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This evening's music features Louisiana blues singer and guitarist Lonesome Sundown. Enjoy!

“We used to be a nation that celebrated people who got things done. Now we celebrate people who stop things getting done.”

-- George F. Will

News and Opinion

Republicans Block Government Funding, Refusing to Lift Debt Limit

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a spending bill needed to avert a government shutdown this week and a federal debt default next month, moving the nation closer to the brink of fiscal crisis as they refused to allow Democrats to lift the limit on federal borrowing.

With a Thursday deadline looming to fund the government — and the country moving closer to a catastrophic debt-limit breach — the stalemate in the Senate reflected a bid by Republicans to undercut President Biden and top Democrats at a critical moment, as they labor to keep the government running and enact an ambitious domestic agenda. ...

The package that was blocked on Monday, which also included emergency aid to support the resettlement of Afghan refugees and disaster recovery, would keep all government agencies funded through Dec. 3 and increase the debt ceiling through the end of 2022. But after the bill cleared the House a week earlier with just Democratic votes, it fell far short of the 60 votes needed to move forward in the Senate on Monday. ...

The debt ceiling increase is needed to finance borrowing that occurred in the past under administrations of both parties — not to pay for plans that Mr. Biden has yet to sign into law. And so far, there is little outreach or negotiation to resolve the impasse.

It is perhaps the most serious round of brinkmanship over America’s debt, with economists and analysts concerned that neither side will relent before the stock market crashes and the government is unable to prioritize sending out Social Security payments, food assistance or aid to veterans and military spouses. The most recent projection from the Bipartisan Policy Center, an independent think tank, estimates that the Treasury Department will run out of cash to meet all its obligations between Oct. 15 and Nov. 4.

The Plot to Kill Julian Assange: Report Reveals CIA’s Plan to Kidnap, Assassinate WikiLeaks Founder

How Is The CIA Still A Thing?

Citing “conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials,” a new report by Yahoo News has confirmed earlier allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency not only spied on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his associates, but also drew up plans for kidnapping, renditioning, and assassinating him.

These plans were reportedly made in coordination with the Trump White House as then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo and then-Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel raged over WikiLeaks’ 2017 Vault 7 release which revealed that the CIA had lost control of an enormous digital arsenal of hacking tools. These included tools which enabled the surveillance of smartphones, smart TVs and web browsers, the hacking of computerized vehicle control systems, and the ability to frame foreign governments for cyber attacks by inserting the digital “fingerprints” of the hacking methods they employ for investigators to find. It was the single largest data leak in CIA history.

Normally we have to wait decades for confirmation that the CIA did something nefarious, and then people absurdly assume that such things no longer occur because it was so long ago, and because changing your worldview is uncomfortable. But here we are with an extensively sourced report that the agency plotted to kidnap, rendition and assassinate a journalist for publishing authentic documents in the public interest, just four years after the fact.

Which is about as spectacular a violation of virtually every value that western society claims to uphold. Particularly the assassination bit.

The authors of the story (who for the record insert their own flimsy spin insinuating ties between Russia and WikiLeaks) say it’s not known just how serious the assassination plans were taken at Langley. But they make it abundantly clear that such plans were made:

“[A]gency executives requested and received ‘sketches’ of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members who had access to Vault 7 materials, said a former intelligence official. There were discussions ‘on whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal,’ the former official said.”

And that, right there, just by itself, should be reason enough to completely abolish the Central Intelligence Agency. Just the fact that this is an institution where such conversations even happen and such plans even get made, to say nothing of the obvious implication that they wouldn’t have such conversations and make such plans if they did not act on them from time to time.

I just can’t get over how this claim was openly confirmed by a mainstream journalism investigation and the public response has been “Oh wow what an alarming news story,” instead of, “Okay well the CIA doesn’t get to exist then.”

I mean, is it not out-of-this-world bizarre that we just found out the CIA recently drew up plans to assassinate a journalist for journalistic activity, and yet we’re not all unanimously demanding that the CIA be completely dismantled and flushed down the toilet forever?

I’m seriously confused at the people who are opposed to abolishing the CIA?

Is the argument that they are doing good work?

