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"Journalists should be exposing inconvenient truths about powerful people in their own nation and its allies. Instead the people we call “journalists” criticize enemy nations, smear political dissidents, demand increasing amounts of censorship, and advance narratives that are convenient for the powerful."

-- Caitlin Johnstone

News and Opinion

Worth a full read:

Chris Hedges: Bandaging the Corpse

The established ruling elites know there is a crisis. They agreed, at least temporarily, to throw money at it with the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 bill known as American Rescue Plan (ARP). But the ARP will not alter the structural inequities, either by raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour or imposing taxes and regulations on corporations or the billionaire class that saw its wealth increase by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic. The health system will remain privatized, meaning the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations will reap a windfall of tens of billions of dollars with the ARP, and this when they are already making record profits. The endless wars in the Middle East, and the bloated military budget that funds them, will remain sacrosanct. Wall Street and the predatory global speculators that profit from the massive levels of debt peonage imposed on an underpaid working class and loot the U.S. Treasury in our casino capitalism will continue to funnel money upwards into the hands of a tiny, oligarchic cabal. There will be no campaign finance reform to end our system of legalized bribery. The giant tech monopolies will remain intact. The fossil fuel companies will continue to ravage the ecosystem. The militarized police, censorship imposed by digital media platforms, vast prison system, harsher and harsher laws aimed at curbing domestic terrorism and dissent and wholesale government surveillance will be, as they were before, the primary instruments of state control.

This act will, at best, provide a momentary respite from the country’s death spiral, sending out one time checks of $1,400 to 280 million Americans, extending $300 weekly unemployment benefits until the end of August and distributing $3,600 through a tax credit for children under the age of 6 and $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17 starting on July 1. Much of this money will be instantly gobbled up by landlords, lenders, medical providers and credit card companies. The act does, to its credit, bail out some 1 million unionized workers poised to lose their pensions and hands $31.2 billion in aid to Native communities, some of the poorest in the nation. But what happens to the majority of Americans who get government support for only a few months? What are they supposed to do when the checks stop arriving at the end of the year? Will the federal government orchestrate another massive relief package? I doubt it. We will be back where we started.

By refusing to address the root causes of America’s rot, by failing to pump life back into the democratic institutions that once gave the citizen a voice, however limited, and make incremental and piecemeal reform possible, by not addressing the severe economic and social inequality and dislocation that afflicts at least half the country, the anomie and ruptured social bonds that gave rise to a demagogue like Donald Trump will expand. The American empire will not staunch its disintegration. The political deformities will metastasize. ...

The engine of our emerging dystopia is income inequality, which is growing. This bill does nothing to address this cancer. The bottom 50 percent of households in 2019 accounted for only 1 percent of the nation’s total wealth. The top 10 percent accounted for 76 percent. And this was before the pandemic accelerated income disparity. More than 18 million American depend on unemployment benefits, as businesses contract and close. Nearly 81 million Americans struggle to meet basic household expenses, 22 million lack enough food and 11 million say they can’t make their next house payment. Only deep structural reforms accompanied by New Deal-type legislation can save us, but such changes are an anathema to the corporate state and the Biden administration. History has amply demonstrated what happens when income disparities of this magnitude afflict a country. We will be no exception. Lacking a strong left, the United States will in desperation embrace authoritarianism, if not proto-fascism. This will, I fear, be Biden and the Democratic Party’s real legacy.

Congressional Testimony: The Leading Activists for Online Censorship Are Corporate Journalists

The House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law held a hearing on Friday and I was invited to testify along with Microsoft President Brad Smith; President of the News Guild-Communications Workers of America Jonathan Schleuss, the Outkick’s Clay Travis, CEO of the Graham Media Group Emily Barr, and CEO of the News Media Alliance David Chavern. The ostensible purpose the hearing was a narrow one: to consider a bill that would vest media outlets with an exemption from anti-trust laws to collectively bargain with tech companies such as Facebook and Google so that they can obtain a greater share of the ad revenue. ...

