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"If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing."

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

News and Opinion

Thanks to Trump, America’s word is now worthless

Donald Trump likes to say that no president in American history accomplished as much in as short a time as he has, and in a few ways, he’s actually right. What other president could say that in less than nine months, they did this much damage to the future of American diplomacy?

Congratulations, Mr. President: America’s word is now practically worthless. And the damage will persist even after you’re gone.

Trump has already pulled us out of the Paris climate accord, which was agreed to by nearly every country on Earth. It’s looking as though he might pull out of NAFTA. Perhaps most dangerous of all — and against the obvious wishes of his entire national security team — he’s moving toward pulling out of the agreement we made in cooperation with China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. For the moment he is withholding certification of the deal and has proclaimed that it’s not in America’s interest as he sees it. Whether he pulls out completely will likely be a matter of how good his aides are at restraining his more lunatic impulses.

If the Iran deal collapses, there will be little reason for Iran not to restart that program, the result of which would be either them becoming a nuclear power or the possibility of another Middle East war to stop it from happening. But it goes beyond that. Imagine that you’re Kim Jong Un, watching all this happen (as he most certainly is). What is the lesson you would take from seeing one American administration painstakingly negotiate an international nuclear deal, and then the next administration waltz in and toss it aside on the whim of its infantile new president, despite the fact that not only international observers but also his own aides attest that Iran is complying with the terms of the deal?

There would be only one reasonable conclusion: America doesn’t keep its promises, and there is no point in negotiating with them to give up your own nuclear weapons.

Why Trump Has Gone Nuclear on Iran

Enter a brand new, major international crisis deployed out of the blue with inbuilt war potential. ... As much as it may be drenched in newspeak, the plot twist does not have much to do with “decertifying” – in fact reneging - the JCPOA. The White House admitted as much in a statement; “The United States’ new Iran strategy focuses on neutralizing the government of Iran’s destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression, particularly its support for terrorism and militants”, as well as denying “the IRGC funding for its malign activities.” ...

Crucially, “fix it or nix it” as applied to the JCPOA – a major narrative in the Beltway - happens to be the exact fervent wish of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The House of Saud’s King Salman may have wasted no time to congratulate Trump in a phone call for his “visionary” Iran strategy. Emirati ambassador to Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba, is obviously gloating. But this is most of all about Israeli warmongering on Iran, as the same Return of the Living (Neocon) Dead are furiously spinning. ...

Trump was personally advised by unindicted war criminal Henry Kissinger earlier last week – even before a meeting in the White House Situation Room with Mattis and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Joseph Dunford centered on North Korean “aggression.” Divide and Rule precedents point to Kissinger’s advice. He’s fully aware a frontal Washington attack against Russia or China - the strategic partnership at the heart of Eurasia integration – is a non-starter. The next best option is to raise trouble in their borderlands – North Korea is especially well positioned for it – and go after the weakest Eurasia link; Iran.

And yet both Moscow and Beijing will continue to do business with Iran as a key hub for Eurasia integration; linked to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI); a future member of the SCO; and also linked to the North-South Transportation Corridor and India’s own incipient maritime Silk Road centered on Chabahar port. Iran will continue to do solid business with the rest of Asia – especially Japan and South Korea. Iran and Qatar may eventually become natural gas providers to Europe in the next decade. And Iran will continue to be – alongside Russia and China - at the forefront of bypassing the U.S. dollar in energy trade.

The dogs of war bark and the Eurasia integration caravan passes.

China: Xi opens Communist Party congress with eye on extending power

Xi Jinping says China will take “center stage in the world”

China will take “center stage in the world,” according to President Xi Jinping, who outlined his vision for the country in a three-and-a-half hour speech at the opening of the 19th Communist Party Congress in Beijing Wednesday. Touting the triumph of “socialism,” albeit with “Chinese characteristics,” Xi said China had “crossed the threshold into a new era” during remarks aimed at cementing his position at the top of the regime. “It is time for us to take centre stage in the world and to make a greater contribution to humankind,” he said.