How can anyone hear about the history of the CIA and what they do and be like, “I approve”

— Nick is a Fred Hampton Leftist (@SocialistMMA) September 27, 2021

This would after all be the same lying, drug-running, warmongering, propagandizing, psychological terrorizing Central Intelligence Agency that has been viciously smashing the world into compliance with its agendas for generations. It is surely one of the most depraved institutions ever to have existed, comparable in terms of sheer psychopathy to the worst of the worst in history.

So why does it exist? Why is there still an institution whose extensive use of torture has reportedly included “Rape, gang rape, rape using eels, snakes, or hard objects, and rape followed by murder; electric shock (‘the Bell Telephone Hour’) rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue; the ‘water treatment’; the ‘airplane’ in which the prisoner’s arms were tied behind the back, and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in midair, after which he or she was beaten; beatings with rubber hoses and whips; the use of police dogs to maul prisoners”?

I am of course being rhetorical. We all know why the CIA still exists. An agency which exerts control over the news media with ever-increasing brazenness is not about to start helping the public become more well-informed about its unbroken track record of horrific abuses, and if anyone in power ever even thinks about crossing them they have “six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.”

The CIA is still a thing for the very reason we wish it wasn’t: because it is more savage and unscrupulous than anyone else around. Because it is willing to do whatever it takes to continue dominating and getting its way. Because terrible things happen to people it doesn’t like.

The date of the absolute last time the CIA ever did anything evil keeps getting moved forward. The CIA just casually had plans drawn up for the assassination of Julian Assange in case they decided that was something they wanted to do, but you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist if you think they might be doing other bad things right now.

The reason the latest Assange story isn’t getting more traction and causing more people to think critically about the CIA is because the US government making plans to kidnap, rendition and assassinate a journalist for telling the truth is so incomprehensibly evil that it causes too much cognitive dissonance for people to really take in. Our minds are wired to reject information which disrupts our worldview, and people who’ve spent their lives marinating in the belief that they live in a free democracy will have worldviews that are resistant to information which shows we are actually ruled by secretive power structures who laugh at our votes.

So to recap, the CIA made plans to kidnap and rendition Julian Assange and to assassinate him and his associates. The CIA also spied on Assange and his legal team, and a notoriously untrustworthy key witness for the prosecution in his case has admitted to fabricating evidence. And yet the CIA is not being burnt to the ground and its ashes scattered to the Langley winds, and the UK is still somehow proceeding right along with the US appeal to extradite Assange.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: as much light as WikiLeaks has shone on the dark inner workings of the powerful over the years, the persecution of Julian Assange by those very same power structures has revealed far, far more. The more they seek to persecute him the brighter that light shines on them, making it easier and easier for us to see who they are, what they do, and how they do it.

pic.twitter.com/LWNibgTiGg

— Erobos Abzu Lamashtu (@ErobosAbzuLamas) September 27, 2021

China to clamp down on abortions for ‘non-medical purposes’

China’s pledge to limit abortions puts women’s bodies under the state’s control just as the one-child policy did and could endanger the lives of women seeking abortions, rights groups have said.

The Chinese government announced on Monday that it would seek to reduce abortions for “non-medical reasons” – a move seen as being in line with its attempts to accelerate birthrates.

Government guidelines did not provide detail on what constitutes a non-medical abortion.

Yaqiu Wang, China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said: “This government in the past 40 years has tried to restrict women’s reproductive rights, making women forcefully abort their children and now restricting abortions. I don’t know what non-medical means, but everyone who knows Chinese government knows this isn’t good.

“The core of the policy is the same – to restrict women’s reproductive means, to see women as a tool. Now there’s an ageing population, a not large enough labour force, so we need more babies. It’s the same: seeing women as a tool for economic goals.”

Berlin Votes to Expropriate 240K Apartments From Corporate Landlords

Housing justice advocates are celebrating after residents in Berlin, Germany—fed up with skyrocketing rents driven in part by speculative investments in real estate markets—voted on Sunday to socialize roughly 240,000 homes by expropriating apartments controlled by the city's biggest corporate landlords and transferring them to public ownership.

By a margin of 56% to 39%, Berliners approved a referendum that instructs the municipal government to purchase housing from mega-landlords, or private real estate companies that own more than 3,000 units. If implemented, the move would bring approximately 240,000 homes, or about 15% of the city's stock, into public ownership.