While I share the ostensible motive behind the bill — to stem the serious crisis of bankruptcies and closings of local news outlets — I do not believe that this bill will end up doing that, particularly because it empowers the largest media outlets such as The New York Times and MSNBC to dominate the process and because it does not even acknowledge, let alone address, the broader problems plaguing the news industry, including collapsing trust by the public (a bill that limited this anti-trust exemption to small local news outlets so as to allow them to bargain collectively with tech companies in their own interest would seem to me to serve the claimed purpose much better than one which empowers media giants to form a negotiating cartel).

But the broader context for the bill is the one most interesting and the one on which I focused in my opening statement and testimony: namely, the relationship between social media and tech giants on the one hand, and the news media industry on the other. Contrary to the popular narrative propagated by news outlets — in which they are cast as the victims of the supremely powerful Silicon Valley giants — that narrative is sometimes (not always, but sometimes) the opposite of reality: much if not most Silicon Valley censorship of political speech emanates from pressure campaigns led by corporate media outlets and their journalists, demanding that more and more of their competitors and ideological adversaries be silenced. Big media, in other words, is coopting the power of Big Tech for their own purposes.

[See link for Greenwald's opening statement and video of the procedings. -js]

Saagar Enjeti: CNN, MSNBC, FOX Ratings COLLAPSE As Knives OUT For Independent Media

'Over-supplied' US faces pressure to send Covid vaccine doses to less wealthy countries

The US is under increasing pressure to share Covid-19 vaccine doses with less wealthy nations, as advocates call for prevention of an emerging “vaccine apartheid” and point to the strategic and diplomatic importance of sharing essential medicines. Calls to share vaccine doses grew louder this week after the Biden administration announced an additional purchase of 100 million vaccine doses from Johnson & Johnson. The American government has now bought enough doses of vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson to vaccinate 500 million people – nearly the entire eligible population twice over.

The administration also holds the rights to 100 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses. The vaccine has not been authorized in the US, but is authorized for use elsewhere in the world. AstraZeneca asked the US to give “thoughtful consideration” to donating the vaccines elsewhere, a spokesperson for the company said.

“I’m doing this because, in this wartime effort, we need maximum flexibility,” Biden said at a White House briefing announcing the purchase this week. “There is always a chance that we’ll encounter unexpected challenges.” ... Biden administration officials have continued to resist sending stockpiled vaccine doses abroad, saying it is part of a plan to be “over-prepared and over-supplied” in the event emerging Covid-19 variants or waning immunity require booster shots.

Richard Wolff: Biden’s No FDR, Here’s The Proof

Omar Leads Bill to Cancel Rent and Mortgage Payments During Pandemic

Citing the "unprecedented crisis" of Covid-19 coupled with widespread economic hardship, Rep. Ilhan Omar on Thursday reintroduced a bill that would cancel rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the pandemic.

The Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act (pdf) would grant full payment forgiveness, with no accumulation of housing debt and no negative impact on credit scores or rental histories. The bill would also create a relief fund to reimburse landlords and mortage holders for losses incurred as a result of the forgiveness. 

Additionally, Omar's (D-Minn.) proposal establishes an optional buyout fund so that state and local governments, public housing authorities, community land trusts, nonprofit organizations, and cooperatives can purchase private rental properties.

The bill is co-sponsored by 24 progressive Democratic lawmakers, including every fellow member of "The Squad"—Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.).

How Democrats Abandoned You In Relief Bill

$15 Minimum Wage Would Lift Millions Out of Poverty, Says... Wall Street Giant Morgan Stanley

Raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would deliver sizable benefits to low-wage workers and lift millions of people in the U.S. out of poverty while having little impact—positive or negative—on employment levels.

So says a new report assembled not by a progressive advocacy organization or a left-leaning think tank, but Wall Street titan Morgan Stanley, which found in a 75-page analysis that—contrary to the GOP's branding of the proposed $15-an-hour federal minimum wage as a job-killer—"the wealth of research points to no definitive conclusion on the impact higher wages have on employment."

