering the story, the newspaper noted that although the source and the methods through which documents were gathered are unclear, the disclosure of 403 pages of internal documents is one of the most significant leaks in decades shedding light on the internal working of China’s ruling Communist Party.

This front-page report, that captured the attention of the American public on the weekend shows the hypocrisy of Western media. While the Times applauds leaks that were reportedly made by an anonymous member of the Chinese political establishment, when it comes to the wrongdoing of their own government, rarely do they show the same exuberance and courage in publishing the information.

This hypocrisy is most pronounced in their attitude toward the U.S. government’s aggressive prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange concerning the publication of classified information. Assange has been kept in complete isolation inside London’s Belmarsh prison for exposing the crimes of the U.S. government. He has been charged with 17 counts of espionage for publishing the government’s documents revealing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and torture in Guantanamo Bay.

The established media with their allegiance to the state has been failing to inform the public about the threat to civil liberties emanating from this country. The U.S. government has been waging a war against the First Amendment. Assange has become a political prisoner of this war. In the era of “hope and change,” he and his organization became a target of Obama’s crackdown on whistleblowers, which now has escalated into Trump administration’s assaults on the press freedom. ...

In the face of this outrageous incarceration, silence prevails among many media professionals. If media stillness is broken, it is only to be filled with an echo chamber of smearing. We live in an illusion of democracy, where we are surrounded by Orwellian doublespeak that distorts truth. Under the guise of free press, news headlines and sound bites turn the reality upside down. Those who dare to speak out against torture and abuse of power get condemned and punished, whereas torturers and perpetrators of violence are praised and rewarded. Truthtellers are silenced and persecuted, while war criminals walk free.

“An Attack on the Human Rights Movement”: Israel Deports Human Rights Watch Monitor

Washington’s Right-Wing Consensus on Israel Faces a Reckoning in Three New York Congressional Races

In May 2018, Ivanka Trump celebrated the U.S. embassy opening in Jerusalem against the backdrop of Israeli troops gunning down 60 Palestinians in Gaza. In some quarters of the Democratic Party, the killings were sharply condemned. ... Other Democrats, however, reacted much differently.

Among them was Rep. Eliot Engel, a 30-year member of Congress from New York. He applauded President Donald Trump’s move to break with decades of U.S. policy and effectively recognize full Israeli control of Jerusalem, a city whose Palestinian eastern half is under military occupation. ... Engel, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is one of the most pro-Israel hawks in the House of Representatives. His alignment with the right-wing on Israel is increasingly out of step with a Democratic base that is younger, more diverse, and more willing to call out Israel for its violations of international law. U.S. military aid to Israel is no longer being accepted without question. A Center for American Progress poll released this year found that 71 percent of Democrats support conditioning aid to Israel if the Jewish state continues to build illegal settlements on Palestinian land. A Data for Progress poll found something similar: Sixty-four percent of Democrats support reducing aid to Israel over human rights abuses. ...

Now, heading into the 2020 election, Engel is one of three staunchly pro-Israel members of New York’s congressional delegation who may — or, in one case, will definitely — be replaced in 2021, creating an opportunity for pro-Palestinian advocates on Capitol Hill. In New York’s 16th Congressional District, which stretches from the tony suburbs of Scarsdale to the busy streets of the Bronx, Engel is facing a spirited primary challenge from two insurgent Democrats, Andom Ghebreghiorgis and Jamaal Bowman, both of whom are critical of Israel’s human rights record and Engel’s positions on Israel.

Jerry Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Committee who represents the 10th District, is also facing a primary from the left by Lindsey Boylan, a former New York state economic official. Nita Lowey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, meanwhile, announced her retirement from her 17th District seat in October, and Mondaire Jones is running on a progressive platform to replace her. New York Democrats go to the polls for primaries on June 23, 2020. All three Jewish lawmakers have played key roles in building the Washington consensus on Israel, and Engel and Lowey, in particular, have been helped by millions of dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel lobby groups and the weapons industry. They rose to power in an age when Israel was seen principally as a post-Holocaust haven for Jews, an indispensable U.S. ally, and a democracy, and they represent districts with substantial populations of Jewish Americans who share those views. As a result, they have spent their long careers ensuring that Israel receives billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and criticizing efforts to hold Israel accountable for human rights abuses.

WaPo op-ed calls US republicans ‘Russian propagandists’

Republicans dig in as hopes of bipartisan support dashed

Congressional Republicans dug deep in defense of Donald Trump over the weekend, frustrating Democratic hopes that the impeachment inquiry would build bipartisan support following weeks of testimony laying out how Trump attempted to extract a political “favor” from Ukraine in exchange for official acts.

