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This evening's music features Chicago blues singer, harmonica and guitar player Little Walter Jacobs. Enjoy!

“Be not intimidated...nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”

-- John Adams

News and Opinion

Top Republican refers Kavanaugh accuser and Michael Avenatti for DoJ investigation

Chuck Grassley, the chair of the Senate judiciary committee, has referred the lawyer Michael Avenatti and Julie Swetnick, one of Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, for criminal investigation. In a statement, Grassley said he was referring the two to the justice department for a “criminal investigation relating to a potential conspiracy to provide materially false statements to Congress and obstruct a congressional committee investigation”.

Swetnick, who was represented by Avenatti, came forward in late September to allege that Kavanaugh took part in efforts to gang-rape women at drunken parties. She said she too was gang-raped at one such party, but did not directly accuse Kavanaugh of being involved. ...

Grassley accused Swetnick and Avenatti of knowingly misleading the committee. ... The move is intended as a referral for investigation only, and is not intended to be an allegation of a crime, Grassley added.

In a tweet, Avenatti responded: “It is ironic that Senator Grassley now is interested in investigations. He didn’t care when it came to putting a man on the SCOTUS for life. We welcome the investigation as now we can finally get to the bottom of Judge Kavanaugh’s lies and conduct. Let the truth be known.” He added that the move could also open new legal proceedings around Kavanaugh. “[Grassley] just opened up Pandora’s box as it relates to Justice Kavanaugh’s conduct. It is Christmas in October!” he said in a second tweet.

An interesting article worth a full read.

The Khashoggi Affair and the Future of Saudi Arabia

If Donald Trump seems at a loss about how to respond to the Jamal Khashoggi murder, it may not be because he’s worried about his Saudi business investments or any of the other things that Democrats like to bring up to avoid talking about more serious topics. Rather, it’s likely because Trump may be facing one of the biggest U.S. foreign-policy crises since the overthrow of the shah in 1979. At that time the U.S. counted on support from Arab Gulf states no less frightened by the Iranian revolution. That included Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, oil emirates Kuwait and Qatar, plus the Saudis themselves.

But if the Saudi power structure were ever to crumble in the wake of the Khashoggi scandal, there would likely be chaos because there is no alternative to replace it. The impact on the region would be significant. With its 55-percent Shi‘ite majority, Iraq is already in the Iranian orbit after the U.S. overthrow of Saddam; Qatar and Oman are on businesslike terms with Tehran, while Kuwait and the UAE could possibly reach an accommodation with Teheran as well. The upshot would be an immense power shift in which the Persian Gulf could revert to being an Iranian lake. That’s probably why the United States and Israel will do everything in its power to prevent the House of Saud from falling.

The consequences in terms of U.S. imperial interests would be nearly incalculable. For decades, America has used the Gulf to shape and direct its interests in the larger Eurasian economy. Thanks to trillions of dollars in military investment, the Saudis control the spigot through which roughly 24 percent of the world’s daily oil supply flows, much of it bound for such economic powerhouses as India, China, South Korea, and Japan. Should control pass to someone else, America would find its monopoly severely impaired. The effects would also be felt in Syria, where Israel is incensed by the Iranian presence. It would be even more so should the Saudi counterweight be removed. ...

The kingdom may be less stable than it appears. It was already in trouble when MbS began his rise in early 2015. The second generation of Al-Saud rulers appeared played out along with their economic model. Adjusted for inflation, oil prices had fallen two-thirds since the 2008 financial crisis while the kingdom was as dependent on oil as ever despite forty years of lip service to the virtues of diversification. Corruption was out of control while unemployment continued to climb because young Saudis prefer to wait years for a no-show government sinecure instead of taking a private-sector job in which they might actually have to work. (Studies show that Saudi government employees put in only an hour’s worth of real labor per day.) Oil was supposed to keep Saudi Arabia rich and powerful, but instead total reliance on it was threatening to eventually weaken it. Something had to be done, and King Salman, although only intermittently lucid, figured his 29-year-old son was the man. Shoving rivals aside – most notably cousin Muhammad bin Nayef, the prince in charge of combatting Al Qaeda – Muhammad bin Salman began grabbing the reins and issuing orders. The results have been disastrous. ...

According to a report in the Paris daily Le Figaro, moves have begun to replace MbS as crown prince, second in line to the throne. An abundance of princely candidates compounds the confusion caused by an unclear line of succession. Since Saudi kings have generally claimed a right to choose their successors, it would be up to Salman to appoint a replacement. So far, the rest of the family has been too terrified to say otherwise. But if MbS departs the scene, factions that suffered under his reign might grow bold enough to demand a say. Since it is unclear what that would mean in an absolute monarchy, a royal donnybrook could conceivably ensue.