The referendum was secured by the Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen (Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.) campaign, which gathered 343,000 petition signatures to ensure the measure made its way onto the ballot for Sunday's elections in Germany. Deutsche Wohnen—the largest residential property owner in Berlin, with a portfolio of more than 113,000 units—is one of several profit-maximizing mega-landlords that organizers expect to be covered by the decision.

"For years, Berlin's rental market has been going berserk," the campaign noted, adding that over the past decade, rents have risen to a far greater extent than wages. "That is why more and more people are affected by displacement... We seek to end the rental insanity."

Progressives worldwide applauded Sunday night's result—made possible by years of organizing by anti-gentrification activists and housing-for-all campaigners in Berlin, where over 84% of the population are tenants and "rents have doubled in the last 10 to 15 years," according to Jonas Becker, a spokesperson for Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. ...

Progressive International characterized the development as a chance to "return" hundreds of thousands of homes to the public. That's because, as journalist Molly Shah wrote last week for The Real News Network, "Berlin used to have much more publicly owned housing, but since reunification of East and West Germany in 1990 more than 200,000 units have been sold to private equity and hedge funds."

Notwithstanding the significance of Sunday night's victory, the referendum to transform corporate landlords' units into public housing is non-binding, meaning that fierce opposition is expected and organizers will likely need to put sustained pressure on Berlin's elected officials in order to ensure the city passes a law that turns the plan into reality.

Euronews reported:

The newly elected parliament has yet to form a coalition, but will likely be comprised of the outgoing constellation of center-left SPD, Greens, and the Left Party. Of those, only the Left Party openly supports expropriation, while the SPD is against it.

Incoming SPD mayor Franziska Giffey has recently categorically ruled out expropriation. Given that more than one million Berliners voted for it, compared to the roughly 400,000 that voted for her, Giffey's hand may be forced by the initiative's popularity.

Joanna Kusiak, an activist for Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co., warned the city government that "more people voted for our initiative than any single party in Berlin. We got support from every part of Berlin, and across the political spectrum."

Kalle Kunkel, another organizer behind the initiative, said that Mayor-elect Giffey "can't just be indifferent to a democratic decision."

"Sure, she'll try to use all the legal and formal tricks at her disposal to delay or circumvent its implementation," Kunkel acknowledged, "but we have over 1,000 activists around the city and they're not going to be robbed of this victory."

Seven independent legal experts have confirmed that the proposal is constitutional, according to Kusiak. The campaign invokes Article 15 of the German constitution, a previously unused eminent domain clause that, according to Euronews, "expressly allows socialization for the public good."

While Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co. estimates that the initiative would cost roughly $9.3 billion, the projections of Berlin's municipal government are closer to $35.1 billion. "The deciding factor," Euronews noted, "will be if the city has to pay the market price for the apartments."

Earlier this month, Berlin's government announced that it would buy nearly 15,000 apartments from two corporate landlords for $2.9 billion, a move that housing campaigners attributed to the potential success of the referendum.

Some progressives say that Berlin's movement to decommodify thousands of homes in one fell swoop provides important lessons, given that moving units from the private market—where shelter is increasingly treated as a financial asset—to the public domain instantly increases the supply of housing that should, in theory, be permanently affordable.

Based on her conversations with housing organizers in Berlin, Shah wrote that "the reason so many of the city's establishment have come out against the law is because of its possible effectiveness in solving the housing crisis—not only in Berlin, but as an example to cities all over the world."

Kim Meyer of the Berlin Alliance against Displacement and Rent Madness told Shah that a successful referendum to decommodify housing in Germany's capital city "might inspire people to question the current sellout of their land and cities to global investors and to [investigate] compulsory purchases of necessities by their administrations, like housing, water wells, power plants, et cetera, and to fight for their human right to housing."

Germany: SPD intends to form coalition with Greens and liberals

The centre-left contender to fill Angela Merkel’s shoes has announced his intention to forge a “social-ecological-liberal coalition” following Sunday’s knife-edge German national vote, as momentum slips from the outgoing chancellor’s own designated successor. “The voters have made themselves very clear,” Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic party (SPD) said at a press conference on Monday morning. He pointed out that his centre-left party, the Greens and the pro-business Free Democratic party (FDP) had all picked up significant numbers of new votes at the election, while the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered a loss in support of almost nine percentage points.