"However," the report adds, "it is evident that the impact to employment... would be minimal, while the social benefits to lifting real wages of lower-income earners and millions out of poverty are substantial."

The big bank's analysis of the potential effects of more than doubling the national minimum wage comes after the Senate Democratic leadership stripped a $15 wage provision out of the newly passed coronavirus relief package, citing the unelected Senate parliamentarian's widely disputed advisory opinion that the proposed pay hike ran afoul of the chamber's reconciliation rules.

As progressive lawmakers vow to continue fighting for the long-overdue pay increase, Morgan Stanley's economic team envisioned "limited impact to broader equity earnings, GDP, and consumption, but important implications for poverty reduction" should Congress ultimately approve a $15 federal minimum wage.

Amazon Workers Close To Forming A Union

Myanmar’s ‘darkest moment’: death toll rises sharply as junta's crackdown continues

At least 39 people have been killed in one of the deadliest days since Myanmar was thrust back under military rule, as a group of ousted MPs urged citizens to defend themselves during the nation’s “darkest moment”.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military forced the civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power in a coup on 1 February, triggering a mass uprising that has led to hundreds of thousands protesting daily for a return to democracy.

The junta has repeatedly justified its power grab by alleging widespread electoral fraud in November’s elections, which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won by a landslide.

More than 80 people have been killed in the military’s crackdown on protesters, but the number is expected to increase sharply after Sunday’s violence – making it one of the deadliest days yet as Myanmar enters its seventh week under a junta regime. ...

The Chinese embassy said many Chinese staff had been injured and trapped in arson attacks by unidentified assailants on garment factories in Hlaing Tharyar and it had called on Myanmar to protect Chinese property and citizens.

McCollum Calls Israeli Troops' Arrest of Palestinian Children 'Extremely Disturbing'

U.S. Congresswoman Betty McCollum joined the international chorus of condemnation of Israeli troops shown in a video roughly arresting a group of Palestinian children near an illegal Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem this week published video footage of the five children, ages 8 to 13, being dragged off and detained by heavily armed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers near the Israeli settler colony of Havat Maon in the southern Hebron Hills. 

McCollum (D-Minn.), who has been one of Congress' leading advocates for Palestinian human rights, told Middle East Eye that "using Israeli soldiers to capture little boys who were reportedly gathering wild vegetables in occupied Palestinian land is wrong."

"Seeing the images of heavily armed Israeli soldiers manhandling and detaining these five preteen Palestinian children is extremely disturbing," she added. 

Al Jazeera reports the children were gathering wild vegetables when masked settlers approached them. The video shows IDF troops arriving on the scene and then pushing and dragging the boys to a nearby vehicle. 

Gaby Lasky, an Israeli human rights lawyer representing the boys, said they were held for about five hours at a police station in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba. 

The video of the incident sparked international outrage and condemnation.

"This is another example of the absolute disregard on the part of Israeli authorities and forces on the ground to the well-being and rights of Palestinians, no matter how young or vulnerable," B'Tselem spokesperson Amit Gilutz told Al Jazeera. 

In addition to regularly killing Palestinian children and teenagers with near-impunity, Israeli authorities also imprison hundreds of minors, some of whom have been tortured in custody, according to the United Nations. Earlier this year, B'Tselem reported 157 Palestinian minors were being held in Israeli prisons and administrative detention. 

Palestinian children also face the sometimes deadly danger of Israeli colonists who, while in the process of settling on stolen Palestinian land and ethnically cleansing the indigenous population to make room for Jewish settlers, often initiate violence or carry out "price tag" attacks in response to Israeli government action against illegal settlement activity.

Far-Right Bolivia Coup Leader Jeanine Añez Arrested on Terrorism, Sedition Charges

Far-right Bolivian politician Jeanine Añez was arrested Saturday on charges of terrorism and sedition for her role in the 2019 military coup that ousted former President Evo Morales and ushered in a brutal regime that violently repressed largely Indigenous pro-democracy protesters.