At the same time, the White House said it was preparing for a trial in the Senate. If the House of Representatives votes for impeachment, the matter would move to the upper chamber with Trump’s removal from office on the line.

But that prospect seemed distant as not a single elected Republican stepped forward to criticize Trump and members of Congress dodged the question of whether it was acceptable for a president to seek help from a foreign country with a political campaign. “Let me answer that,” the New York representative Lee Zeldin said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, before zigging to claim Trump had a bona fide interest in fighting Ukrainian corruption and zagging to point out that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had been granted a meeting with Trump – at the United Nations. ...

The ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, meanwhile, faces allegations he travelled to Europe late last year to meet Ukrainians and discuss digging up dirt on Biden. Devin Nunes has denied the claim and threatened to sue CNN and the Daily Beast, which reported it.

Saagar and Krystal: Impeachment developments, corporate Dems throw workers under the bus in VA

Ex-White House counsel Don McGahn must testify in impeachment inquiry, judge rules

A federal judge has landed a damaging blow on Donald Trump in the US president’s ongoing fight with Congress, ruling that the former White House counsel Donald McGahn must testify in the impeachment hearings despite claims that he had “absolute immunity” as a top presidential adviser. The judgment from Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the US district court in Washington, has potentially far reaching implications for Trump as he struggles to fend off impeachment. Not only is McGahn an important witness in his own right – as Trump’s first White House counsel he had broad influence until he left the post in October 2018 – but the ruling could also affect other key witnesses called before Congress.

Those high-value witnesses include John Bolton, the former national security adviser who is reported to have been deeply unhappy about Trump’s posture on Ukraine, Bolton’s deputy Charles Kupperman and the current acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. In each of those cases the White House has deployed the same argument – that the officials were so core to executive functions that they enjoyed immunity in the face of congressional subpoenas. Jackson’s ruling has blown a large hole in that legal argument. In terms that left no room for ambiguity, the judge scathingly remarked that the White House had got its separation-of-powers thinking in relation to the respective standing of the president, Congress and judiciary “exactly backwards”.

Pointedly, the judge added: “It is a core tenet of this nation’s founding that the powers of a monarch must be split between the branches of the government to prevent tyranny… Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that presidents are not kings.” It was the role of the judiciary to interpret the law and of Congress to conduct investigations of suspected abuses of power by the government, she wrote in the 120-page opinion. The Department of Justice’s claim “to unreviewable absolute testimonal immunity on separation-of-powers grounds … is baseless, and as such, cannot be sustained.” ...

The justice department instantly moved to appeal the decision, rendering an appeal hearing inevitable and opening up the possibility that such a fundamental dispute over where power lies in modern America will end up at the door of the US supreme court.

Not 'Free Stuff,' But Public Goods: Ocasio-Cortez Denounces Neoliberal Talking Points on Publicly-Funded Education and Housing

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won applause and cheers from her constituents on Sunday at a town hall in the Bronx where she expressed deep frustration with the routine dismissal of investment in public goods as "free stuff."

"I never want to hear the term 'free stuff' ever again," Ocasio-Cortez told the audience.

The progressive first-term Democrat explained her vision for newly proposed legislation—the Green New Deal for Public Housing—for a $180 billion investment in upgraded public housing that would prioritize communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis, retrofit units with energy-efficient insulation and appliances, and create 250,000 jobs. The bill is cosponsored in the Senate by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). ...

At Sunday's town hall, Ocasio-Cortez denounced the term "free stuff" to dismiss progressive proposals for benefits already available to people in many developed countries as a "neoliberal" talking point.

"I'm already hearing some of these neoliberal folks who are trying to flip the script on us and say...'Oh, I don't want to pay for a millionaire's kids to go to college,'" she said.

The argument makes no more sense, Ocasio-Cortez suggested, than saying publicly-funded infrastructure unfairly benefits the rich.

"I believe all people should be able to go to a public library," she said. "Everyone can drive on our roads, everybody should be able to send our kids to public school, and every person who needs it should have access to public housing that looks like this."

New Campaign Demands Congress Probe the 'Ever-Expanding Surveillance Empire' of Amazon

Amazon must face a full congressional investigation to answer questions about threats posed by the company's "ever-expanding surveillance empire." That's the demand from over a dozen groups who on Monday kicked off a campaign urging lawmakers to probe the digital giant's products including Alexa, Rekognition, and Ring over privacy, security, and civil liberties concerns.