The Greens and the Free Democrats, who achieved 14.8% and 11.5% of the vote and could form a stronger bloc than either the SPD or CDU/CSU, have agreed to hold exploratory talks with each other before entering negotiations proper, the FDP leader, Christian Lindner, said on Monday.

As well as joining a power-sharing deal with the SPD, nicknamed “traffic light” after the parties’ traditional colours, the Greens and FDP could theoretically lend their support to a so-called “Jamaica coalition” with the CDU, led by its chancellor candidate, Armin Laschet. ...

While the result of the vote “cannot, must not and won’t satisfy the [Christian Democratic] Union”, the CDU leader said at a press conference, it did not yield a government mandate for either of the largest parties. Not only Social Democrats question Laschet’s analysis of the result. On Bild newspaper’s own television channel, the tabloid’s commentator Paul Ronzheimer said the Rhinelander gave the impression that “he lives in a different reality”.

Germany election: far-right AfD loses status as main opposition

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which made a whirlwind entry into the German parliament in 2017, is set to lose its status as the main opposition force following Sunday’s election but has at the same time emerged as the strongest party in parts of eastern Germany. The party, which rose to prominence on an anti-immigrant ticket after the arrival of around 1m refugees in 2015 but has more recently focused its attention on attacking the government’s pandemic management, dropped just over 2% nationally to secure 10.3% of the vote.

It will lose its prominent status in the Bundestag, which has allowed it to take to the podium immediately after the chancellor has spoken, an opportunity it has often used to turn parliamentary debates into fiery and combative affairs. That position will now go to whichever of the higher-scoring parties does not enter government after coalition negotiations are complete.

Still, it has consolidated its power base in the eastern state of Saxony, emerging once again as the strongest party there with 24.6% (2.4% lower than 2017), and has become the leading party in Thuringia for the first time, securing 24%, 1.3% more than in 2017. It appeared to make gains on the back of the poor performance of the Christian Democrats (CDU) in Saxony, which secured just over 17%, a fall of almost 10%, putting the conservatives in third place behind the AfD and Social Democrats (SPD).

In Thuringia, where the AfD has been placed under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution for its suspected ties to rightwing extremism, the CDU dropped 12 percentage points to third place with 16.9%, behind the SPD.

The party was founded in 2013 as an anti-Euro movement, but has since won solid support among communities that have struggled economically after German reunification and made the topic of the “disadvantaged east” its central theme.

Ryan Grim: Covid Deaths Are Wiping People Out In Trump Country

The message from Israel is clear: Covid booster shots should be standard

In the summer, Israel began offering third doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine to the over-60s. It was the first country to start administering “booster shots”, to people vaccinated at least five months previously. The prime minister, Naftali Bennett, announced the decision after a study by Leumit Health Services, an Israeli healthcare provider, showed that those over the age of 60 who had been vaccinated more than five months previously were three times more likely to be infected than those vaccinated more recently. As of 29 August, Israel began offering a third dose to everyone aged 12 and older, who had waited this period of time. The question for other countries is now whether to follow Israel’s lead.

The first data evaluating the early impact of the third dose programme were published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). It showed that two weeks after more than 1.1 million over-60s had received their third dose, they were 11.3 times less likely to become infected with the exceptionally contagious Delta variant that currently predominates in Israel and across the world.

In other words, third doses are highly effective at preventing people from becoming infected with Delta, among those who are willing to be vaccinated. When third doses dramatically reduce a person’s susceptibility to infection, it creates a barrier to the onward transmission and spread of the virus. This is important because growing numbers of people are getting infected despite being vaccinated (though the risks of infection, spread and severe illness remain greatest among those who are unvaccinated). And they have similar peak levels of virus in their noses to those who are unvaccinated, contributing to the unrelenting spread of the virus.

