Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues guitarist T-Bone Walker . Enjoy!

“I definitely do not like the Law," said Simple, using the word with a capital letter to mean police and courts combined.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because the Law beats my head. Also because the Law will give a white man One Year and give me Ten."

"But if it wasn't for the Law," I said, "you would not have any protection."

"Protection?" yelled Simple. "The Law always protects a white man. But if I holler for the Law, the Law says, 'What do you want, Negro?' Only most white polices do not say 'Negro.' "

"Oh, I see. You are talking about the police, not the Law in general."

"Yes, I am talking about the polices."

"You have a bad opinion of the Law," I said.

"The Law has a bad opinion of me," said Simple. "The Law thinks all Negroes are in the criminal class. The Law'll stop me on the streets and shake me down—me, a workingman—as quick as they will any old weed-headed hustler or two-bit rounder. I do not like polices."

"You must be talking about the way-down-home-in-Dixie Law," I said, "not up North."

"I am talking about the Law all over America," said Simple, "North or South. Insofar as I am concerned, a police is no good. It was the Law that started the Harlem riots by shooting that soldier-boy. Take a cracker down South or an ofay up North—as soon as he puts on a badge he wants to try out his billy club on some Negro's head. I tell you police are no good! If they was, they wouldn't be polices.”

-- Langston Hughes

News and Opinion

The Bad Apples worldwide tour is in San Francisco now:

San Francisco Activists Sue City Over 'Illegal Dragnet Surveillance' of George Floyd, BLM Protests

A group of activists on Wednesday sued the city of San Francisco over its police department's alleged illegal surveillance of protesters during recent racial justice demonstrations.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and ACLU of Northern California filed the suit (pdf) in San Francisco Superior Court on behalf of local activists Hope Williams, Nathan Sheard, and Nestor Reyes, Black and Latinx activists who organized and participated in Black Lives Matter, Defund SFPD Now, and other protests in the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black and BIPOC people this year.

Last year, San Francisco became the first major city in the nation to ban the use of facial recognition technology by police and other agencies following an 8-1 vote by the city's governing Board of Supervisors.

The lawsuit alleges the city violated its Surveillance Technology Ordinance (pdf), which also restricts police and other city agencies' power to "receive information from non-city-owned surveillance technology."

"San Francisco police have a long and troubling history of targeting Black organizers going back to the 1960s," said EFF staff attorney Saira Hussain in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

New lawsuit alert! @EFF and @ACLU_NorCal just sued the city of San Francisco over the SFPD's unlawful real-time surveillance of #BlackLivesMatter protests using a network of hundreds of surveillance cameras. https://t.co/9BCIlpIUuC

— Saira Hussain (@sairahussain87) October 7, 2020

"This new surveillance of Black Lives Matter protesters is exactly the kind of harm that the San Francisco supervisors were trying to prevent when they passed a critical Surveillance Technology Ordinance last year," added Hussain. "And still, with all eyes watching, SFPD brazenly decided to break the law."

Matt Cagle, technology and civil liberties attorney for the ACLU of Northern California, said that "in a democracy, people should be able to freely protest without fearing that police are spying and lying in wait."

"Illegal, dragnet surveillance of protests is completely at odds with the First Amendment and should never be allowed," he said.

"That the SFPD flouted the law to spy on activists protesting the abuse and killing of Black people by the police is simply indefensible," Cagle added.

Williams, a community organizer and lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that she "took to the streets to protest police violence and racism and affirm that Black lives matter," and that "it is an affront to our movement for equity and justice that the SFPD responded by secretly spying on us." ...

According to the suit—which calls on the city to enforce the Surveillance Technology Ordinance and for the SFPD to behave lawfully—the San Francisco Police Department tapped into a network of downtown business cameras to conduct mass surveillance of protesters in late May and early June.

EFF said in July that SFPD received live access to hundreds of cameras operated by the Union Square Business Improvement District, a special taxation zone created by the city of San Francisco but run by a private nonprofit group.

SFPD also gained access to a "data dump" of camera footage during the protests. The networked high definition cameras can zoom in on a targeted person's face to capture images that could then be analyzed using facial recognition software in contravention of local law.

Bad apple makes bail:

Former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder of George Floyd released on bail

On Wednesday morning, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin posted a $1 million bond for bail and was released from a Minnesota state prison. Chauvin, who is white, has been charged with second degree murder and third degree manslaughter and murder for kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed African American man, in May. ...

