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“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.”

-- Lysander Spooner

News and Opinion

UN disqualifies itself as a source of information and as a rational, impartial observer of international conflicts.

They’re Recycling The Viagra Rape Atrocity Propaganda They Used On Libya

The west is advancing the claim that Putin is distributing Viagra to his soldiers so that they can more effectively rape Ukrainians, which was a ridiculous propaganda narrative the first time the west used it to manufacture consent for regime change in Libya.

In a Thursday interview with the French government-owned news agency AFP, a Mauritian-British official from the United Nations named Pramila Patten claimed that Russia has a “military strategy” of mass rape in Ukraine and that Russian soldiers are being “equipped” with the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra in order to facilitate that military strategy.

“When you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it’s clearly a military strategy,” Patten said.

Because AFP is one of the major propaganda multipliers whose material is republished by news media outlets around the world, Patten’s completely unevidenced claim of weaponized Viagra has been uncritically reported as a real news story by outlets like CNN, The New York Post, Forbes, The Independent, The Hill, and Yahoo News. This claim will now be folded into many rank-and-file mainstream news consumers’ understanding of what is happening in Ukraine, despite its brazenly propagandistic nature.

The only other time the west has been hammered with a story about marauding Viagra-armed rape brigades like this was in 2011, when the western empire was circulating atrocity propaganda to manufacture consent for regime change interventionism in Libya. In March of that year an email later published by WikiLeaks was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by her private advisor Sidney Blumenthal, informing her of an unconfirmed “rumor” that Libya’s longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi “has adopted a rape policy and has even distributed Viagra to troops.” Blumenthal notes that this claim originated from “the rebel side” of the conflict, which we now know included Al Qaeda, whom Gaddafi had been fighting.

The following month that “rumor” was repeated before the UN national security council by Susan Rice, another Obama administration official, this time presented not as a rumor but as a reality. Although anonymous US military intelligence officials informed the press the very next day that they had no evidence of Rice’s claim, by June an International Criminal Court investigation was underway with western news media continuing to uncritically report claims of weaponized Viagra in Libya.

Meanwhile, another UN human rights investigator named Cherif Bassiouni said he’d found those allegations to have arisen from “massive hysteria” and that both sides of the conflict had been making them about the other. Amnesty International failed to turn up any evidence of mass rapes and weaponized Viagra in Libya, and a 2016 report by the British Parliament found that the false “humanitarian intervention” by NATO forces which resulted in Gaddafi’s death had in fact been based on lies.

This information came far too little, far too late. The case was made for intervention and Libya was plunged into chaos and humanitarian catastrophe by the western empire and its jihadist proxies on the ground, putting a final nail in the coffin of the claim that NATO is a “defensive alliance”.

The map of countries that participated in the 2011 destruction of Libya looks remarkably similar to the map of countries currently imposing sanctions on Russia. This is not a coincidence. pic.twitter.com/BVajIVviqW

— Carlos (@agent_of_change) March 30, 2022

Of course we cannot conclusively prove that Putin isn’t giving his soldiers sex drugs to help them rape Ukrainians more efficiently. We cannot conclusively prove that Ukrainian spies aren’t sneaking across the border and injecting Russian babies with HIV either, but we don’t treat bizarre, nonsensical and completely unevidenced claims as true just because they cannot be definitively proven false. Especially when those exact claims have been used to advance depraved power agendas in the past in instances that remain completely unevidenced.

Earlier this year the western media were uncritically publishing claims made by a single official in the Ukrainian government that Russian soldiers were running around raping Ukrainian babies and children, despite the fact that those claims had no evidence and were accompanied by demands for more western military assistance. Weeks later, that very same official was fired by the Ukrainian parliament for, among other things, circulating unevidenced claims about rapes by Russian soldiers.

As we’ve discussed previously, the U.S. and its proxies have an extensive history of using atrocity propaganda, for example in the infamous “taking babies from incubators” narrative that was circulated in the 1990 false Nayirah testimony which helped manufacture consent for the Gulf War. Atrocity propaganda has been in use for a very long time due to how effective it can be at getting populations mobilized against targeted enemies, from the Middle Ages when Jews were accused of kidnapping Christian children to kill them and drink their blood, to 17th century claims that the Irish were killing English children and throwing them into the sea, to World War I claims that Germans were mutilating and eating Belgian babies.