Will Turkey Shield the Saudi Crown Prince from Khashoggi’s Murder?

Killing Journalists Is Wrong When the Saudis Do It — and When the United States Does It, Too

What lesson should be learned from the brutal murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi and the ongoing geopolitical fallout from his death? That governments cannot be allowed to kill journalists with impunity, correct? Everyone from the secretary general of the United Nations to hawkish Republican senators have lined up to make this point and to express their concern and anger.

But is this a lesson that only applies to Middle Eastern dictatorships? Or to Western democracies, too? The United States, perhaps? The reason I ask is that we all now know the name of Arab journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but very few of us know the name of Arab journalist Tareq Ayoub. The difference between them? An unelected crown prince in the Gulf is blamed for killing Khashoggi, while an elected president of the United States has been blamed for killing Ayoub. We rightly demand justice in the case of Khashoggi, so why not in the case of Ayoub?

On the morning of April 8, 2003, less than three weeks after U.S. President George W. Bush ordered the illegal invasion of Iraq, Al Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayoub was on the rooftop of his network’s Baghdad bureau. The 35-year-old Palestinian from Jordan and his Iraqi cameraperson, Zoheir Nadhim, were reporting live on a pitched battle between U.S. and Iraqi forces for control of the capital. It was just three days after Ayoub had arrived in the country. At around 7:45 a.m., an American A-10 Warthog attack jet appeared overhead during Ayoub’s broadcast. “The plane was flying so low that those of us downstairs thought it would land on the roof – that’s how close it was,” Maher Abdullah, the network’s Baghdad correspondent, later recalled. “We actually heard the rocket being launched. It was a direct hit.”

Ayoub was killed while Nadhim, the cameraman, was injured. Fifteen minutes later, a second American warplane launched a second missile at the building, blowing the front door off its hinges. ... But the U.S. government, like the Saudi government in recent weeks, tried to duck responsibility for the attack. It was just a “grave mistake,” according to a State Department spokesperson. “This coalition does not target journalists,” a U.S. general told reporters in Baghdad, adding, “We don’t know every place journalists are operating on the battlefield.” The controversy passed quickly from public view; the U.S. military has never made public any sort of real investigation into what happened.

The U.S. statements about Ayoub’s killing were brazen lies of the sort that the Trump administration would be proud to tell. For a start, Al Jazeera’s managing director, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, had written a letter to the Pentagon less than two months earlier, on February 24, 2003, providing U.S. officials with the exact address and coordinates of the Baghdad bureau. The U.S. military had bombed Al Jazeera’s Kabul office in November 2001, and the network’s bosses wanted to prevent a repeat of such an incident in Iraq. To misquote Oscar Wilde, for the United States to bomb the bureau of a news organization once might be considered unfortunate; to bomb it twice was more than carelessness.

Honduras: US senators sound the alarm over threats to journalists and activists

More than 50 US lawmakers have called on Donald Trump’s administration to investigate a string of threats against journalists and human rights activists in Honduras, and asked the state department to reassess its certification of the country’s human rights conditions. Led by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, the lawmakers wrote to Trump expressing concern over death threats and intimidation campaigns targeting journalists and activists documenting human rights violations in Honduras.

“By supporting the corrupt and repressive regime of Juan Orlando Hernández, the US is tacitly approving state-sanctioned violence and the complete disregard for worker rights, indigenous rights, and individual freedoms,” Schakowsky said in a statement. “The Trump administration can’t be in the business of permitting impunity,” said Markey. “Continued support of Juan Orlando Hernández’s government without continued checks on its behavior will only fuel the destruction of the rule of law, cripple an already devastated economy, and allow for a pervasive fear among the Honduran people.” ...

Conditions have deteriorated steadily in Honduras since a military-backed coup in 2009.

Journalists and human rights advocates have described a surge in threats and intimidation including harassment, physical attacks and abusive legal proceedings. Human rights activists from the US, Canada and Europe have been expelled from the country or barred from entry. Nina Lakhani, a freelance reporter for the Guardian, has been among those targeted while covering the trial of eight men accused of murdering Berta Cáceres, an indigenous leader who was fatally shot in her home in March 2016. The long-awaited trial has been mired in allegations of a coverup and abuse of authority by judges.

Lakhani’s coverage has made her the victim of a smear campaign, which included press releases fraudulently linking her to violence. Citing the incidents involving Lakhani and others, the US lawmakers said: “This is an alarming pattern that continues to escalate.”