Democratic elected officials in Minneapolis are ... preparing to suppress protests following the release of Chauvin.

As of this writing it is not clear how Chauvin was able to cover his bail. According to the Washington Post, a bail fund for Chauvin, launched by “unidentified relatives” in September, had only raised just over $4,000 as of Wednesday. ...

As in cities across the country, Chauvin’s lawless behavior was formed and encouraged by the political establishment, including the supposedly “left-liberal” establishment in Minneapolis. In the weeks following the massive protests against the MPD, Democratic Party lawmakers in the city council had sought to posture as opponents of the police and defenders of social justice. Some even endorsed the call to “defund” the police department.

The New York Times reported last month in an article titled “How a Pledge to Dismantle the Minneapolis Police Collapsed” that in the months since the mass protests, Democratic lawmakers have sought to quietly slither away from their promises.

'How Their Rotten System Works': Global Billionaire Wealth Surged to Record $10.2 Trillion Amid Covid-19 Catastrophe

While Covid-19 has taken the lives of over one million people across the globe and exacerbated economic precarity for millions more, the combined wealth held by the world's 2,189 billionaires has skyrocketed—increasing by 27.5% between April and July 2020 and reaching a record high of $10.2 trillion.

The surge in billionaires' wealth in the midst of a calamitous pandemic is captured in Riding the Storm: Market Turbulence Accelerates Diverging Fortunes, a report (pdf) published by Swiss bank UBS and consultancy firm PwC on Wednesday.

The report attributed the growing fortunes of billionaires—there are 31 more of them in 2020 than there were in 2017—to "the year's V-shaped rebound in asset prices," which benefited the rich even as middle- and low-income households continue to experience material hardship.

Authors noted that billionaires in some sectors, particularly technology and healthcare, fared better than mega-wealthy individuals in other fields, such as media, finance, natural resources, and construction.

For instance, "during 2018, 2019, and the first seven months of 2020, technology billionaires' total wealth rose by 42.5% to $1.8 trillion," while "healthcare billionaires' total wealth increased by 50.3% to $658.6 billion."

Among the class as a whole, the increase was more modest at 19.1% during the same time period. Meanwhile, "the net worth of billionaires in entertainment, financial services, materials, and real estate sectors lagged" behind their peers, "with increases of 10% or less."

Regarding the ability of tech and healthcare billionaires "to decisively pull ahead of the pack as they increased their wealth while others fell," the report romantically stated that Covid-19 dramatically accelerated the trend of "innovators and disruptors... reshaping the economy" and "demonstrating the value of the digital world they helped to create."

However, The Guardian explained that the world's billionaires increased their collective net worth by more than a quarter "at the height of the crisis from April to July" by "betting on the recovery of global stock markets when they were at their nadir during the global lockdowns in March and April."

UBS executive Josef Stadler told The Guardian that the uber-rich, who he described as having a "significant risk appetite," were able to benefit from the crisis because they had "the stomach" to purchase more company shares when equity markets were declining. When global stock markets rebounded, their strategy paid off.

Whereas the report focused on billionaire tech and healthcare entrepreneurs "pulling ahead" in relation to their super-rich peers, critics were quick to point out that the most significant polarization is not within the billionaire class but between billionaires and the vast majority of humanity.

"The super-rich got even richer while millions of people around the world lost their jobs," tweeted Richard Burgon, a British Labour Party parliamentarian. "That's not a coincidence," Burgon added. "That's how their rotten system works."

Keiser Report | Plunder Trickles Down

Covid-19 Pandemic Could Push Up to 150 Million Into 'Extreme Poverty' by 2021, World Bank Warns

Amid findings that the combined wealth of the planet's billionaires skyrocketed to $10.2 trillion during the coronavirus pandemic, the World Bank warned Wednesday that the public health crisis could cause global extreme poverty to rise for the first time in over two decades and push tens of millions of people into that category by next year.

"Between 88 million and 115 million people could fall back into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic, with an additional increase of between 23 million and 35 million in 2021, potentially bringing the total number of new people living in extreme poverty to between 110 million and 150 million," the report says. "Early evidence also suggests that the crisis is poised to increase inequality in much of the world."

Entitled Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2020: Reversals of Fortune (pdf), the report discusses the impacts of not only Covid-19 but also armed conflict and climate change, finding that the latter "may drive about 100 million additional people into poverty by 2030, many of whom reside in countries affected by institutional fragility and armed conflict, and where global extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated."