In November of 2019—days after Morales was forced by the nation's military to resign and flee the country over bogus claims of election fraud—Añez declared herself the interim president of Bolivia in violation of the country's constitution. The Trump administration, then in power in the U.S., applauded the military coup as it drew global condemnation.

What followed was a wave of deadly attacks by the Bolivian police and military against demonstrators who took to the streets to denounce the subversion of democracy and the illegitimate removal of the nation's first Indigenous leader.

But last October, as Common Dreams reported, Morales' Movement for Socialism (MAS) party—now headed by Luis Arce—prevailed in the country's closely-watched presidential election after the contest was twice postponed by the coup regime. Añez dropped out of the race in September after polling showed her in fourth place; her ally, Luis Camacho, ultimately came in third in the presidential election.

Early Saturday morning, Bolivian minister of government Carlos Eduardo del Castillo tweeted that Añez has "been apprehended and is currently in the hands of the police" after a warrant was issued for her arrest. Añez claimed she is a victim of "political persecution."

The Friday announcement of the warrant for Añez's arrest came after warrants were also issued for the former head of the armed forces and police, according to the Associated Press.

In a tweet Saturday morning, Morales declared that "the authors and accomplices of the dictatorship that looted the economy and attacked life and democracy in Bolivia" must "be investigated and punished."

Diane Archer on The War to Privatize Medicare

Missouri Prosecutors Lack the Power to Right a Wrongful Conviction

For more than 25 years, Lamar Johnson has been locked up in a Missouri prison for a crime that almost no one believes he committed. That includes the elected circuit attorney for the city of St. Louis, where Johnson was originally prosecuted for murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Thanks to a ruling this month from the state’s supreme court, Johnson’s time behind bars will continue, despite extensive evidence that police and prosecutorial misconduct compromised his case and the fact that the real perpetrators have come forward to take responsibility for the crime.

But the state’s high court didn’t consider any of this. Instead, it ruled in response to a purely procedural question: Does an elected prosecutor, in this case Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, have the power to overturn a wrongful conviction? The court determined that she does not — a decision that has far-reaching implications for the future of prosecutors’ conviction integrity units and those wrongfully convicted in Missouri.

The Missouri Supreme Court ruling is “deeply disappointing,” Gardner said in a statement. “What is at stake is equal justice under the law and public trust in the integrity of the entire criminal justice system.”

“Huge Victory”: Black Farmers Hail $5B in New COVID Relief Law to Redress Generations of Racism

Pelosi: Biden sending help for migrant children at border amid 'humanitarian' challenge

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi said, on Sunday that the Biden administration had inherited a broken immigration system as the administration announced it would send federal help to children on the US-Mexico border seeking asylum. ... The Biden administration, which has prioritized reversing the immigration policies of Donald Trump, announced late Saturday that it would deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), best known for responding to natural disasters, to the border, to manage and care for the children.

Fema agents would assist in the transfer of children in custody within 72 hours “into family homes or homes that are safe for them to be”, Pelosi said.

A near-record 9,457 unaccompanied children were taken into US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody in February, according to the agency, the most since May 2019.

Hundreds of immigrant children and teenagers have been detained at a border patrol tent facility in packed conditions, with some sleeping on the floor because there are not enough mats, the Associated Press reported on Friday, citing non-profit lawyers who conduct oversight of immigrant detention centers.

Private Companies Maneuvering to Cash In on Biden’s Child Migrant Detention

The influx of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border over the last three months is focusing attention — and criticism — on the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Even as officials claim that they are processing and releasing children as quickly as possible, a bottleneck has kept thousands of children in Border Patrol custody longer than the court-mandated maximum 72 hours, with more than 100 kids held for more than 10 days, sometimes in harsh conditions.

The influx has reached a level where Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to, as a Homeland Security statement put it, “look at every available option to quickly expand physical capacity for appropriate lodging.” In its effort to house child migrants as they pass through various agencies’ custody on their way to placement in the U.S., the federal government is likely to turn to an all-too-familiar resource: Private companies that operate custodial facilities which straddle the line between shelters and detention centers. Even as scrutiny fell on decisions like the one to reopen a controversial emergency “influx shelter” in Texas, less attention has been paid to the for-profit security firms that are being charged with caring for some of these children.

