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This evening's music features Jazz multi-instrumentalist and singer Slim Gaillard. Enjoy!

"No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from."

-- George Eliot

News and Opinion

America's Terrible God Is a Weapons-Maker

Who is America's god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn't serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god of justice and mercy. In truth, the deity America believes in is the five-sided one headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

In God We Trust is on all our coins. But, again, which god? The one of "turn the other cheek"? The one who found his disciples among society's outcasts? The one who wanted nothing to do with moneychangers or swords? As Joe Biden might say, give me a break.

America's true god is a deity of wrath, whose keenest followers profit mightily from war and see such gains as virtuous, while its most militant disciples, a crew of losing generals and failed Washington officials, routinely employ murderous violence across the globe. It contains multitudes, its name is legion, but if this deity must have one name, citing a need for some restraint, let it be known as the Pentagod.

Yes, the Pentagon is America's true god. Consider that the Biden administration requested a whopping $753 billion for military spending in fiscal year 2022 even as the Afghan War was cratering. Consider that the House Armed Services Committee then boosted that blockbuster budget to $778 billion in September. Twenty-five billion dollars extra for "defense," hardly debated, easily passed, with strong bipartisan support in Congress. How else, if not religious belief, to explain this, despite the Pentagod's prodigal $8 trillion wars over the last two decades that ended so disastrously? How else to account for future budget projections showing that all-American deity getting another $8 trillion or so over the next decade, even as the political parties fight like rabid dogs over roughly 15% of that figure for much-needed domestic improvements?

Paraphrasing Joe Biden, show me your budget and I'll tell you what you worship. In that context, there can't be the slightest doubt: America worships its Pentagod and the weapons and wars that feed it.

'We Need to Get Our Priorities Right': Bernie Sanders a 'No' on $778 Billion Pentagon Budget Vote

On Tuesday, the eve of a likely U.S. Senate vote on the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, Sen. Bernie Sanders said he would vote against the legislation because it enriches the military-industrial complex at the expense of desperately needed social programs and climate action.

"Many of my colleagues tell the American people, day after day, how deeply concerned they are about the deficit and the national debt," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. "They tell us that we just don't have enough money to expand Medicare, guarantee paid family and medical leave, and address the climate crisis to the degree that we should if we want to protect the well-being of future generations."

"Yet, tomorrow, the U.S. Senate will be voting on an annual defense budget that costs $778 billion—$37 billion more than [former President Donald] Trump's last defense budget and $25 billion more than what President [Joe] Biden requested," he continued. "All this for an agency, the Department of Defense, that continues to have massive fraud and cost overruns year after year and is the only major government agency not to successfully complete an independent audit."

"Isn't it strange," added Sanders, "how even as we end the longest war in our nation's history concerns about the deficit and national debt seem to melt away under the influence of the powerful military-industrial complex?" ...

Sanders further criticized the 2022 NDAA for an amendment—the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act—aimed at countering the rise of China, as well as for containing "$52 billion in corporate welfare, with no strings attached, for a handful of extremely profitable microchip companies."

"This bill also contains a $10 billion handout to Jeff Bezos for space exploration," he noted, referring to the Amazon.com founder's Blue Origin private orbital tourism venture.

"Combining these two pieces of legislation would push the price tag of the defense bill to over $1 trillion—with very little scrutiny," Sanders continued. "Meanwhile, the Senate has spent month after month discussing the Build Back Better Act and whether we can afford to protect the children, the elderly, the sick, the poor, and the future of our planet."

"As a nation, we need to get our priorities right," he added. "I will vote 'no' on the National Defense Authorization Act."

Pentagon Chief Orders Briefing on 2019 Syria Airstrike That Killed Dozens

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered the military’s top commander in the Middle East to brief him on details of a U.S. airstrike in Syria in 2019 that killed dozens of women and children, the Pentagon said on Monday.

The Pentagon’s top spokesman, John F. Kirby, said Mr. Austin, who became secretary this year after the Biden administration took office, requested the briefing after reading an investigative report published over the weekend by The New York Times detailing the strike and allegations that top officers and civilian officials sought to conceal the casualties.

Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the head of the military’s Central Command, which oversaw the air war in Syria, will “brief him more specifically on that particular airstrike” and its handling, Mr. Kirby told reporters.

Mr. Kirby would not comment on details of the strike, a bombing at Baghuz, Syria, on March 18, 2019, that was part of the final battle against Islamic State fighters in the last shard of a once-sprawling religious state across Iraq and Syria. It was one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the yearslong war against ISIS, but had never been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. military.