"During this holiday season, people are going to buy Amazon's product unaware of the surveillance features and the threats they pose to their personal data and civil liberties," said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future. "Meanwhile, Amazon gains access to video footage and sensitive audio recordings from millions more Americans and their families."

"Amazon's surveillance empire," she added, "is spreading at an alarming rate."

Fight for the Future joins other groups including Color of Change, Council on American-Islamic Relations-SFBA, and CREDO Action in the Investigate Amazon campaign, which accuses the company of having a business model "all about using monopolistic practices to sweep up and exploit data from our private and public lives."

The groups say problems include the fact that Amazon's Alexa records surrounding conversations and its Rekognition technology allows law enforcement to tracks anyone's movement in public spaces.

Of particular concern are partnerships between Amazon and local police departments in which the tech company provides warrantless access to law enforcement from Ring doorbell cameras. That data can then be shared with agencies including ICE or used to target protesters. Such partnerships are of heightened concern for risk for black, brown, and low-income communities, which are already subjected to unjust policing practices.

Ring also threatens people's privacy, as bystanders who've given no consent have personal data recorded, and there are more general security concerns because Ring cameras don't use what is known as end-to-end encryption. Jelani Drew, campaigner manager at CREDO Action, called Ring "a perfect yet horrifying example of how Amazon, in partnership with law enforcement, is effectively making each and every one of our homes an extension of the police."

Google fires employee who protested company's work with US border patrol

On Friday, about 200 employees rallied outside Google’s office in San Francisco to demand that two suspended worker activists be reinstated. By Monday, at least one of the suspended workers said she had been fired, with reports that three other Google staffers had also been let go.

Rebecca Rivers, a software engineer at Google who had been involved with internal protests against Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), announced her firing on Twitter on Monday afternoon. Three other Google staffers were also fired Monday, according to an internal company memo obtained by Bloomberg. ...

One of the organizers of the walkout, Meredith Whittaker, called Rivers’s firing “craven retaliation” in a tweet. Stephanie Parker, a current YouTube employee, called the terminations “inhumane” and “illegal” on Twitter. “I’m still here, still fighting, and not afraid,” she tweeted. ...

The public protest and firings are the latest indications of growing labor unrest at Google. The company has seen an upsurge in employee activism over the past two years, with many employees demanding a say in how their work gets used, as well as about their rights as workers.

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New York Democrats Just Passed a Measure That Could Take the Working Families Party Off the Ballot

At a meeting on Monday, a commission created to implement New York’s public campaign finance system voted to pass a proposal that would make it significantly more difficult for alternative political parties to operate in the state. The proposal would change party qualification rules and, combined with an earlier measure to end fusion voting, is seen as part of a larger set of attacks by state Democrats, led by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on Cuomo’s nemesis: the Working Families Party.

In doing so, state Democrats go against national party leaders, who have spoken out against attempts by the state party to end the WFP’s ballot line. Both party leaders and the WFP say the change would also build a structural advantage for Republicans in swing districts across the state by eliminating the WFP’s margins and boosting numbers for the state’s biggest minor party, the right-leaning Conservative Party.

New York Democratic Party Chair and Public Campaign Finance Commissioner Jay Jacobs’s change would increase by threefold the number of votes political organizations need to qualify as a party. Currently, a party has to petition to get on the ballot, and then receive 50,000 votes in a gubernatorial election in order to qualify as a party for the next four years, without having to go back through the arduous petition process. Jacobs’s latest proposal would raise that threshold to 2 percent of total voter turnout every two years in a gubernatorial and presidential races, or 130,000 votes, whichever is higher. In a typical gubernatorial election, that’s around 130,000 to 150,000 votes. In a presidential race, that’s around 160,000.

The new proposal would go into effect in 2020, which would keep WFP off the ballot in 2022 if they don’t reach the new threshold in 2020. Cuomo is up for reelection in 2022. In that case, the WFP says, it would continue to focus on primary challenges and organizing in the state.

Zaid Jilani: Why corporatists have protected Michael Bloomberg, Obama's disdain for Bernie Sanders

Bloomberg news service under fire for ban on investigating owner

After Michael Bloomberg confirmed his run for president on Sunday, the news service that bears his name said it would not “investigate” the billionaire or any of his Democratic rivals. A former editor of his Bloomberg Businessweek title branded the decision “staggering” and said journalists at Bloomberg News “deserve a hell of a lot better than this”.