At least three companies that have taken on past roles in immigration detention or enforcement, including one with a history of operating holding centers for children, are poised to vie for multimillion-dollar contracts to operate, staff, and do logistical work for the administration’s efforts to process and place migrant children. The trio of companies — Caliburn International, the British security company Serco Group, and Pacific Architects and Engineers — have already posted job listings related to a contract to operate a child-detention center in Homestead, Florida, with a checkered history of abuse. Caliburn, which already holds contracts for child-detention centers, and Serco were among the sponsors of a government-run session to inform private-detention firms about the bidding process on the Homestead facility.

Critics of harsh immigration policies and the private detention industry are watching with a wary eye, noting that two of the firms poised to bid for contracts have poor track records with accountability and abuse in migrant detention.

Biden, Pelosi COVER For Cuomo Amid RESIGNATION Calls

Cuomo vaccine tsar's pleas to support governor raise ethical concerns – reports

The coronavirus vaccination tsar for the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, made appeals for political support for the embattled politician, prompting ethical concerns, according to multiple media reports on Sunday.

New York’s “vaccination tsar”, longtime Cuomo aide Larry Schwartz, reportedly pivoted in at least one telephone conversation with a county executive from a discussion of vaccination policy directly to an appeal for support for Cuomo.

Schwartz has denied mixing political and policy calls or acting improperly. ... One county executive has already filed a preliminary report with the state attorney general, Letitia James, of a possible ethics violation by the Cuomo administration in the Schwartz matter, according to reporting in the Washington Post and New York Times.

“At best, it was inappropriate,” an unnamed executive told the Post of Schwartz’s mixing discussions of vaccination policy and Cuomo’s political future. “At worst, it was clearly over the ethical line.” At least two other county executives reported a close juxtaposition of phone conversations about vaccine policy with other conversations with Schwartz about supporting Cuomo.

Schwartz served as the governor’s top aide for four years during Cuomo’s first administration and was called back into service after the outbreak of the coronavirus emergency.

Krystal Ball: How Cuomo TRICKED Dem Voters with Gender Identity Politics

'We're Destroying Our Life-Support Systems': Study Suggests the Amazon Now Contributes to Warming

While recent research has raised alarm that tropical forests including the Amazon could soon stop serving as carbon sinks, a first-of-its-kind study from 30 experts that takes into account other greenhouse gases suggests the world's largest rainforest may already be contributing to the warming of the planet.

The new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, considers not only carbon dioxide (CO2) and its impact on the global climate but also that of methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N20), black carbon, biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), aerosols, evapotranspiration, and albedo.

"What the authors do that's important is to expand the conversation beyond carbon dioxide, which is what 90% of public conversation is centered around," Patrick Megonigal, associate director of research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, told National Geographic.

"CO2 is not a lone actor," added Megonigal, who was cited in but not involved with the research, which was funded by the National Geographic Society. "When you consider the whole cast of other characters, the outlook in the Amazon is that the impacts of human activities will be worse than we realize." ...

The study notes that "after a transient period of reduced deforestation and increased optimism, rising agricultural conversion and illegal logging activities are again accelerating Amazonian forest loss. This resurgence has renewed concerns that the region is rapidly approaching a catastrophic 'tipping point.'"

Data from the Rainforest Foundation Norway revealed Monday that human activities have destroyed 34% of old-growth tropical rainforests and degraded 30% worldwide. Over half of that destruction since 2002 has been in the Amazon and neighboring South American rainforests. Under Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro—whose country is home to the majority of the Amazon—deforestation hit a 12-year high in 2020.

"Cutting the forest is interfering with its carbon uptake; that's a problem," Kristofer Covey, lead author of the new study and a professor of environmental studies at Skidmore College, told National Geographic. "But when you start to look at these other factors alongside CO2, it gets really hard to see how the net effect isn't that the Amazon as a whole is really warming global climate."