Pledging to build a “modern socialist country” by 2035, Xi said China would not “mechanically copy the political systems of other countries,” and even took a veiled swipe at President Donald Trump, who recently withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. “No country can alone address the many challenges facing mankind; no country can afford to retreat into self-isolation,” Xi said.

Donald Trump is ripping up the alliances that keep the world safe

Five months ago, Donald Trump’s national security adviser HR McMaster penned a column attempting to persuade the world that “America first” did not mean “America alone”. Last week Trump took two decisions that landed the US in a strikingly lonely position: he pulled his country out of Unesco, and took a massive swipe at the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. ...

Trump’s decisions gave their full meaning to key sentences in the McMaster article, and offered a clear illustration of this administration’s foreign policy outlook. “The world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, non-governmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage,” said that text, adding: “Rather than deny this elemental nature of international affairs, we embrace it.” ...

It’s true that other US presidents have lashed out at Unesco in the past; the organisation is not exactly flawless. But no one in the Oval Office before Trump has ever so openly and ideologically run a bulldozer into US-built, post-1945 institutions. Trump had laid it out in his speech at the UN general assembly last month. “The best vehicle for elevating the human condition,” he said, “is the nation state.” Not international cooperation, not global regulation, and certainly not universal values.

With that, the US has now bluntly demonstrated that it is ready to go it alone. In the case of the Iran deal, the consequences for international security are potentially immense, and could unravel quickly. One US senator may not have been exaggerating when he warned that Trump risked putting his country “on the path to world war three”. Trump has refrained from instantly tearing up the nuclear agreement, but he’s put conditions on its survival that Congress and US allies alike will now struggle to address; and he has threatened to deliver a final blow if they don’t comply.

Iran’s supreme leader dismisses Trump's 'rants and whoppers'

Iran’s supreme leader has said his country will not take heed of “rants and whoppers of a foul-throated US president”, in a speech that also made clear that Tehran will not be the first to violate the nuclear deal. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his first reaction since Donald Trump decertified the Iran deal, said on Wednesday that “we will not tear up the nuclear deal so long as the other side has not torn it up, but if they do, we will cut it in pieces”.

The 78-year-old ayatollah told a gathering of students in Tehran that the US was angry because Iran had foiled its plots in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. “I don’t want to waste our time to respond to the rants and whoppers of the foul-throated president of the United States,” he said, according to the transcript of his speech posted on his official website.

“The US is the agent of the international Zionism, it was the US that created Daesh [Arabic acronym for Islamic State] and Takfiri movements [Iran’s terminology for Sunni extremist groups].” Khamenei said the US was infuriated by Iran’s role in fighting Isis. “They are angry because the Islamic Republic has foiled their plots in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Egypt,” he said. “Everyone should know that once again America will receive a slap in its mouth and will be defeated by the people of Iran.”

Trump Is Not the Failure He Appears to Be

Since the day Trump got elected, there have basically been two big questions about the degree to which he would transform the country: Would he become more moderate as he grew into the immense responsibilities of his office? Or, insofar as he did pursue a radical agenda, would he prove capable of overcoming the resistance of the opposition and the inertia of the government bureaucracy?

The answer to the first question is as clear-cut as it could possibly be. In the wake of a couple of weeks in which Trump repeatedly threatened to revoke NBC’s broadcasting license, stepped up his race-baiting attacks on the country’s top black athletes, and dissed the erratic leader of a hostile nuclear power, nobody can seriously suggest that Trump has become more moderate on the job.

The answer to the second question, though, is a bit more complicated. It has become obvious, even to Trump, that the limits on his power are real, at least for now. Courts have substantially weakened his travel ban. Congress has voted down some of his most important legislation. To pursue his agenda, Trump increasingly has to rely on executive orders and independent agencies like the Federal Communications Commission or the Environmental Protection Agency. And yet, the hope that Trump would effectively be stopped from doing much of anything is just as much of a fantasy as the outsize expectations of his biggest fans.