“I’m not going to relitigate a strike that happened back in March of 2019,” Mr. Kirby said.

U.S. and Its Allies Are Fueling Worldwide Erosion of Democracy, Analysis Shows

Recent internal attacks on democracy and human rights by the United States and many of its allies—which often portray themselves as exporters of such ideals—are driving an overall erosion of democracy worldwide, according to a new analysis.

The New York Times analyzed an annual report released earlier this year by V-Dem, a Swedish research institute that collects data on democracy and autocratic governments around the world, finding that the United States and several of the countries it's considered allies in recent decades have shifted substantially away from operating as democracies—with attacks on voting rights, judicial independence, and the rights of the media among the factors driving the erosion.

The U.S. and its allies drove increases in "democracy scores," according to V-Dem's reporting, throughout the 1990s, accounting for 9% of democratic growth around the world. But in the past decade, the Times' analysis showed, 36% of all democratic "backsliding" has happened in the U.S. and U.S.-aligned countries, including Turkey, Hungary, and Israel.

"Much of the world's backsliding is not imposed on democracies by foreign powers, but rather is a rot rising within the world's most powerful network of mostly democratic alliances," wrote Max Fisher at the Times.

V-Dem's report, titled Autocratization Turns Viral, pointed to the arrests of Turkish journalists for their reporting on the coronavirus pandemic and the detention of "hundreds of citizens for discussing the issue on social media" as examples of democratic erosion that has intensified in the last year.

"The decay in freedom of the press, academia, civil society, and increasing spread of false information in Turkey predates 2010 but has continued since, with legal restrictions to further limit civil society activity and freedom of expression," the report notes.

The group pointed to an assault on the judiciary and the press in Hungary as evidence of the deterioration of democracy, "dating back to as early as 2010 when [the] right-wing government led by Viktor Orbán and his Fidez party enacted several media laws that curtailed media freedom substantially."

The Times' analysis comes amid an intensifying assault on voting rights and elections by the Republican Party in the U.S.—and the failure of the Democratic Party, which controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, to eliminate the legislative filibuster to allow the passage of far-reaching voting rights legislation.

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, state-level congressional maps drawn by Republican legislatures could give the party "a 13-2 advantage among representatives to the U.S. House," while the conservative takeover of the federal courts including the U.S. Supreme Court has put reproductive rights in peril. ...

V-Dem's findings and the outlet's analysis left critics of American exceptionalism and U.S. foreign policy—including numerous wars which both Democrats and Republicans have claimed were aimed at "spreading democracy"—asking how the U.S. will continue to claim authority on democratic ideals.

"If the U.S. actually undermines democracy, how else shall we justify U.S. primacy?" tweeted Dr. Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute.

Israeli firm’s spyware linked to attacks on websites in UK and Middle East

Researchers have found new evidence that suggests spyware made by an Israeli company that was recently blacklisted in the US has been used to target critics of Saudi Arabia and other autocratic regimes, including some readers of a London-based news website.

A report by Montreal-based researchers from Slovakian company Eset, an internet security firm, found links between attacks against high-profile websites in the Middle East and UK, and the Israeli company Candiru, which has been called Israel’s “most mysterious cyberwarfare company”. ... The Eset report revealed new information about so-called “watering hole attacks”. In such attacks, spyware users launch malware against ordinary websites that are known to attract readers or users who are considered “targets of interest” by the user of the malware.

The sophisticated attacks allow the malware user to identify characteristics about the individuals who have visited the website, including what kind of browser and operating system they are using. In some cases the malware user can then launch an exploit that allows them to take over an individual target’s computer. Unlike NSO Group’s signature spyware, which is called Pegasus and infects mobile phones, Candiru’s malware is believed by researchers to infect computers. The company appears to be named after a parasitic freshwater catfish that can be found in the Amazon.

The researchers found that the websites that were “known targets” of this kind of attack included Middle East Eye, a London-based news website, and multiple websites associated with government ministries in Iran and Yemen.

Germany suspends approval for Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

Germany has suspended its approval process for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline which would double its reliance on Russian gas following growing geopolitical pressure to scrap the project.

Energy markets across Europe surged after the German energy regulator suspended its certification process, in a big setback to Kremlin-backed Gazprom’s plans to extend Russian gas dominance via a new pipeline across the Baltic Sea. UK gas prices for next month surged 9.3% on Tuesday to 223p a therm, an almost three-week high, while the Netherlands – which is one of the biggest gas markets in Europe – suffered an increase of 7.9% to 88.05 euros a megawatt hour.