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on less than $1.90 a day but also measures poverty lines of $3.20 and $5.50 for middle-income countries. The report says that had the pandemic not occured, the global extreme poverty rate was expected to drop to 7.9% this year. However, given current conditions, extreme poverty could now affect over 9% of the world's population.

Jobless Claims SPIKE, Stimulus Outlook Looks DISMAL. Who Is To Blame?

Golden Dawn guilty verdicts celebrated across Greece

A court verdict in Athens with ramifications for the far right across Europe has been met with jubilation in Greece and internationally after judges ruled the neo-fascist Golden Dawn was a criminal organisation in disguise.

Tens of thousands people who had converged near the heavily guarded court complex in Athens in anticipation of the judgment roared in excitement as the news emerged. Many broke into spontaneous applause and punched the air as it became clear that the three-member tribunal had found the far-right group guilty of operating a gang of hit squads bent on eliminating perceived enemies. “It’s official. Golden Dawn is over. The conviction is overwhelming,” said Petros Constantinou, a leading anti-racism activist. “The mood here today is resonant of the celebrations we saw with the liberation of Athens from the Nazis. It’s a great day.”

Wrapping up a trial that began in April 2015, the presiding judge, Maria Lepenioti, said the court had concluded that seven of Golden Dawn’s 18 former MPs, including the party founder, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, had led the deadly organisation. The rest were found culpable of participating in the gang. ...

Before the verdict, the public prosecutor overseeing the case recommended the acquittal of many key party members in relation to the criminal organisation charge, citing lack of evidence – a recommendation that was roundly denounced by critics, who accused the magistrate of typifying the toxic influence wielded by conservatives over the justice system.

The hearing was the biggest trial of fascists since the prosecution of the Nazis at Nuremberg after the second world war.

Trump calls Covid diagnosis 'blessing from God' amid false treatment claims

Donald Trump has called his Covid-19 infection “a blessing from God” as he returned to the Oval Office on Wednesday despite concerns that he should be self-isolating, as the virus continued to spread among senior White House figures.

In a video message posted to Twitter, Trump said that an experimental drug cocktail from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals was key to recovering from his infection. He said it was his suggestion to be treated with the drug, which has rarely been used outside clinical trials.

“I feel great. I feel, like, perfect,” the president says in the video. “I think this was a blessing from God, that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise. I caught it, I heard about this drug, I said let me take it. It was my suggestion.”

The president also promised to bring the drug to the American people for free, hawking it – falsely – as a “cure”. There is no cure for Covid-19.

Trump’s latest claims echoed his previous endorsements of unapproved treatments – from hydroxychloroquine to bleach. Even if the drug is effective, it has not yet been granted emergency authorization for use by the general public.

Analysis Shows Trump Covid-19 Treatment Would Cost Regular Folks $100K

An analysis Wednesday by the New York Times estimating the treatment President Donald Trump received for Covid-19 would have cost ordinary Americans over $100,000 is being met with fury by critics—many of them Medicare for All supporters—who pointed to the cruelty of an administration working feverishly to slash healthcare access for millions in the middle of a pandemic and economic recession.

The costs were calculated by the Times' Sarah Kliff, who considered the president's coronavirus testing, three-day hospital stay, and medications, as well as the big ticket item of his helicopter transportation to and from Walter Reed.

"The median charge for a coronavirus hospitalization for a patient over 60 is $61,912, according to a claims database, FAIR Health," the Times reported, and pointed to data finding a $38,770 median charge for an air ambulance.

"Mr. Trump did not have to worry about the costs of his care, which are covered by the federal government. Most Americans, including many who carry health coverage, do worry about receiving medical care they cannot afford."https://t.co/HMvQjs8hJv

— Gavin Yamey (@GYamey) October 7, 2020

'I'm back': Trumpworld shows no sign of changing after Covid-19 diagnosis

There was a school of thought that Donald Trump might be humbled by becoming infected himself with the coronavirus, see the light and encourage Americans to stay safe. It lasted about as long as the hope that he would “pivot” to a traditional presidency after his inauguration.

Instead Trump has sought to project the strongman image, flying to the White House by helicopter at sunset, standing on the balcony and taking off his face mask while still contagious, bragging that he feels better than he did 20 years ago and urging the public to neither fear the virus nor let it dominate their lives.

His campaign has sent out fundraising emails preaching a similar if-I-can-beat-it-so-can-you-message, hoping to turn personal and political disaster to their electoral advantage against the cautious Joe Biden. It is very on-brand for a president who views illness as a weakness and seeks each day to make himself the hero of his own reality TV show. ...