Third doses stimulate the production of neutralising antibodies that are both higher in magnitude and have greater breadth against viral variants than those elicited by a second dose. Taken together, booster jabs aren’t just an immune refresher – they are an immunological upgrade. These superior neutralising antibody responses create an immunological buffer that is effective even against the Sars-CoV-2 Delta variant, explaining the dramatic reduction in risk of infection following third doses in Israel. The same buffer would be expected to reduce the need for frequent “boosting” in the future, as higher levels of neutralising antibodies are predicted to confer longer-lasting immunity.

Congress Playing CHICKEN On Funding, Government LURCHING Towards Shutdown

Big Pharma’s Dems Score Ad Blitz

A dark money group funded by Big Pharma is bankrolling ads boosting the conservative House Democrats who are trying to weaken the party’s plan to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. Additionally, a separate pharma-funded foundation is suddenly sponsoring newspaper ads thanking one of the Democrats for his work on prescription drug policy. The new ad campaigns highlight the lengths the pharmaceutical industry is willing to go in order to derail legislation that could cut into their bottom line. If Big Pharma’s efforts are successful, it will prevent the government from saving tens of billions annually and stop health care reforms that would cut prices on expensive drugs by more than 50 percent.

Last week, the Washington-based nonprofit Center Forward started running digital ads touting six Democratic lawmakers who are trying to replace Democrats’ long-promised prescription drug pricing bill with far weaker provisions: Reps. Scott Peters (Calif.) Kurt Schrader (Ore.), Kathleen Rice (N.Y.), Stephanie Murphy (Fla.), Lou Correa (Calif.), and Josh Gottheimer (N.J.). Four of the Democrats supported by the ads — Peters, Schrader, Rice, and Murphy — recently used their committee positions to try to block House leaders from including the drug pricing legislation in the party’s $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. While House Democrats have kept the drug pricing measure in their reconciliation bill so far, Democrats only currently have a four-seat majority in the House, so they can only afford to lose three votes on the package.

Center Forward, who says its mission is “to give centrist allies the information they need to craft common sense solutions,” is heavily funded by Big Pharma. Washington’s top drug lobby, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), donated $4.5 million to Center Forward between 2016 and 2019, accounting for a quarter of its revenue, tax records show.

'Cartoonish Level Corrupt': As Dems Fight for Bold Agenda, Sinema to Fundraise With Its Corporate Opponents

U.S. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema faced blistering rebuke Monday following reports that the right-wing Arizona Democrat will solicit large campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists staunchly opposed to her party's flagship $3.5 trillion Build Back Better budget reconciliation package.

The New York Times reports Sinema is scheduled to host a Tuesday fundraiser with five influential business lobby groups. According to the paper:

Under Ms. Sinema's political logo, the influential National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and the grocers' PAC, along with lobbyists for roofers and electrical contractors and a small business group called the S-Corp Political Action Committee, have invited association members to an undisclosed location on Tuesday afternoon for 45 minutes to write checks for between $1,000 and $5,800, payable to Sinema for Arizona.

These organizations vehemently oppose the Build Back Better bill, which Robert Yeakel, the director of government relations at the National Grocers Association, recently called a "laundry list of tax hikes."

Sinema also rejects the bill as proposed. Along with a small coterie of conservative Democrats including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, she has defied her party—and the wishes of a majority of U.S. voters—by rejecting the proposal's $3.5 trillion price tag.

"So Kyrsten Sinema is using the reconciliation fight to collect $5,800 checks from corporate PACs opposing the bill?" tweeted Sawyer Hackett, executive director of former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro's People First Future PAC.

"Each of these PACs overwhelmingly support[s] Republicans over Democrats," Hackett added.

Sinema and others also came under fire over the weekend for opposing tax hikes on corporations and the super-rich to finance Democrats' reconciliation package, with Demand Progress campaign director Robert Cruickshank accusing right-wing Democrats of "carrying water for big corporations and billionaires who don't want their taxes to go up."

As Sinema gets ready to collect checks from opponents of the Build Back Better bill, House Democrats are preparing to pass the sweeping social welfare, infrastructure, and climate measure later this week. House progressives are threatening to block bipartisan infrastructure legislation unless conservative Democrats support the full $3.5 trillion proposal.