Saudi Ties to U.S. Universities Under Question Amid Ongoing Crisis over Khashoggi Murder

Why American Leaders Persist in Waging Losing Wars

War may be a racket, as General Smedley Butler claimed long ago, but who cares these days since business is booming? And let’s add to such profits a few other all-American motivations. Start with the fact that, in some curious sense, war is in the American bloodstream. As former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges once put it, "War is a force that gives us meaning." Historically, we Americans are a violent people who have invested much in a self-image of toughness now being displayed across the “global battlespace.” (Hence all the talk in this country not about our soldiers but about our “warriors.”) ...

Add in, as well, the issue of political credibility. No president wants to appear weak and in the United States of the last many decades, pulling back from a war has been the definition of weakness. No one -- certainly not Donald Trump -- wants to be known as the president who “lost” Afghanistan or Iraq. As was true of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in the Vietnam years, so in this century fear of electoral defeat has helped prolong the country’s hopeless wars. Generals, too, have their own fears of defeat, fears that drive them to escalate conflicts (call it the urge to surge) and even to advocate for the use of nuclear weapons, as General William Westmoreland did in 1968 during the Vietnam War.

Washington’s own deeply embedded illusions and deceptions also serve to generate and perpetuate its wars. Lauding our troops as “freedom fighters” for peace and prosperity, presidents like George W. Bush have waged a set of brutal wars in the name of spreading democracy and a better way of life. The trouble is: incessant war doesn’t spread democracy -- though in the twenty-first century we’ve learned that it does spread terror groups -- it kills it. At the same time, our leaders, military and civilian, have given us a false picture of the nature of the wars they’re fighting. They continue to present the U.S. military and its vaunted “smart” weaponry as a precision surgical instrument capable of targeting and destroying the cancer of terrorism, especially of the radical Islamic variety. Despite the hoopla about them, however, those precision instruments of war turn out to be blunt indeed, leading to the widespread killing of innocents, the massive displacement of people across America’s war zones, and floods of refugees who have, in turn, helped spark the rise of the populist right in lands otherwise still at peace.

Lurking behind the incessant warfare of this century is another belief, particularly ascendant in the Trump White House: that big militaries and expensive weaponry represent “investments” in a better future -- as if the Pentagon were the Bank of America or Wall Street. Steroidal military spending continues to be sold as a key to creating jobs and maintaining America’s competitive edge, as if war were America’s primary business. (And perhaps it is!)

Nation Transfixed In Horror By Toy Bombs While Destroying Lives With Real Ones

Media headlines have been dominated for the last two days by the news that pipe bombs are being sent to Democratic Party elites and their allies, a list of whom as of this writing consists of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, George Soros, Maxine Waters, Eric Holder, Robert De Niro, and the CNN office (addressed to former CIA Director John Brennan who actually works for NBC). As of this writing nobody has been killed or injured in any way by any of these many explosive devices, and there is as of this writing no publicly available evidence that they were designed to. As of this writing there is no evidence that the devices were intended to do anything other than what they have done: stir up fear and grab headlines.

And of course it is a good thing that nobody has been hurt by these devices. Obviously targeting anyone with packages containing explosive materials is terrible, even if those devices were not rigged with the intention of detonating and harming anyone, and it is a good thing that not a single one of them has done so. It is a good thing that none of America’s political elites were targeted by the sort of explosive device that America drops on people in other countries every single day. You know, the kind that actually explode.

It is good that Barack Obama was never sent anything resembling the 26,171 bombs that his administration dropped in the final year of his presidency, for example. It is good that neither the first US president to serve every minute of his administration under wartime, nor those who served as part of that administration like Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton, were targeted with the kinds of weapons which were deployed against impoverished people in other nations every single day for all eight years. People would have been killed and badly injured if anyone had been sent anything like those kinds of explosive devices, their bodies ripped to shreds like the countless civilians killed in the airstrikes which resulted from the Obama administration’s expansion of Bush’s so-called “war on terror”. ...

Right now the only political debate happening over these bomb scares is who is responsible for them. ... While we wait for copious amounts of facts and evidence before forming a solid opinion one way or the other, how about a little interest in the people who are being targeted with actual bombs that actually explode by the empire these Democratic elites serve?

Experts say the bomber left these key clues behind

It’s all hands on deck across U.S. intelligence agencies, as investigators scramble to chase leads, find clues, and establish a character profile for the serial bomber who sent explosive devices to at least eight high-ranking officials and celebrities in the space of 72 hours. But experts say the bomber, so far elusive, left a number of key clues behind. ... According to the FBI, the packages were all delivered in manila envelopes with a bubble-wrap interior and had computer-printed address labels. They also featured the misspelled return address of Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who formerly headed the Democratic National Committee. All of the envelopes had six American flag stamps, though not all were sent by mail, and at least one, dropped off at CNN's New York headquarters, contained a separate package of white powder, which was later cleared as an inert substance.