Across a whole range of issues, we are increasingly seeing a real give and take between an administration hellbent on enacting radical change and a system cautiously trying to push back. ... Then there is the worrying fact that Trump is, day in, day out, weakening democratic norms to an extent even I would have found unimaginable a year ago. It would be tempting to ignore his Twitter ravings as inconsequential if they didn’t have the power to change the opinion of millions of Americans. The latest sign of the damage his extreme statements can do comes in the form of a poll about, of all things, football. About 2 in 3 Trump supporters used to have a positive impression of the NFL. As soon as Trump started to step up his attacks on team owners, the league’s approval ratings plummeted. Today, less than 1 in 3 Trump supporters have a somewhat or very favorable view of the NFL.

This poll scared me more than just about any other I have seen in the past months. If Trump can turn his base against the NFL, then what can’t he get them to do? And if he can get his base to go along with just about anything he does, how can we be so sure that he won’t take more and more radical steps to overcome opposition to his agenda?

Government May ‘Seize’ Citizens’ Fingerprints To Unlock Apple Devices, Federal Court Rules

A federal court ruled the United States government is not violating a citizen’s Fifth Amendment rights when they require a citizen to apply his or her fingerprints to a sensor so authorities can access a device.

The government sought authorization to “seize” four residents so their fingers could be applied to Apple devices in a home in order to uncover evidence related to a child pornography case. ...

Although the Northern District Court of Illinois acknowledged privacy concerns, it maintained [PDF] there is a distinction between compelling an individual to communicate something and compelling a person to “provide some physical characteristic.” The communication cannot be “testimonial.” The Supreme Court has held that authorities may compel displays of “physical features.” For example, a person may be forced to put on a shirt to see if it fits, provide a blood sample, submit to fingerprinting or photographs, or provide a voice or handwriting sample.

The court additionally argued, “The government agents will pick the fingers to be pressed on the Touch ID sensor, so there is no need to engage the thought process of any of the residents at all in effectuating the seizure. The application of the fingerprint to the sensor is simply the seizure of a physical characteristic, and the fingerprint by itself does not communicate anything.”

Because police choose which finger (or fingers) to apply to a sensor, the district court determined there was no communication by a citizen to protect.

Catalonia Referendum: "We need to organize an agreed referendum, it is only way out"

Spain ready to impose direct rule on Catalonia on eve of deadline

Spain is set to enter uncharted political territory as the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, prepares to carry out his threat to halt the regional Catalan government’s push for independence byimposing direct rule from Madrid.

Last week, Rajoy warned the Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, that he had until 10am on Thursday to abandon his secession plans and return the region to “constitutional order”.

Failure to do so, he said, would result in the Spanish government taking the unprecedented step of invoking article 155 of the country’s post-Franco constitution and assuming control of the region. ...

Speaking in parliament, Rajoy asked Puigdemont’s colleagues to persuade him “not to make any more problems” that would “oblige the government to make decisions that would be better never to make”.

There was also speculation that the Catalan government might try to avoid the triggering of article 155 by calling new regional elections. However, the Catalan foreign minister, Raül Romeva, insisted such a move was not being considered, telling reporters in Brussels: “Elections from our perspective are not an option.”

Argentina halts election campaign after body, thought to be missing activist, found

Major parties running in Argentina’s midterm congressional election on Sunday have suspended their campaigns after a body, thought to be that of a young protester who went missing more than two months ago, was found in a river.

A government spokeswoman said President Mauricio Macri’s Cambiemos (Let’s Change) coalition would halt campaigning for the rest of the day after investigators on Tuesday discovered the body in the Chubut river in the country’s southern Patagonia region.

The remains were found near the site where indigenous rights activist Santiago Maldonado was last seen at a tribal rights protest on 1 August. Former president and now senate candidate Cristina Fernández de Kirchner also suspended campaigning, along with other major figures vying for Congress, their campaigns said. ...

Some opposition and rights groups believe state security forces took Maldonado, a 28-year-old craftsman, and allege Macri’s government covered up information on his whereabouts. Macri’s government has said that there is no evidence that shows security forces detained Maldonado.

Potential cases of abuse by security forces are sensitive in Argentina, where the 1976-1983 military dictatorship secretly detained, tortured and killed people in clandestine prisons. Rights groups say up to 30,000 people “disappeared”.