The German energy regulator said it would not continue its approval process until the Nord Stream 2 company, which is registered in Switzerland, transfers its main assets and staffing budget to its German subsidiary. “A certification for the operation of Nord Stream 2 will only be considered once the operator is organised in a legal shape compliant with German law,” the regulator said.

Germany’s decision to delay Nord Stream 2, which bypasses current pipelines that run through Russia’s nearest neighbours in Ukraine and Belarus, follows calls from western leaders to scrap the plan or risk destabilising the region.

Ukrainian government deploys armed drones against separatists

Despite its obligations under the signed 2015 Minsk Accords peace agreement, the Ukrainian government is continuing to ramp up its military capabilities against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. In late October, it deployed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones there for the first time ever. In response to an ostensible shelling by separatists, Ukraine used the TB2 drone to destroy a Russian-made howitzer, provoking the deployment of Russian troops to the Ukrainian border and the renewed risk of a full-scale war between Moscow and NATO-backed Kiev.

The attack in the separatist-controlled village of Hranitne, which was reported on favorably by the New York Times on Tuesday, is another demonstration that the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky is committed to a policy of escalation as it seeks to reintegrate the breakaway provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

For the past year the Ukrainian ruling class has sought to deepen military ties with the Turkish government, with both powers seeking to diminish Russian naval control over the strategic Black Sea region. The Ukrainian government offered Ankara advanced missile technology and in exchange received the coveted Turkish-made armed aerial drones.

Drones played a pivotal role in Azerbaijan’s defeat of Russian-backed Armenia last year in the Nagarno-Karabakh war, and the Ukrainian oligarchy quickly became enamored with their potential use against its own Russian-backed separatists. Kiev received the first shipment of drones in July and plans to purchase approximately 50 of the TB2 drones. In September, the two sides signed a memorandum to create a joint drone training and maintenance center in Ukraine.

Russia has predictably reacted with hostility to the use of drones in Ukraine, which could spark a new wave of targeted bombings and assassinations by Kiev in the more than seven-year-long war that has claimed the lives of over 14,000. Speaking Saturday on Russian state television about drones and Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin accused the Zelensky government of violating the 2015 Minsk accords, which specifically ban the use of aerial weapons:

“Now the current president cheerfully reports they’re using Bayraktars, that is, unmanned aerial vehicles. Europe said something incomprehensible and the US even supported it and officials in Ukraine openly say that they used them and will use them further.”

Fascist wants a nicer prison:

Proud Boys leader asks for early release over jail conditions

The leader of the Proud Boys far-right group has asked a judge to free him from jail in Washington DC, complaining about poor conditions. Henry “Enrique” Tarrio is serving a five-month sentence for stealing and burning a Black Lives Matter banner from a historic Black church in the capital, after Donald Trump’s election defeat.

On Monday, Tarrio asked a judge to release him, arguing that he has been exposed to inhumane conditions. Asking that his sentence be reduced or that he be allowed to complete it under house arrest, he claimed to have been harassed by correctional officers and said his cell regularly floods with dirty water from a toilet in a neighboring cell.

“I’ve been to jail before and what I’ve seen here, I’ve never seen anywhere else,” Tarrio said in a video testimony. “This place needs to be shut down immediately,” he added.

Tarrio described abusive guards, smoke-filled hallways and medical neglect, saying he witnessed a prisoner have a seizure who lay for a half hour before help arrived. “I’m deathly afraid that something is going to happen to me,” Tarrio said.

According to his attorney, Tarrio has endured “serious abuses of his rights on a daily basis”, including jail employees repeatedly ignoring his requests for medical treatment, throwing cold, often inedible meals into his cell and denying access to running water.

Rittenhouse jurors return for Day 2 of deliberations

Kyle Rittenhouse trial: sense of unease amid wait for verdict in Wisconsin

After the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who as a 17-year-old fatally shot two men and wounded a third, finally closed and the jury was sent out to deliberate its verdict, a crowd of supporters stood outside the Kenosha county courthouse volleying chants in the cold November dark.

“Black Lives Matter!” one group shouted.

“Self-defense is not a crime!” the other responded.