Western mass media are proving time and time again that there is no accusation against Russia that they will not promote as factual news reporting, no matter how evidence-free and ridiculous. The fact that they’re going to the well and recycling old atrocity propaganda illustrates this even more lucidly.

If we were being told the truth about this war, we wouldn’t be hammered with blatant atrocity propaganda by so-called “news” outlets. We wouldn’t be subjected to ever escalating censorship of voices who criticize the western empire’s role in this war. We wouldn’t be swarmed by pro-NATO online trolling operations founded by actual neo-Nazis.

How are people not yet tired of having their intelligence insulted?

Russia's kamikaze drones. Protests, France & Moldova. Libya propaganda recycled.

The SPD and Greens seek to gag rock musician Roger Waters and silence criticism of NATO’s war in Ukraine

Members of the Munich city council, a coalition of the SPD and the Green Party, are seeking to prevent Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters from performing his This Is Not a Drill show at the city-owned Olympiahalle on May 21, 2023. Advance sales for the concert have already begun.

Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) declared he was very irritated to learn that the city-owned Olympia Park company had awarded its rooms to Waters, and that he had had no knowledge of the move. Reiter called on the company to review and reverse its decision. The city’s deputy mayors, Verena Dietl (SPD) and Katrin Habenschaden (Greens), expressed similar views.

Cancelling the hall, which has over 15,000 seats, would be tantamount to banning Waters from performing in Munich, under conditions where no comparable facility is available. This blatant attempt at censorship is justified solely on the grounds of Waters’ political stance, which runs counter to the interests of the ruling elite in Germany.

As the WSWS wrote about Waters’ concert tour, which began in the US in July, almost every one of his songs “deals with the pressing issues of our time: imperialist war, fascism, the poison of nationalism, the plight of refugees, the victims of state oppression, global poverty, social inequality, the assault on democratic rights and the threat of nuclear annihilation.”

The SPD and the Greens—as well as governing in the city of Munich, both parties are also partners in the federal government—are absolutely determined to prevent any discussion of these issues and will stop at nothing to discredit Waters. They are denouncing him as an anti-Semite and Putin supporter, although such accusations are demonstrably false. The conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), which governs the state in Bavaria, and the corporate media also support the campaign against Waters.

MSM Confirms Ukraine Crisis in Bakhmut; Ukraine Kherson Defeat; Putin Makes Hint of End of Ukraine

De facto alliance, Russia and Turkey

NATO Set To Kick Off Nuclear War Games on Monday

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is set to begin its annual military drills in preparation for nuclear war. American B-52 bombers will be joined by advanced aircraft from other alliance members as they simulate a war of annihilation with Russia.

The war games, dubbed "Steadfast Noon," will begin Monday and run through the end of October. Belgium is hosting the exercises which will take place over the North Sea and the United Kingdom. Some American aircraft will take off from bases in North Dakota.

Worth a full read:

The Iraq war authorization turns 20

This Sunday, October 16, marks the 20th anniversary of the law that authorized the invasion of Iraq and as the result of growing bipartisan consensus, Congress may just be on the precipice of finally repealing this decades-old war authority. ...

[H]istorically speaking, the repeal of such instruments hasn’t been necessary to mark a final end to their use by the executive branch. Prior administrations generally accepted that the end of a conflict rendered the statue that authorized it obsolete. This was the case even when the enemy was the same. For example, President Roosevelt never attempted to rely on the 1917 declaration of war against Germany to justify war against Hitler’s Nazi regime 24 years later. Rather, he sought a fresh authorization from the body with the constitutional power to “declare war.”

This has not been the case for the Iraq AUMF. Despite Congress’s very clear intent for the resolution, as exhibited by both its text and legislative history, successive administrations have interpreted the Iraq AUMF far beyond its original purpose. ... Over the last few years, frustration has grown among an increasingly bipartisan majority in Congress over the executive branch’s usurpation of Congress’s constitutional power to decide if, when, and against whom, the United States goes to war.

While trepidation remains concerning how to approach the post-9/11 2001 AUMF, the Iraq AUMF is an entirely different story. The executive branch has confirmed that the Iraq AUMF is not needed for any current military operations. Its repeal would begin a long-overdue process of rebalancing the constitutional division on war powers, amounting to what many call “constitutional hygiene.” It would also prevent any further abuse of the law by an enterprising executive branch that has defined it more broadly and any lawmaker could have conceived in 2002.