“He’s operated in kind of cartoon icons his entire career, with iconic images and symbols of being a magnate, owning a football team, an airline, casinos, Mar-a-Lago,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. ... Trump, a disciple of the book The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, seems determined to wish his own serious condition away even if it means endangering his staff, Blair added. “All the people that he’s exposing by this, the poor Secret Service, the medical personnel, the pilots on the helicopter, all the White House staff. It’s mind-boggling.”

Laying 'Tens of Thousands of Preventable Deaths' at the Foot of Trump Failures, Top US Health Official Resigns in Protest

In a direct and outspoken protest over President Donald Trump's deadly and failed response to the Covid-19 pandemic over the last nine months, government whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright on Wednesday publicly announced his resignation from the National Institute of Health as he chastized a White House that "suffers from widespread internal chaos" and warned the United States, due to lack of leadership, is now "flying blind into what could be the darkest winter in modern history."

Bright, who until April of 2020 served as the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, first came forward to denounce the administration in May after he says he was removed from his post over voiced objections to how Trump and other political officials within HHS were mishandling the pandemic in the early weeks and months of the outbreak.

"Public health and safety have been jeopardized by the administration's hostility to the truth and by its politicization of the pandemic response, undoubtedly leading to tens of thousands of preventable deaths," Bright wrote in a statement published Wednesday afternoon by the Washington Post. "For that reason, and because the administration has in effect barred me from working to fight the pandemic, I resigned on Tuesday from the National Institutes of Health."

Despite best efforts by some, he continued, "there is still no coordinated national strategy to end the pandemic. Federal agencies, staffed with some of the best scientists in the world, continue to be politicized, manipulated and ignored."

As the Guardian reports:

Bright's departure comes as it was revealed that the head of the Centers for Disease Control, Robert Redfield, had been encouraged to expose the "slaughter" resulting from the Trump administration's "political interference" in the coronavirus response by William Foege—the US epidemiologist who devised the global strategy to eradicate smallpox and is also a former director of the CDC.

In his letter to Redfield, Foege wrote that despite "White House spin attempts, this will go down as a colossal failure of the public health system of this country." He further called the pandemic "the biggest challenge in a century," but said it was clear that the CDC "let the country down."

While Bright's criticism of the administration, the Guardian noted, has been well-documented for months "and discounted by the White House as sour grapes, Foege is regarded in US public health circles as a towering figure."

USPS Blocking Democratic Lawmakers From Inspecting Postal Facilities

U.S. Postal Service officials suggested Tuesday that ensuring Americans are able to get mail in a timely manner—as millions plan to vote by mail this year—is solely a Democratic priority, when they claimed members of Congress cannot inspect mail facilities because such visits would be a violation of the Hatch Act.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) have all attempted to visit postal facilities in recent weeks, only to be told they can't do so because federal elections are coming up in November and postal workers must be protected from inadvertently violating the Hatch Act.

The law prohibits civil servants from partaking in partisan activities. As the Washington Post reported Tuesday, USPS leaders cited also ethics rules dictating that the post office decline tour requests from anyone on a ballot within 45 days of a primary of general election—a guideline that would effectively bar 85% of members of Congress and thousands of state and local officials from inspecting postal facilities. The guidance, the Post noted, is limited by the caveat that elected officials cannot be prohibited from "appropriately representing their constituents."

As such, Pascrell accused USPS officials of illegally preventing him and other members of Congress from inspecting mail services—to ensure not only that ballots are delivered on time, but also that Americans receive their medications and other necessities in a timely manner.

"Postal facilities are not Area 51," Pascrell tweeted. "This is an outrage—and it's also illegal."

McConnell hits out at Guardian and other media over Amy Coney Barrett scrutiny

Top Republican Mitch McConnell lashed out on Wednesday at reports about Amy Coney Barrett’s background in a strict religious group which the Senate majority leader claimed “demean the [supreme court] confirmation process, disrespect the constitution and insult millions of American believers”.

Among McConnell’s targets was a Guardian report which said Barrett “lived in the home of one of the founders of the People of Praise while she was a law student, raising new questions about the supreme court nominee’s involvement with the secretive Christian faith group that has been criticized for dominating the lives of its members and subjugating women”. ...

The Guardian was not the only outlet to publish a story about Barrett on Tuesday. Citing records which People of Praise has taken off its website, the Washington Post said: “A 2010 directory states that she held the title of ‘handmaid’, a leadership position for women in the community”. ... The Post quoted a former member of the group as saying a “handmaid” was a leadership position, though subordinate to male leadership in People of Praise. ...