The editor-in-chief, John Micklethwait, announced the new rules in a note to 2,700 journalists and analysts. “There is no point in trying to claim that covering this presidential campaign will be easy for a newsroom that has built up its reputation for independence in part by not writing about ourselves,” Micklethwait wrote.

Bloomberg started his news service in 1990 to complement the financial information he sold to customers. It operates a TV and radio network and the business magazine.

Micklethwait said reporters would still cover polls, policies and how the Bloomberg campaign is faring. But they will not do investigative stories on Bloomberg or any other Democratic contender. It will continue to investigate the Trump administration. If other credible organizations do investigative stories on Bloomberg or other Democrats, the news service will summarize or publish them in full, Micklethwait said. Bloomberg News “has handled these conflicts before – and proved our independence”, he added.

The announcement prompted criticism from some former Bloomberg journalists. When Bloomberg was considering a candidacy in 2016, politics news director Kathy Kiely resigned, saying she did not feel she could do her job without covering him aggressively. Kiely said the new rules “relegate his political writers to stenography journalism … it’s not satisfying for journalists and it’s not satisfying for readers. I think people will go elsewhere for in-depth political coverage.”

Krystal Ball: Tulsi, Bernie alone stand up to regime change war machine

Two new polls show Bernie surge is real

Sanders Campaign Charges Bloomberg 2020 Run 'Is Against Bernie, Not Trump'

Billionaire media businessman and former three-term Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg entered the Democratic primary on Sunday expressly to attack Sen. Bernie Sanders' attempt to win the party's 2020 nomination, the Sanders campaign charged Monday. "Bloomberg is primarily motivated by a desire to stop Bernie and his working-class movement," claimed Sanders speechwriter David Sirota Monday in his Bern After Reading newsletter.

According to Sirota, the timing of Bloomberg's announcement lines up with Sanders' rise in the polls and a well-reported meeting between the media mogul and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the two wealthiest men in the world alongside Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Bloomberg is also close with Disney's Bob Iger, Sirota said.

Bloomberg's run is reminiscent of the billionaire's decision in 2016 to float a run in order to take down the Sanders campaign. "Bloomberg began floating the idea of a presidential bid in 2016, just as Bernie was beginning to gain momentum in that race," wrote Sirota. "At the time, Bloomberg disparaged Bernie and his campaign’s challenge to Wall Street."

Sanders, in a statement Friday in advance of Bloomberg's entrance in to the race, said he was "disgusted" that Bloomberg believed the race could be bought. "I'm disgusted by the idea that Michael Bloomberg or any other billionaire thinks they can circumvent the political process and spend tens of millions of dollars to buy our elections," Sanders said. The Vermont senator doubled down on those criticisms at a rally on Sunday in New Hampshire. "We do not believe that billionaires have the right to buy elections," said Sanders. "That is why multi-billionaires like Michael Bloomberg are not going to get very far in this election."

On MSNBC Monday, anchor Katy Tur wondered if Bloomberg has another candidate in mind to take down. "Is this a real campaign, is he really running?" wondered Tur. "Or is he running to torpedo Elizabeth Warren?" Warren, in New Hampshire on Sunday, said that while she accepts some excesses of wealth she draws the line at billionaires having more political power than the rest of Americans. "I understand rich people are going to have more shoes than the rest of us," said Warren. "They're going to have more cars than the rest of us, they're going to have more houses—but they don't get a bigger share of democracy. Especially in a Democratic primary."

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Keystone XL: police discussed stopping anti-pipeline activists 'by any means'

US law enforcement officials preparing for fresh Keystone XL pipeline protests have privately discussed tactics to stop activists “by any means” and have labeled demonstrators potential “domestic terrorism” threats, records reveal. Internal government documents seen by the Guardian show that police and local authorities in Montana and the surrounding region have been preparing a coordinated response in the event of a new wave of protests opposing the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada to Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.

Civil rights organizations say the documents raise concerns that law enforcement is preparing to launch an even more brutal and aggressive response than the police tactics utilized during the 2016 Standing Rock movement, which drew thousands of indigenous and environmental activists opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) to North Dakota. At Standing Rock, law enforcement organized repeated rounds of mass arrests and filed a wide array of serious charges in local and federal courts against activists. Police also deployed water cannons, teargas grenades, bean bag rounds and other weapons, causing serious injuries to protesters.

The documents are mostly emails from 2017 and 2018 between local and federal authorities discussing possible Keystone protests. They show that police officials are anticipating construction will spark a sustained resistance campaign akin to the one at Standing Rock and that police are considering closing public lands near the pipeline project.