Biden loves the taste of shoe leather and doesn't seem to have any talent for diplomacy whatsoever:

Pakistan summons US envoy over Joe Biden’s ‘most dangerous nation’ remark

Pakistan on Saturday summoned the US ambassador for an explanation after President Joe Biden described the south Asian country as “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” and questioned its nuclear weapons safety protocols. Biden made the apparently off-the-cuff remark late on Thursday while talking about US foreign policy during a private Democratic party fundraiser in California, but the White House later published a transcript of his comments, which provoked outrage in Pakistan. ...

Biden was speaking about his frequent interactions with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, when he said: “Did anybody think we’d be in a situation where China is trying to figure out its role relative to Russia and relative to India and relative to Pakistan?

“This is a guy who understands what he wants but has an enormous, enormous array of problems. How do we handle that? How do we handle that relative to what’s going on in Russia?

“And what I think is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world: Pakistan. Nuclear weapons without any cohesion.” Hours after the transcript of his address was posted, Pakistan summoned the US ambassador, Donald Blome, to the foreign office in Islamabad.

“I have discussed it with the prime minister, and we have summoned the ambassador of the United States … for an official demarche,” Pakistan’s foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said during a press conference in Karachi. “I am surprised by the remarks of President Biden. I believe this is exactly the sort of misunderstanding that is created when there is lack of an engagement.”

Paragraphs plucked from a propaganda article:

Xi Jinping opens Chinese Communist party congress with warning for Taiwan

Xi Jinping celebrated China’s crushing of Hong Kong’s autonomy, and warned Taiwan that the “wheels of history” are turning towards Beijing taking control of the island democracy, as he opened a key Communist party summit.

Xi also made a veiled attack on the US’s increasingly explicit support for Taipei, denouncing “foreign interference” for exacerbating tensions. “The Taiwan issue is China’s own problem to solve,” Xi told the 20th Communist party congress.

The most important gathering in the five-year Chinese political cycle, the week-long meeting in Beijing is expected to hand Xi another five-year term running China, cementing his position as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. ...

In response to Xi’s speech, Taiwan’s presidential office said a majority of Taiwan’s citizens had made it clear they “resolutely refuse ‘one country, two systems’.” The office’s spokesperson, Chang Tun-han, reiterated Taiwan’s statehood and vowed there would be no concessions in its territorial sovereignty, democracy and freedom. Chang said maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait was a shared responsibility and Taiwan was willing to work with Beijing “under the principle of rationality, equality and mutual respect”.

Xi sees seizing Taiwan as a key part of his legacy and a requirement for China’s “national rejuvenation”. China will never renounce the option of using force to achieve it, he said, repeating a familiar talking point.

France strikes 'exactly what the government didn’t want’

Liz Truss fights for survival as even allies say she could have only days left

Liz Truss is fighting for her political survival, with Conservative MPs threatening to oust her and even allies warning she has just days to turn around her premiership despite ripping up her economic strategy and appointing Jeremy Hunt as chancellor.

The beleaguered prime minister will attempt to shore up her crumbling support by gathering her cabinet ministers at No 10 on Monday evening and then embarking on a series of meetings with mutinous Tory MPs before the next budget in a fortnight’s time.

After crisis talks at Chequers over their new fiscal plan on Sunday, Hunt insisted that Truss was still “in charge” despite her increasingly perilous position, as he warned of further public spending cuts and failed to rule out more U-turns on her disastrous mini-budget including scrapping the 1p cut to the income tax base rate.

Ministers will wait anxiously for the markets to open – the first test of whether Truss’s decision to sack Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor and tear up her mini-budget will be enough – amid fears that sterling could head towards parity with the dollar and rising bond yields put upward pressure on mortgage rates.

Labour leader Keir Starmer increased pressure on Truss, calling on her to make an urgent Commons statement on Monday, with party insiders saying they would do everything possible to force her to come. “The prime minister says she is in charge but the evidence this weekend suggests she is in office but not in power,” he said.

Latest US inflation data raises questions about Fed’s interest rate hikes

A fresh round of US inflation data released last week showed persistently high prices, raising more questions about whether the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are missing what many economists contend are the real inflationary culprits: corporate pricing, energy costs and supply chain disruptions. The news is further stirring fears of unnecessary economic pain should the Fed push America into recession.

“Raising interest rates isn’t working, and the Fed’s overly aggressive actions are shoving our economy to the brink of a devastating recession,” said Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the progressive Groundwork Collaborative think tank. “Supply chain bottlenecks, a volatile global energy market and rampant corporate profiteering can’t be solved by additional rate hikes.”