After voicing a key Republican talking point, comparing supposed progressive anti-Catholic bigotry to attacks on President John F Kennedy, a liberal hero, McConnell added: “Our coastal elites are so disconnected from their own country that they treat religious Americans like animals in a menagerie.”

Bernie World FURIOUS Over Biden's Attacks On 'Socialists'

The Greatest Failure in Presidential History: Kamala Harris Slams Trump/Pence's Handling of COVID-19

'Fracking Is Bad, Actually': Ocasio-Cortez Interjects After Harris Falters Over Pence Attack on Green New Deal

Even as Vice President Mike Pence was busy "polluting the atmosphere with lies" about the climate crisis during Wednesday night's vice presidential debate, Democratic nominee Sen. Kamala Harris came under considerable criticism of her own after repeatedly highlighting Joe Biden's commitment to "not ban fracking" and an overall lackluster defense of the Green New Deal—the signature framework put forth by progressives and the scientific community to combat the threat of a rapidly warming world.

"Fracking is bad, actually," tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) after Harris repeatedly proclaimed, in response to Pence's charge that Democrats want to "abolish fossil fuels," that a Biden administration would not ban hydraulic fracturing.

While Pence attacked Harris' support for the Green New Deal, which she co-sponsored in the U.S. Senate, backers of the proposal—a plan that would combat the existential planetary emergency by making major investments in renewable energy infrastructure projects that would create millions of jobs—pointed out that ending destructive fossil fuel extraction, including fracking, is a policy to embrace not run away from.

Majority of Pennsylvanians oppose fracking.

Biden-Harris are pandering to a minority of voters here https://t.co/EmlNtRAmgv

— Mike Elk (@MikeElk) October 8, 2020

According to Waleed Shahid of the Justice Democrats, "I feel like Kamala Harris over-corrected way too much after being being attacked as the 'liberal Senator of California' on her climate crisis responses."

Rev. William Barber: Millions Are Struggling. So Why Do the Debates Ignore Poverty?

Krystal Ball: VP Debate Reveals Why ‘Return To Normal’ Is A BITTER Pill To Swallow

'Pretty fly on a white guy': Insect steals buzz at VP debate

The House Just Passed Another “Save Our Seas” Act. Here’s Why It Won’t.

The Save Our Seas 2.0 Act purports to offer a bipartisan solution to the unthinkable amount of plastic — 11 million metric tons, a figure predicted to nearly triple by 2040 — that enters the ocean every year. It seems Congress would agree. On Thursday, the federal bill was expedited to the floor of the House of Representatives and passed on suspension, a procedure typically reserved for noncontroversial bills. In the less than 15 minutes of debate to precede the vote, no dissenting views were raised. The bill has returned to the Senate — it passed unanimously there in January — and is expected to be signed into law by President Donald Trump, who also signed the Save Our Seas Act of 2018 into law. Then, once in effect, the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act will not do much at all.

Outside of Congress, the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act has faced steeper scrutiny from environmentalists who see it as an extension of decades’ worth of failed policies that assume the plastics crisis can be solved by innovating recycling and waste management — and who are suspicious of support from the plastics and chemical industries, not known for their enthusiastic commitment to eradicating plastic pollution.

“It is so woefully inadequate to the scale of the crisis that it is really very little more than a distraction endorsed by the plastics industry to keep our attention away from the focusing on real solutions to the problem,” says Brett Hartl, the government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the 40 environmental organizations to sign a letter, addressed to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in opposition to the bill.

The bill primarily aims to clean marine plastic pollution in a few ways. It funds studies, pilot projects, and reports to better understand and develop solutions for the marine plastic debris crisis, such as a program to incentivize fishers to collect plastic debris, and creates a “Genius Prize for Save Our Seas Innovations” to encourage innovations to reduce plastic waste in the ocean. It also establishes the public-private Marine Debris Foundation that will support the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration in preventing and removing plastics from the ocean under the 2006 Marine Debris Act, while expanding the annual funding for the Marine Debris Act from $10 million to $15 million per year. Many of these strategies, while not inherently bad, are focused solely on cleaning up plastic waste, neatly removing responsibility from the plastics industry.

“There’s a reason the plastics industry likes this. It’s because they don’t really have to do anything,” says Hartl.

BIDEN Won't Listen To The Scientists!