On Saturday, The Daily Beast reported that the Arizona Democratic Party passed a resolution vowing that if Sinema "continues to delay, disrupt, or vote to gut the reconciliation package of its necessary funding" and keeps opposing filibuster reform, it will "go officially on record and will give Sen. Sinema a vote of no confidence."

Democratic organizer Kai Newkirk told The Daily Beast that "the Arizonans who did the work to elect Sinema have had enough of her betraying the voters who put her in office. It's time for her to show the bare minimum of accountability and stop obstructing the agenda that Democrats, including her, campaigned on and were elected to deliver."

"Sinema is setting her political future on fire," Newkirk added. "If she doesn't change course drastically and soon, it will be too late."

Briahna Joy Gray: HIGHLY LIKELY Nina Turner CHALLENGES Shontel Brown In OH-11, Files Campaign Papers

The governments of the world, largely owned by corporations, can't agree to keep the habitat which humanity relies upon able to support human life. Since corporations are immortal, presumably they will survive, unless Mitt Romney was correct that "corporations are people, my friend" in which case they are toast, too.

Have you told your corporate government to fuck off today?

Cop26 climate talks will not fulfil aims of Paris agreement, key players warn

Vital United Nations climate talks, billed as one of the last chances to stave off climate breakdown, will not produce the breakthrough needed to fulfil the aspiration of the Paris agreement, key players in the talks have conceded. The UN, the UK hosts and other major figures involved in the talks have privately admitted that the original aim of the Cop26 summit will be missed, as the pledges on greenhouse gas emissions cuts from major economies will fall short of the halving of global emissions this decade needed to limit global heating to 1.5C.

Senior observers of the two-week summit due to take place in Glasgow this November with 30,000 attenders, said campaigners and some countries would be disappointed that the hoped-for outcome will fall short.

However, the UN, UK and US insisted that the broader goal of the conference – that of “keeping 1.5C alive” – was still in sight, and that world leaders meeting in Glasgow could still set a pathway for the future that would avoid the worst ravages of climate chaos. That pathway, in the form of a “Glasgow pact”, would allow for future updates to emissions pledges in the next few years that could be sufficient for the world to stay within scientific advice on carbon levels. ...

A US official told the Guardian countries must still aim as high as possible on emissions cuts: “We are going to try to achieve [the emissions cuts necessary]. No one in the administration wants to admit defeat before we have made the maximum effort. You should set an ambitious agenda and may have to, in the end, take baby steps but you should plan for long strides. We are taking long strides.”

After the Amazon, Brazil's Atlantic forest in danger

Long article, worth a scan:

Race to the bottom: the disastrous blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea

In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans.

In the three months since it was fired, the sound of that shot has reverberated through government offices, conservation movements and scientific academies, and is now starting to reach a wider public, who are asking how the fate of the greatest of global commons can be decided by a sponsorship deal between a tiny island and a multinational mining corporation.

The risks are enormous. Oversight is almost impossible. Regulators admit humanity knows more about deep space than the deep ocean. The technology is unproven. Scientists are not even sure what lives in those profound ecosystems. State governments have yet to agree on a rulebook on how deep oceans can be exploited. No national ballot has ever included a vote on excavating the seabed. Conservationists, including David Attenborough and Chris Packham, argue it is reckless to go ahead with so much uncertainty and such potential devastation ahead.

Louisa Casson, an oceans campaigner at Greenpeace International, says the two-year deadline is “really dangerous”. Given the potential risks of fisheries disturbance, water contamination, sound pollution and habitat destruction for dumbo octopuses, sea pangolins and other species, she says no new licences should be approved. “This is now a test of governments who claim to want to protect the oceans,” she said. “They simply cannot allow these reckless companies to rush headlong into a race to the bottom, where little-known ecosystems will be ploughed up for profit, and the risks and liabilities will be pushed on to small island nations. We need an urgent deep-sea mining moratorium to protect the oceans.”

Mining companies also insist on urgency – to start exploration. They say the minerals – copper, cobalt, nickel and magnesium – are essential for a green transition. If the world wants to decarbonise and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, they say we must start extracting the resources for car batteries and wind turbines soon. They already have exploration permits for an expanse of international seabed as large as France and Germany combined, an area that is likely to expand rapidly. All they need now is a set of internationally agreed operating rules. The rulebook is being drawn up by the ISA, set up in 1994 by the United Nations to oversee sustainable seabed exploration for the benefit of all humanity. But progress is slower than mining companies and their investors would like.