The Fed and some economists maintain that demand generated by a hot labor market and higher wages are driving inflation, and higher unemployment and interest rates are panaceas. To that end, the Fed has hiked rates five times in 2022 and indicated more increases are to come, moves the Federal Reserve board chair, Jerome Powell, has acknowledged will “bring some pain” to households and businesses.

Data shows the Fed is making some progress in its aim: mortgage rates are soaring and home sales are plummeting. Meanwhile, the latest employment numbers show a sharp decline in job openings, as well as slowing job and wage growth. But Thursday’s Consumer Price Index numbers for September revealed the approach has yielded few gains on pricing. Inflation inched up to 8.2%, while month-to-month it climbed 0.1% in August and 0.4% in September.

The price drops aren’t materializing because current inflation largely isn’t demand- or labor-driven as it often is during inflationary periods, said Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist and founder of Sahm Consulting. “High inflation is not workers’ fault, but the Fed is waging a war on US workers,” Sahm said.

Biden Insists U.S. Economy Is ‘Strong As Hell’ Amidst RISING Inflation

Corporate Media Mostly Ignoring GOP Ploy to Cut Social Security and Medicare

Corporate media outlets are mostly ignoring a Republican ploy to use the debt ceiling fight to gut Social Security and Medicare if the GOP regains control of Congress—a plot that one leading watchdog on Friday called "perhaps the single most consequential story" of the midterm elections.

"Social Security and Medicare are on the ballot next month," said Media Matters for America senior fellow Matt Gertz. "If the American public doesn't know that, it's in part because the press isn't telling them."

Common Dreams reported earlier this week that Social Security and Medicare defenders are warning that the popular programs—which each serve tens of millions of older Americans—face "grave danger" in the event Republicans retake control of Congress in January.

The warning came after four House Republicans hoping to chair the lower chamber's budget committee told Bloomberg Government that "Social Security and Medicare eligibility changes, spending caps, and safety-net work requirements are among the top priorities" if the GOP is back in charge.

The Republican lawmakers indicated in the article that "next year's deadline to raise or suspend the debt ceiling is a point of leverage" to force Democrats to allow policies including raising the retirement age and slashing Social Security and veterans' benefits, in keeping with the GOP's recently adopted policy agenda.

Despite congressional Democrats sounding the alarm on what Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said would be an "economically catastrophic" policy, "there's been virtually no coverage from major TV news shows, newspapers, and other mainstream outlets," Gertz noted.

"There has been shockingly little coverage of this development given its significance," Gertz continued. "It earned a scattering of mentions in publications including New York magazine. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and MSNBC's Chris Hayes detailed the stakes on his show Wednesday night."

"But the story hasn't been referenced elsewhere this week on MSNBC, or on CNN, or on Fox News," he added. "The nationally broadcast morning and evening news shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC haven't discussed it. It hasn't been mentioned in the pages of major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today."

Governors REJECT Cannabis Pardons After Getting PRIVATE PRISON Cash

DOJ to Investigate Bureau of Prisons After Judge Rips Officials Over Inmate's Death

The U.S. Department of Justice said Friday that its inspector general's office will investigate the Federal Bureau of Prisons following a judge's excoriation of a warden at a Texas prison who let an inmate waste away from untreated cancer.

The DOJ said in a statement that its Office of Inspector General (OIG) "is investigating the circumstances surrounding the release from prison and subsequent death of Frederick Mervin Bardell, who was released from the Seagoville Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, Texas, on February 8, 2021, and died nine days later."

"In an order dated October 4, 2022, Judge Roy B. Dalton, Jr., in the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida, who had previously reviewed Mr. Bardell's petitions for compassionate release, recommended that the attorney general, the OIG, or other appropriate investigative offices undertake an examination into the conditions of Mr. Bardell's confinement and treatment, and alleged misrepresentations to the court," the statement continued.

In his order, Dalton wrote that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and Seagoville warden Kristi Zook "should be deeply ashamed of the circumstances surrounding the last stages of Mr. Bardell's incarceration and indeed his life."

According to The Washington Post:

Bardell had served most of a 12-year sentence for distributing child pornography when, in late 2020, he asked for compassionate release from a prison in Seagoville, Texas to receive specialized treatment for colon cancer. Justice Department lawyers argued against his release, saying he could receive adequate treatment in prison and suggesting he might not have cancer, according to court papers.