Goldmining having big impact on indigenous Amazon communities

A new report has exposed the scale and impact of mining on indigenous reserves in Amazon countries as gold prices soared during the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 20% of indigenous lands are overlapped by mining concessions and illegal mining, it found, covering 450,000 sq km (174,000 sq miles) – and 31% of Amazon indigenous reserves are affected. The report, released on Wednesday by the World Resources Institute, said indigenous people should be given more legal rights to manage and use their lands, and called for better environmental safeguards. As pressure mounts over the issue, a leading Brazilian thinktank has called for regulations tracing gold sold by financial institutions.

“The extent of mining concessions and illegal mining areas that overlap indigenous areas in the Amazon is much more significant than many people thought,” said Peter Veit, director of the WRI’s Land and Resource Rights Initiative, and one of the report’s authors. It used geospatial analysis and literature and science reviews, and estimated that half a million small-scale goldminers are active in the Amazon region. Only half of legal mining concessions in the Amazon are active, Veit said. But with mining seen by many Amazon countries as key to development, that could change. In Brazil, the government of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has sent a bill to Congress to formally legalise mining on protected indigenous reserves.

“The implications for the environment and for indigenous peoples could significantly increase if those concessions that have yet to be allocated were to start up,” Veit said. ... In Brazil, invasions of indigenous lands by garimpeiros – as wildcat miners are called – have increased since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019. Many voted for Bolsonaro after he promised to legalise their work. In 2019, deforestation caused by garimpeiros in the Amazon rose 23% on 2018 to a record 10,500 hectares (26,000 acres), O Globo newspaper reported in May, following a freedom of information request to the environment agency Ibama.

Army operations have failed to clear tens of thousands of miners from Brazil’s biggest indigenous reserve, the Yanomami. From October 2018 to March 2020 alone, nearly 2,000ha were degraded by mining in the reserve, the report said. ...

Legal mining can also come at a high cost, Veit said. “Many companies don’t adhere to the law, the letter of the law, many don’t seem to adhere to their agreements with the government,” he said. Case studies from Peru and Ecuador document legal struggles between indigenous groups, governments and mining companies.

Plan for largest mine in Papua New Guinea history 'appears to disregard human rights', UN says

The plan for the largest mine in Papua New Guinea’s history carries a risk of catastrophic loss of life and environmental destruction and “appears to disregard the human rights of those affected”, according to United Nations officials.

In an extraordinary intervention, 10 UN special rapporteurs have written with “serious concerns” to the governments of Papua New Guinea, Australia, China, and Canada, as well as the Chinese state-owned developers of the gold, copper and silver mine proposed for the remote Frieda river in the country’s north.

The UN’s special rapporteur on toxic wastes, Baskut Tuncak – who has since retired from that role – and nine other senior UN officials, jointly signed letters in July “to express our serious concern regarding the potential and actual threats to life, health, bodily integrity, water [and] food”.

The letters ask for governments and the company, PanAust, to respond to key questions including an alleged “lack of information for free, prior and informed consent of the indigenous people” to the mine proceeding.

The mine, if approved and built, would be the largest in PNG’s history, and one of the largest in the world, covering 16,000 hectares. To be built on the Frieda river, a tributary to the Sepik in the north of New Guinea island, it is forecast to yield gold, silver and copper worth an estimated US$1.5bn a year for more than 30 years.

Also of Interest

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

Corporations Shouldn’t Manage Another Presidential Debate

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Trump: All US Troops in Afghanistan Should Be ‘Home by Christmas’

Trump Orders Russiagate Documents Declassified

Former Intel Officials Try To Downplay Ratcliffe’s Russiagate Releases

'He really packed on the pounds': Fat Bear Week crowns 747 the winner

Posters that changed the world – in pictures

OPCW Syria whistleblower and ex-OPCW chief attacked by US, UK, France at UN

Jimmy Dore: Obama's Deep Contempt Of Young Voters

Jimmy Dore: TRUMP Wants To Lose

Jimmy Dore: Nobody Wants To See BERNIE Campaign For BIDEN!

A Little Night Music

T-Bone Walker - Goin' to Chicago

T-Bone Walker - Too lazy to work and too nervous to steal

T-Bone Walker - Strollin' With Bones

T Bone Walker - T-Bone Shuffle

T-Bone Walker - I Got The Blues

T Bone Walker - Hey Baby

T Bone Walker - Guitar Boogie

T-Bone Walker - High Society

T-Bone Walker - The Hustle Is On

T Bone Walker - Everyday I Have the Blues