That is why Nauru’s action is pivotal. By triggering the “two-year rule”, the island nation has in effect given regulators 24 months to finish the rulebook.

In search of ‘Lithium Valley’: why energy companies see riches in the California desert

Standing atop a pockmarked red mesa, Rod Colwell looks out at an expanse of water that resembles a thin blue strip on the horizon. The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, has come and gone at least five times in the last 1,300 years, most recently in 1905, when floodwaters from the Colorado River refilled its basin. A mid-century resort destination, the lake has since become an environmental disaster zone. Its waters, long fed by pesticide-laden runoff from nearby farms, have been steadily evaporating, exposing a dusty shoreline that kicks up lung-damaging silt into the surrounding communities of the Imperial Valley, where rates of asthma are alarmingly high.

But as disastrous as the disappearing Salton Sea is, powerful people believe that a vast reserve of lithium locked beneath it and the surrounding area holds the key to flipping the region’s fortunes.

Global demand for lithium, a metal vital for the batteries in electric cars and computer electronics, is projected to grow by 40 times in the next 20 years as renewable technologies become more ubiquitous. The earth deep below the southern Salton Sea is rich in hot, mineral-abundant brine that contains some of the world’s largest deposits of lithium, and Colwell and others envision a “Lithium Valley” that would establish California as a global production hub and employ thousands of workers for generations to come.

Colwell keeps track of the Salton Sea’s water levels because as it evaporates, more land becomes available for Controlled Thermal Resources, the Australia-based lithium mining and geothermal power company where he is CEO. On this “blank canvas” of exposed land, he imagines a grid filled with huge, steam-emitting facilities, a cathode manufacturing plant for batteries and solar panels, and rows of crops to remediate the salty white soils. ...

California officials estimate about 600,000 tons of lithium could be produced every year in the Imperial Valley – an amount that would upend global supply chains, especially if related businesses like battery and cathode makers decided to relocate here. The state has convened a “Lithium Valley” commission to study the potential industry, which envisions thousands of clean energy jobs and an economic leg up for communities along the US-Mexico border, across from Mexicali, whose residents are among the state’s poorest. But many who live here say they’ve heard similar promises before. Some fear that lithium is just the latest example of how their homes and bodies are treated as an industrial experiment, especially as the commercial-level technology needed to get at the lithium is still in its very early stages.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges - America’s Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy

HBO’s Anti-Maduro Propaganda Is Cruder Than Venezuelan Oil

Almost half a million US households lack indoor plumbing: ‘The conditions are inhumane’

'Quite Literally What Instigated the Tunisian Revolution': Outrage After NYC Food Vendor's Stall 'Trashed' By City

Robert Kaplan Was Trading Like a Hedge Fund Kingpin for Five Years while President of the Dallas Fed; a Dozen Legal Safeguards Failed to Stop Him

Years of Local Opposition Defeats PennEast Pipeline

Paraguay on the brink as historic drought depletes river, its life-giving artery

River otter attacks baffle authorities in Anchorage, Alaska

South Australian eagle fossil identified as one of the oldest raptor species in the world

Rolling Stones review – a funky, heavy first show without Charlie Watts

Kim Iversen: Norway DROPS All Restrictions And Chooses To LIVE With Covid

Progressive UNDERDOG Amy Vilela’s INSURGENT Campaign To Take Down Establishment Dem

BLATANT Gerrymandering In New TX Congressional Map, CA Makes Vote By Mail PERMANENT

A Little Night Music

Lonesome Sundown - I'm A Mojo Man

Lonesome Sundown w/Lazy Lester - Gonna stick to you baby

Lonesome Sundown - I'm a samplin' man

Lonesome Sundown - You're Playing Hookey

Lonesome Sundown - Leave My Money Alone

Lonesome Sundown - Lonesome Whistler

Lonesome Sundown - I´ve Got the Blues

Lonesome Sundown - Lost Without Love

Lonesome Sundown - What I had, I didn't need (now I need, don't have a dime)

Lonesome Sundown - Louisiana Lover Man