Months later, Bardell was much sicker and again asked Dalton, an Orlando-based federal judge who presided over Bardell's sentencing, to release him for medical care. This time, the judge agreed and ordered the Bureau of Prisons to create a release plan. Instead, according to the judge, the Bureau of Prisons dumped Bardell on the sidewalk of the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Bardell was left without a wheelchair. He was weak and soiling himself with feces and blood throughout his homebound journey to Florida, and after arriving, his parents rushed him straight to hospital, where he died nine days later.

"With timely diagnosis and treatment, Mr. Bardell's attesting physician assessed his chances of survival at 71%," Dalton wrote in his October 4 order.

"No individual who is incarcerated by order of the court should be stripped of his right to simple human dignity as a consequence," the judge argued. "The purposes of incarceration, which include rehabilitation, deterrence, and punishment, do not include depriving a human being of the fundamental right to a life with some semblance of dignity."

"The treatment Mr. Bardell received in the last days of his life is inconsistent with the moral values of a civilized society," he added, "and unworthy of the Department of Justice of the United States of America."

Florida governor Ron DeSantis will fly migrants to Illinois and Delaware

The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, plans to continue flying undocumented migrants to Democratic strongholds, his spokeswoman said on Saturday, a day after released records showed the state paid nearly $1m to arrange two sets of flights to Delaware and Illinois.

Documents released on Friday showed that the planned flights will transport about 100 migrants. They were scheduled for before 3 October but were halted or postponed. The contractor hired by Florida extended the window for the trips until 1 December, according to memos released by the state transportation department.

Asked why the flights were postponed, DeSantis’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, said Florida had been busy dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. “While Florida has had all hands on deck responding to our catastrophic hurricane, the immigration relocation program remains active,“ Fenske said.

Conservative Muslims join forces with Christian right on Michigan book bans

A recent school board meeting at which about 1,000 people gathered in Dearborn, Michigan, to pressure district officials to censor books with LGBTQ+ themes was in most ways similar to hundreds of other recent book ban hearings across the US. Speakers alleged the books “promote mental health issues” and “self harm”, while the school district and liberals were seeking to “indoctrinate children”. Gay people, they said, were “creeps and pedohiles”, and gay lifestyles were equated with zoophilia.

“American values and the American way is not child pornography,” one angry parent told the Dearborn public school board.

But the speakers were not the white, rightwing conservative Christians usually behind efforts to censor literature in public schools. Instead, the heated audience was almost all Muslim Arab Americans. In Dearborn, a city that’s 47% Arab American and reliably Democratic at the polls, some conservative Muslim residents have joined forces with the Christian right to censor literature in the city’s public schools.

Although the right wing in America has frequently vilified Muslims and Islam, the alliance highlights how some deeply socially conservative Arab Americans are willing to put that aside and join in the culture wars. Several parents who spoke with the Guardian insisted the effort had nothing to do with politics and did not answer questions about why they would campaign alongside Donald Trump supporters. “This has nothing to do with Trump,” Hassan Anoun, a Dearborn schools parent, said, adding that he is a Republican. “We don’t want our kids to be exposed to this. These books should be banned.”

Whistleblower Trump Media executive says firm violated federal securities laws

The co-founder of Donald Trump’s beleaguered social media company has turned whistleblower, alleging the firm violated federal securities laws and that the former president pressured executives to hand over lucrative shares to his wife.

Will Wilkerson, a former Trump Media and Technology Group executive, has told the US government’s financial watchdog that the company’s bid to raise more than $1bn via an investment vehicle known as a special purpose acquisition company (Spac), relied on “fraudulent misrepresentations … in violation of federal securities laws.”

Trump Media and Technology Group is the company that launched Trump’s Truth Social platform after Twitter and Facebook banned the ex-president for his role in the deadly January 6 attack on the Capitol.

Wilkerson, who was sacked from his role as senior vice-president for operations last week after speaking to the Washington Post, filed a whistleblower complaint to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August. He backed his complaint with a cache of emails, documents, messages and audio recordings which detail a pattern of rancorous infighting, technical incompetence and power struggles inside Trump Media since its launch last year.

Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy

Peter Thiel is far from the first billionaire who has wielded his fortune to try to influence the course of American politics. But in an election year when democracy itself is said to be on the ballot, he stands out for assailing a longstanding governing system that he has described as “deranged” and in urgent need of “course correction”. The German-born investor and tech entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley “disrupter” who helped found PayPal alongside Elon Musk and made his fortune as one of the earliest investors in Facebook, has catapulted himself into the top ranks of the mega-donor class by pouring close to $30m into this year’s midterm elections.

He’s not merely favoring one party over another, but is supporting candidates who deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president and have, in their different ways, called for the pillars of the American establishment to be toppled entirely. ... Thiel, like Trump, has made it his business to end the careers of what he calls “the traitorous 10”, Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Four of these members opted not to run for re-election at all, and four more, including Liz Cheney, the vice-chair of the House committee investigating January 6, went down in the primaries. ...

Over the past decade, ever since the supreme court dramatically loosened the rules of political campaign giving in its Citizens United decision, Thiel has placed sizable bets on candidates who are not only conservative but have sought to challenge longstanding institutional traditions and break the Republican party’s own norms: Senator Ted Cruz in Texas and Senator Josh Hawley in Missouri as well as Trump himself.

Thiel himself opined as far back as 2009 that he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom and expressed “little hope that voting will make things better”. While a member of Trump’s presidential transition team in 2016, he flashed his institution-busting instincts by proposing that a leading climate change skeptic, William Happer, be appointed as White House science adviser. He also pushed for a libertarian bitcoin entrepreneur who did not believe in drug trials to head up the Food and Drug Administration. ...

Thiel sat out the 2020 election but appears to have been re-energized by the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump’s claims of a stolen presidential election and the January 6 insurrection. Addressing a NatCon convention this time last year, he denounced the “incredible derangement of various forms of thought, political life, scientific life and the sense-making machinery generally in this country”.

Hmmm... U.S. Democracy cannot be reached on the phone, by email or snail mail. If the people have little to no access to their representatives, how can that be called "Democracy?"

With No One Answering Phones, How Can We Actually Reach People?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on the imbalance of communications success between callers and callees. The latter have all kinds of ways not to return calls, emails, and other portals of the so-called communications technological revolution.

I noted that getting through to your callee is so difficult these days that it represents a formidable obstacle both to a functioning democratic society and a functioning consumer-driven economy.

So now I'm asking you, the readers, to suggest ways you have either tried successfully or think could be successful in getting through to people or institutions.

Here are some categories:

1. Legislators at the local, state, and federal levels. In my experience, it has never been more difficult to reach your senator, representative, or their staff, unless you're a campaign donor, a social friend, or are requesting a flag that has flown over the U.S. Capitol. Congressional offices are barricaded by voicemail or nameless interns who take messages without having a clue as to who is calling or how serious the message may be. Emails are sent into a vortex. Serious letters are viewed as quaint relics to be dismissed without even the courtesy of an acknowledgment. ...

2. Executive branch agencies at the local, state, and federal level. We’ve tried, with other citizens, to get through to agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). They don't even bother to acknowledge, much less respond to, serious issues raised by citizen groups or taxpayers. I was reliably told that the bureaucratic staff of the FTC intercepts letters sent personally to FTC commissioners and decides what, if anything, to deliver to the commissioner addressed. No wonder FTC Chair Lina Khan doesn't respond to my letters.

Reflecting their sense of hopelessness, people from all quarters say that they no longer even try to complain or get answers to their questions from local, state, and federal agencies. I've seen some local post offices take their phone off the hook or make callers endlessly wait on hold. That's why we hear some agency leaders claim they have gotten no complaints, other than from the rare caller who reaches them with a complaint.

Dark Money Is DESTROYING Populism in Democratic Primaries

Dems Barely Messaging On Economic Issues

Even as polling shows Americans’ top concern in the upcoming midterm is the economy, Democrats have barely amplified any message on the issue in their midterm House and Senate election advertising campaigns, according to new data reviewed by The Lever.

Republican candidates and political groups have spent $44 million on TV ads focused on the economy and inflation since Labor Day, according to a tally from AdImpact, which tracks campaign spending throughout the country. In the same period, Democrats have spotlighted these issues in just $12 million worth of ads, less than 7 percent of the party’s total ad spending during that time. The party has put another $18 million into ads mentioning jobs and infrastructure — but overall, Republicans are significantly outspending them on messaging around economic issues.