As Puerto Rico Faces $95 Billion Cleanup, Exposé Reveals Vulture Firms Who Own Its $74 Billion Debt

Google Is So Big, It Is Now Shaping Policy to Combat the Opioid Epidemic. And It’s Screwing It Up.

A snap decision by Google has begun to reshape the drug treatment industry, tilting the playing field toward large conglomerates — the precise opposite outcome Google had hoped to achieve.

The fateful decision was made September 14. Google faced pressure from an exposé in The Verge released a week earlier, documenting how shady lead generators game its AdWords system. High-cost ads based on rehab keywords referred users to phone hotlines that gave the impression of being independent information services, but were actually owned by treatment center conglomerates. Representatives, who reap large fees based on how many patients they sign up, employ high-pressure sales tactics to push people into their favored facilities, whether or not that facility is the right one for the patient.

This deceptive marketing can lead to substandard treatment and massive overbilling. It also made lots of money for Google, which was shown in the story actively courting addiction treatment advertisers.

And so Google made a quick call: It effectively stopped running ads from treatment facilities. At first blush, that may look like a happy alignment of the public good and a company’s need for good public relations, with Google taking a hit to make the world a better place in the midst of an epidemic. But the problem of economic concentration is so deep in the United States today that peeling back one layer merely reveals another. Without ads, addicts or their parents are left only with the organic search results.

Guess who wins those?

Oil will crash to $10 a barrel with electric vehicle revolution, strategist says

Oil prices are poised to crash to just $10 per barrel over the next six to eight years as alternative energy fuels continue to attract more and more investors, Chris Watling, chief executive of Longview Economics, told CNBC on Friday.

When looking ahead to 2018, Watling acknowledged that a key catalyst for the oil market would most likely be Saudi Aramco's initial public offering (IPO) in the second half of next year. And when he was asked about Saudi Arabia's state oil group being launched on the international stock market, he replied, "Well I think they need to get it away quick before oil goes to $10 (per barrel)."

While Watling explained that he did not necessarily expect such an intense decline in oil prices over the coming weeks or months, he did argue that over the long term "what happens with electric vehicles is really, really important" given that around 70 percent of oil is used for transportation.

EPA Says Higher Radiation Levels Pose ‘No Harmful Health Effect’

In the event of a dirty bomb or a nuclear meltdown, emergency responders can safely tolerate radiation levels equivalent to thousands of chest X-rays, the Environmental Protection Agency said in new guidelines that ease off on established safety levels.

The EPA’s determination sets a level ten times the drinking water standard for radiation recommended under President Barack Obama. It could lead to the administration of President Donald Trump weakening radiation safety levels, watchdog groups critical of the move say.

"It’s really a huge amount of radiation they are saying is safe," said Daniel Hirsch, the retired director of the University of California, Santa Cruz’s program on environmental and nuclear policy. "The position taken could readily unravel all radiation protection rules."

The change was included as part of EPA "guidance" on messaging and communications in the event of a nuclear power plant meltdown or dirty bomb attack. The FAQ document, dated September 2017, is part of a broader planning document for nuclear emergencies, and does not carry the weight of federal standards or law. ...

A 2007 version of the same document stated that no level of radiation is safe, concluding: "The current body of scientific knowledge tells us this."

See you in court: Washington state sues Monsanto over chemical pollution

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Live In Toronto

Trump Escalates Anti-Leak Campaign

In the Age of Trump, Tom Cotton May Be America’s Most Dangerous Senator

Dear White People: Be More Like Gregg Popovich

National parks for all: that's a populist cry we need

A Little Night Music

Otis Redding - Try a little tenderness

Otis Redding - There Goes My Baby

Otis Redding - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Otis Redding - My Lovers Prayer

Otis Redding - Mr. Pitiful

Otis Redding - FA-FA-FA-FA-FA (Sad Song)

Otis Redding - She Put The Hurt On Me

Otis Redding - Cigarettes and Coffee

Otis Redding - Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay

Otis Redding - Hard To Handle