The new records have come to light as the Keystone pipeline project has overcome numerous legal hurdles with help from the Trump administration, and as the project’s owner, TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), is moving forward with initial construction efforts.

Climate-heating greenhouse gases hit new high, UN reports

The concentration of climate-heating greenhouse gases has hit a record high, according to a report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization. The jumps in the key gases measured in 2018 were all above the average for the last decade, showing action on the climate emergency to date is having no effect in the atmosphere. The WMO said the gap between targets and reality were both “glaring and growing”.

The rise in concentration of greenhouses gases follows inevitably from the continued surge in global emissions, which was described as “brutal news” for 2018. The world’s scientists calculate that emissions must fall by half by 2030 to give a good chance of limiting global heating to 1.5C, beyond which hundreds of millions of people will suffer more heatwaves, droughts, floods and poverty.

But Petteri Taalas, the WMO secretary-general, said: “There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, despite all the commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change. We need to increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of mankind. “It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of carbon dioxide was 3-5m years ago. Back then, the temperature was 2-3C warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now.”

The WMO report, published on Monday, found the global average concentration of CO2 reached 407.8 parts per million in 2018, up from 405.5ppm in 2017. It is now 50% higher than in 1750, before the industrial revolution sparked the widespread burning of coal, oil and gas.

Lots more at the link:

Emboldened by Bolsonaro, Land-Hungry Ranchers Are Destroying a Pioneering Project to Help the Poor and Save the Amazon

n the morning of February 12, 2005, American missionary Dorothy Stang was walking by the side of the road in the Brazilian Amazon when she was approached by two gunmen. She was alone. But she shouldn’t have been.

Doti, as she was known, had been receiving death threats since the early 2000s. The 73-year-old Catholic nun, born in Dayton, Ohio, arrived in Brazil in 1966. At the time of her death, she was fighting for a program that set aside land for poor families, giving them a guaranteed income so long as they preserved the forest. The settlements, known as Sustainable Development Projects (or PDS, their Portuguese acronym), resisted for a decade after Stang’s murder. But now, the program runs the risk of collapsing, with the forest and settlers under threat and undefended by the Brazilian government. The situation has worsened under President Jair Bolsonaro, who, since taking office this January, has set about dismantling Brazil’s forest protection programs as part of an all-out assault on the environment. ...

Stang’s philosophy clashed with the local culture in the Brazilian Amazon, where powerful ranchers view deforestation as the only path to economic prosperity. They see trees as valuable lumber and soil as space for cattle and soybeans. Stang wanted to counter the false dilemma presented by agribusiness, by offering an alternative economic model for the forest. But today, clear-cutting, land-hungry ranchers occupy the PDS settlements she founded and are pushing to terminate the entire project.

The ranchers have found ways to invade the lots set aside as PDS settlements, circumventing monitoring mechanisms and packing government agencies with political allies. “Land-grabbers,” or grileiros (a term that comes from an old practice of storing fake deeds in a box with a cricket, or grilo, whose feces would stain the papers yellow and make them look authentically aged), threatened Stang before her death and continue to menace those who are trying to uphold her legacy. Last year, Stang’s successor, Father José Amaro Lopes, was jailed for three months on charges that his supporters say were aimed at silencing him and his work on land rights and forest protection.

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Also of Interest

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

A New Pipeline Could Undo America’s Influence In Asia

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BBC admits 'mistake' in editing out laughter at Johnson in TV debate

Michael Tracey: MSNBC makes Tulsi Gabbard a villain, Dems Mueller obsession

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White Helmets Whitewash: founder's death, OPCW scandal lift mask on al-Qaeda's ally in Syria

Contract for the Web: Internet Inventor Tim Berners-Lee Unveils Global Plan to Battle 'Digital Dystopia'

If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer

Law Enforcement Crushing Pipeline Dissent in Minnesota at Water Protectors' Blockade of Enbridge Terminal

Storms in France, Greece and Italy leave 'biblical destruction'

Fleeing the Hellscape of Google Search with Qwant

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A Little Night Music

Bo Diddley - Back To School

Bo Diddley - Silly Willy

Bo Diddley - Walkin' and Talkin'

Bo Diddley - Mummy Walk

Bo Diddley - Run Diddle Daddy

Bo Diddley - Before You Accuse Me

Bo Diddley - Cops And Robbers

Bo Diddley - Who Do You Love

Bo Diddley - Soul Train

Bo Diddley - Roadrunner

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