The dueling chants crystallize what the trial has come to represent for the millions of people watching the case in Wisconsin and across America. To some, it’s a case of a gun-wielding teenager who responded to racial unrest by taking justice into his own hands and shooting three anti-racist protesters – two fatally. To others, Rittenhouse used his weapon in self-defense after he was attacked by members of a violent crowd.

As the sun rose on Tuesday above nearby Lake Michigan, the case headed to the 12 jurors who will determine what it represents in the eyes of the law. It has not unfolded smoothly, as the prosecution seems to have botched some of its witnesses and arguments and the presiding judge’s behavior has been erratic and at times betrayed an apparent sympathy to the defense.

Meanwhile, the city of Kenosha remains on standby hoping to avoid the violence that erupted in August 2020. Last week, Wisconsin’s governor, Tony Evers, mobilized 500 national guard members to assist local law enforcement should they be needed.

Mayor Pete, Kamala GO TO WAR Over 2024

Kim Iversen: GOP Supporting Weed, UBI, Public Option. How They’re Taking Back The Working Class

Dems Are Giving The GOP Another Political Bailout

The last time Democrats held the presidency and Congress, the party spent its first year in power enriching big banks that had cratered the economy and then letting public money subsidize the Wall Street bonuses of their campaign donors. The spectacle gave Republicans a political bailout in the 2010 midterms, allowing the GOP to depict itself as anti-establishment populists challenging an elitist government. Twelve years later, history is rhyming. Democrats were vaulted into office on popular promises to tax the wealthy, but they are now generating national headlines about their proposal to provide new tax breaks narrowly targeted to enrich their affluent blue-state donors, just as a new survey shows nearly two thirds of Americans see the party as “out of touch with the concerns of most people.” And now the Republican machine is already gearing up to demagogue the issue in 2022.

The situation is like a storyline from Veep satirizing blue-state elitism: As millions of voters are being crushed by health care costs and higher energy prices, and as Democratic lawmakers have abandoned a $15 minimum wage, Democratic leaders are pushing a regressive proposal to allow wealthy property owners to deduct more of their their state and local taxes (SALT) from their federal taxes. This initiative, which would provide almost no benefit to the working class, isn’t some small tweak. After Democrats gutted their wildly popular initiatives to expand Medicare and lower drug prices, the tax initiative has now become one of the most expensive provisions in the entire Build Back Better legislation.

The whole initiative seems deliberately sculpted to hand the American Right a weapon to bludgeon Democrats ahead of the election. Indeed, you can imagine it being Fox News’ latest “Entitlement Nation” segment — only rather than dishonestly bashing poor people, Fox could accurately cast entitled blue-state yuppies as the ones being enriched by this Democratic policy. ... The GOP seems to sense the opportunity already. Its media and political apparatus is already weaponizing the SALT proposals ahead of the 2022 elections.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Heritage Foundation are deriding Democrats for trying to give new tax breaks to the wealthy. Similarly, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) recently tweeted, “The Democrats’ SALT tax deduction is almost exclusively a tax cut for the rich. They’re out here yelling ‘tax the rich’ while crafting handouts for the wealthy behind closed doors.” ... If Democrats instead follow through and enact their current proposal, the GOP rhetoric is likely a preview of what’s to come in the 2022 election. It could be a redux of some of the Tea Party’s most effective clarion calls during the 2010 midterms.

Only this time around, the GOP claims that Democrats are secretly working to enrich their elite donors would actually be true — and it will be boosted by millions of dollars of television ads designed to enrage swing voters. Many of them are already frustrated about Democrats’ betrayals. Democrats now leaning into a tax policy easily caricatured as elitist threatens to turn that frustration into yet another midterm shellacking.

Ari Berman: With Extreme Gerrymandering, the Republicans Are Rigging the Next Decade of Elections

'Lighting the Fuse on a Massive Carbon Bomb': Biden Rebuked on Eve of Drilling Lease Sale

Climate and environmental campaigners on Tuesday took President Joe Biden to task on the eve of his administration's scheduled oil and gas drilling auction of 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico—a move that comes just days after the U.S. leader pleaded for "every nation to do its part" to combat the climate emergency at the U.N.-backed climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Biden administration's first offshore fossil fuel extraction auction—Lease Sale 257—is scheduled for Wednesday morning, and would break the president's campaign promise of "no more drilling, including offshore."

The sale would also mark the end of a pause in federal fossil fuel leases implemented by executive order during Biden's first week in office.

In resuming U.S. lease sale auctions, the Resist Line 3 coalition accused the Biden of "actively selling away our futures."

Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a statement that "the Biden administration is lighting the fuse on a massive carbon bomb in the Gulf of Mexico."

"It's hard to imagine a more dangerous, hypocritical action in the aftermath of the climate summit," Monsell added.

Forget Any COP26 Promises Your Heard. Just Look at the $6 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies

It sounds incredible: while politicians have been cackling about the climate emergency and profiling in empty promises to halt it, they have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers' money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

Add to this that governments will double the production of energy from these very same, highly dangerous, global warming generators.

In a 2021 study: Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that globally, fossil fuel subsidies were 5.9 trillion US dollars in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). And that such subsidies are expected to rise to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025.

According to the study, 8 percent of the 2020 subsidy reflects undercharging for supply costs (explicit subsidies) and 92 percent for undercharging for environmental costs and foregone consumption taxes (implicit subsidies).

Mexican environmental campaigner missing after attack on villagers

A Mexican environmental campaigner has been declared missing barely a week after a savage attack on indigenous villagers displaced from the lands she was defending against illegal logging.

Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the indigenous Mixtec (ñuù savi) people who worked to protect forests in southern Oaxaca state, was last heard from on 27 October. She was scheduled to attend a virtual meeting so she could join a state mechanism for protecting journalists and defenders, but did not attend, according to Rosi Bustamante, a US-based activist who had been in close contact with Galindo.

Earlier that same day, Galindo attempted to present a petition to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at the National Palace in Mexico City, but said she was turned away.

“There aren’t any government officials who will go and see how we live … They only send in money that is used to buy weapons that are used to kill us. If there are organizations or groups that want to help us, they end up being criminalized, threatened and harassed,” Galindo wrote on her Facebook page just before her disappearance. “Where does this end? What follows?”

Galindo’s disappearance reinforces Mexico’s reputation as a country where environmental campaigners are frequently targeted for murder. The Mexican Centre for Environmental Law counted 65 attacks on environmental defenders in 2020 and 18 murders – a sharp increase from the 39 attacks in 2019 – with “structural and generalised violence against those who defend nature, land and territory”, according to the report.

Canada confirms fatalities from floods and landslides after Pacific north-west storm

Search and rescue officials in British Columbia have confirmed multiple fatalities after a deadly storm hit the Pacific north-west, destroying highways and leaving tens of thousands of people in Canada and the US without power.

Canada’s largest port was cut off by flood waters, as emergency crews in British Columbia announced on Tuesday that at least 10 vehicles had been swept off a highway during a landslide. “We’re hopeful to find people alive. But obviously that diminishes with time, the nature of the slide activity. People being caught up in mud and debris, it certainly diminishes as time goes by,” said David MacKenzie, the Pemberton district search and rescue manager, to the Globe and Mail. ...

Although the high winds and the rains caused by an atmospheric river – a huge plume of moisture extending over the Pacific – began easing in the region, most of British Columbia remained under either flood watch or flood warning.

South of the border, tens of thousands of households and businesses remain without power in Washington state. Nearly 50,000 Washington state electrical customers still had no power Tuesday after days of heavy rain triggered mudslides and floods and forced the closure of the west coast’s main north-south highway near the Canadian border, officials said. ... The Washington governor Jay Inslee declared a severe weather state of emergency in 14 counties and said the state emergency management division, with support from the Washington national guard, would coordinate the response.

Also of Interest

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

PATRICK LAWRENCE: Shadow Wars

Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the Inability to Think in Terms of Principles

'Reckless' FDA and Big Pharma Greed Blamed for Medicare Premium Hike

Another Humorous Substack Panic

New US war on Nicaragua's Sandinistas: OAS rejects elections, Biden imposes sanctions

Bhaskar Sunkara: Finding Commonplace Solidarity

Ryan Grim: Jeff Bezos And Big Tech Are Coming For Your Car

NPR Tweet DEVOID Of Substance On Ideology & Race Laments Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's Election

A Little Night Music

Slim Gaillard - Hit That Jive Jack

Slim Gaillard Trio - Scotchin' With Soda

Slim Gaillard - Yip Roc Heresy

Slim Gaillard - Flat Foot Floogie

Slim Gaillard - Potato Chips

Slim Gaillard - A Well A Take 'Em A Joe

Slim Gaillard - Walkin' & Cookin' Blues

Slim Gaillard Quartette - Atomic Cocktail

Slim Gaillard - Communication

Slim Gaillard - How High The Moon

Slim Gaillard - Hit That Mess