The takeaway is clear: Caught between a bad economy and not wanting to offend big donors, Democrats have not aired a unified populist message hammering the business profiteering fueling inflation. Instead, they have spent much of their resources — $67 million — on ads related to abortion rights, a topic of heightened significance after the repeal of Roe v. Wade, but one that does not raise the ire of their corporate sponsors nor generate as much interest from midterm voters this year, according to recent survey data.

The lack of focus from Democrats on the economy and inflation comes as recent polls from the Washington Post and Monmouth University found that the top two most important issues among voters are the economy and inflation — far outpacing abortion.

The cost to capture carbon? More water and electricity

A carbon capture proposal for a central Louisiana power plant has been titled “Project Diamond Vault” by its owner, Louisiana utility Cleco. The utility says the project will have “precious value” to the company, customers and state. Yet less than six months after announcing the project to capture carbon from the plant’s emissions and store them underground near the plant, Cleco revealed in a recent filing to its state regulator the $900m carbon capture retrofit could reduce electricity produced for its customers by about 30%.

Cleco maintains it hasn’t committed to this path. But, if it decides to produce additional power necessary to run the carbon capture process, it could increase the plant’s water use by about 55%, according to studies of similar power plants. The Louisiana project is not an outlier. Operating enough carbon capture to keep the climate crisis in check would double humanity’s water use, according to University of California, Berkeley researchers. Regardless of the method being used – on a power plant or capturing carbon directly from the air – more power and more water will be needed.

The Cleco proposal provides an object lesson in how one solution can exacerbate another problem. “These technologies to mitigate climate change have unintended environmental impacts, like water use and water scarcity,” said Lorenzo Rosa, a principal investigator at Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford. Carbon capture and sequestration increases water withdrawals at power plants between 25% and 200%, according to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that cites Rosa’s work. The same IPCC report says carbon capture could help reduce the fossil fuel pollution that is heating the planet’s climate and causing more extreme weather.

The power generation unit to which Cleco plans to add carbon capture technology – the Madison 3 unit – makes electricity by burning 70% petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining, and 30% coal. It’s been estimated that retrofitting a coal-fired power plant with carbon capture technology could increase that plant’s water use 55%. A similar increase could be expected for retrofitting a petcoke power plant, Rosa said. Cleco, however, told Floodlight it can’t definitively say how much power and electricity the carbon capture process will use until initial designs and studies are complete in 2024.

Alaska cancels snow crab season over population decline

Alaska officials have cancelled the upcoming snow crab season, due to population decline across the Bering Sea.

The fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will not happen. The winter harvest of smaller snow crab has also been cancelled for the first time.

The causes of the population collapse are being researched but likely include increased predation and stresses from warmer water, which the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes may have prompted the crabs to shift away from coasts.

“In the Bering Sea, Alaska pollock, snow crab, and Pacific halibut have generally shifted away from the coast since the early 1980s … They have also moved northward by an average of 19 miles,” the federal agency said.

The Alaska closures reflect conservation concerns about both crab species following bleak summer population surveys. The decisions to shut down the harvests came after days of discussions among Alaska state biologists and senior officials, who faced crabbers’ pleas for at least small takes to be allowed.

Nigeria's worst floods in a decade kill 600, displace 1.3 million

Also of Interest

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

Misguided Foreign Policies Against Russia And Others Damage The U.S. And Its 'Allies'

Patrick Lawrence: The Non-West Coalesces

Sweden Shuns Formal Joint Investigation of Nord Stream Leak, Citing National Security

Biden Administration Doubles Down on Sanctions Self-Harm: China Chip Export Ban, Possible Russia Aluminum Sanctions, All Systems Still Go with Russian Oil Price Cap

Is the US Preparing for the “NATOization” of Bosnia?

A Central Banker in Finland Just Told Finns to Stock Up on Cash, Just in Case of Disruption to Payments System

Orca submarine is yet another case of the Navy spending money like a drunken sailor

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A Little Night Music

Lyn Collins, Fred Wesley & J.B.'s - Doing It To Death

Lyn Collins - Take Me Just As I Am

Lyn Collins - Do Your Thing

Lyn Collins - Rock Me Again & Again & Again & Again & Again & Again

Lyn Collins - Just Won't Do Right

Lyn Collins - Give It Up Or Turnit Loose

Lyn Collins - Me And My Baby Got A Good Thing Goin'

Lyn Collins - Wheels of Life

Lyn Collins - People Make The World A Better Place

Lyn Collins - Think (About It)