The study says that despite some uncertainty, "we conclude that current warming from non-CO2 agents (especially CH4 and N2O) in the Amazon Basin largely offsets—and most likely exceeds—the climate service provided by atmospheric CO2 uptake. We also find that the majority of anthropogenic impacts act to increase the radiative forcing potential of the basin."

"Given the large contribution of less-recognized agents," the paper continues—noting that Amazonian trees alone emit about 3.5% of all global CH4—focusing strictly on carbon uptake and storage "is incompatible with genuine efforts to understand and manage the biogeochemistry of climate in a rapidly changing Amazon Basin."

Covey and his colleagues told National Geographic that reversing the damage that's already been done will require halting emissions from fossil fuels around the world and reining in Amazon deforestation, "along with reducing dam building and increasing efforts to replant trees."

US Lawyer Steven Donziger Speaks From House Arrest in NYC After Suing Chevron For Amazon Oil Spills

Philadelphia calls for 'lights out' after skyscrapers cause hundreds of bird deaths

The lights of Philadelphia may not shine as bright in the coming weeks as a coalition in the City of Brotherly Love tries to prevent millions of migrating birds that pass through twice a year from slamming into skyscrapers and crashing to the sidewalk.

Bird Safe Philly on Thursday announced the Lights Out Philly initiative, a voluntary program in which many external and internal lights in buildings are turned off or dimmed at night during the spring and fall.

The problem of artificial lights attracting birds to their deaths in the city is not new. “We have specimens in the academy’s ornithology collection from a kill that happened when lights were first installed on Philadelphia’s city hall tower in 1896,” said Jason Weckstein, the associate curator of ornithology at Drexel University’s Academy of Natural Sciences. ...

Birds navigate during migration using celestial cues and when they cannot see stars on a cloudy night they get confused by bright city lights, according to experts. Windows pose a problem, according to Weckstein, because birds might see a reflection of trees or the sky.

Scientists estimate between 365 million and 1 billion birds are killed by collisions with buildings or other outdoor structures in the US every year and those crashes are taking a toll on some species.

'Like the end of the world': Beijing chokes in vast sandstorm

Also of Interest

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

The Blob Insists on Clinging to an Obsolete Past

5 former OPCW officials join prominent voices to call out Syria cover-up

How Biden Benefits From Limiting His Own War Powers

WATCH: Home Run for Assange

The Sovietization of the American Press

Murdoch Paper Gives Away the Game: Cuomo Is on Their Side

Moscow would retaliate if U.S. deployed missiles in Japan

Almost Nobody Wants Troops at the US Capitol, Including the Guard Chief and Congress

Wall Street vs. Workers

Advocates Sound Alarm Over Quiet Trump Era Move That Could Further Privatize Medicare

The 'American Dream' of upward mobility is broken. Look at the numbers

Congress Urged to Take 'Immediate Action' to Stop Debt Collectors From Snatching Relief Checks

Don't worry, be happy: how your state of mind could affect your Covid jab

A Year Later, Tara Reade Works to Correct the Record

Primaries Matter: Why This Time Is Different for Andrew Cuomo

Oil Spill Caused By Israeli Attacks On Iranian Oil Bound for Syria

Jimmy Dore: Rachel Maddow's Jaw-Dropping Propaganda For Dems Stimulus Bill

Rising: Governor Jim Justice - WV Vaccines & Why GOP Is Wrong On Stimulus Opposition

A Little Night Music

Roy Brown - Bootleggin' Baby

Roy Brown - Big Town

Roy Brown - Butcher Pete Pts 1 & 2

Roy Brown - Trouble at Midnight

Roy Brown - Love Don't Love Nobody

Roy Brown - Hurry Hurry Baby

Roy Brown - Ain't No Rocking No More

Roy Brown - Shake 'Em Up Baby

Roy Brown - Saturday Night / Everybody

Roy Brown - Bar Room Blues

Roy Brown - Boogie At Midnight