Authorities say some of the packages appeared to have gone though the mail system at some point. But the packages that arrived in CNN’s mailroom and De Niro's restaurant Tribeca Grill were reportedly dropped off by a courier; another was placed directly in Soros’ mailbox. This pattern is helpful to investigators, said former FBI assistant director Ron Hosko, who said that if he were investigating the case, he might start with the package left in Soros’ mailbox. “In Soros’ neighborhood, which I’m assuming is wealthy, there are probably security cameras,” Hosko said. “Perhaps there are also cameras or sensors at other locations that could be exploited to take the delivery back to the point of origin, whether that’s FedEx, or the post office.” Many of the bombs were dropped around the New York area, though Reuters reports law enforcement sources are currently focusing on leads in Florida. ...

Some of the devices also featured a sticker of a parody ISIS flag with the catchphrase “Git-R-Dun,” a meme created by stand-up comedian Larry the Cable Guy. “They clearly wanted the stickers to be seen,” said Scott Stewart, a former U.S. State Department special agent who now supervises terrorism and security issues for Stratfor, a global intelligence firm. “It does seem to me this is about creating panic and terror, not necessarily hurting or killing someone.” Experts say it is unusual, however, that a package bomb would use a timer as a detonation device. Package bombs tend to use a booby-trap detonation technique, meaning the act of opening the envelope can serve as the trigger for the device to explode. “These seem like they want to be discovered,” Stewart said. “It’s not clear what date and time, if any, those timers were set for.” ...

Jeff Danik, former FBI special agent, said that his priority lead would be DNA matching. “The chance of DNA being found is high,” said Danik. “There are too many device components and envelopes to have zero DNA.”

Police find two new bombs targeting Cory Booker and James Clapper

Authorities said they recovered another two suspicious packages Friday morning, one addressed to New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and another to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

The package addressed to Booker was intercepted at a mail processing facility in Opa-Locka, Florida, which has become a focus of the investigation in recent days, and the package to Clapper was found at a mail sorting facility in midtown Manhattan, and was sent to him care of CNN, where he is a regular contributor.

Images of the device sent to Clapper reveal it was sent in a padded manilla envelope with six stamps and printed address labels, just like the other 10 packages sent earlier this week.

Authorities say that the packages intercepted on Friday had all the hallmarks of the earlier packages, which were confirmed to contain what authorities have classified as “crude but functional” pipe bombs. So far, nobody has been hurt, and it’s not clear whether the devices were sophisticated enough to detonate at all.

US plans to send 800 troops to border as caravan travels through Mexico

The Trump administration is planning to dispatch at least 800 active duty troops to the southern border at the direction of a president who has sought to transform fears about immigration into electoral gains in the midterms as a caravan of thousands of migrants makes its way through Mexico. The US defense secretary, Jim Mattis, is expected to sign an order sending the troops to the border, bolstering national guard forces already there, an official said Thursday.

The action comes as Donald Trump has spent recent days calling attention to the caravan of Central Americans slowly making their way by foot into southern Mexico, but still more than 1,000 miles from US soil. Trump, who made fear about immigrants a major theme of his 2016 election campaign, has been eager to make it a top issue heading into the 6 November midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. The president and senior White House officials have long believed the issue is key to turning out his base of supporters.

The additional troops would provide logistical and other support to the border patrol, said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that had not been finalized and formally announced. It’s not unusual for the national guard to help with border security. Active duty troops, however, are rarely deployed within the US except for domestic emergencies like hurricanes or floods.

The Migrant Caravan and U.S. Policy

There are an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 would be migrants moving in a caravan north from the border of Mexico and Guatemala. Men, women, and children are making a desperate effort to enter the United States where their families will be separated even as they seek asylum. This crisis makes a lie out of the Trump administration claim that those cruel measures would stop the flow of migrants. It also reveals how United States interventions have destroyed Honduras, the home of most of these refugees.

The hypocrisy of the corporate media in following official government narratives is also shown clearly in reporting of this story. When Venezuelans fled from the U.S. imposed economic destruction of their country we were told that their departures proved that socialism “didn’t work” and that the government was illegitimate. No such opinions are directed at United States proxies like Honduras. In 2009 the elected president Manual Zelaya was overthrown with support from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Activists like the late Berta Caceres were murdered. That disruption has sent many waves of Hondurans to seek refuge in the United States yet there has been no serious discussion about the imperialist role that sent so many people here to seek safety. The dictatorship, disputed elections, and police state violence are never described as not working, even as the evidence of a failed state is clear. This mass movement is a searing indictment of the U.S. role in destabilizing governments over many years. The wars against left wing movements and alleged wars against drugs created terror regimes that people want to flee any way they can. ...

Any discussion of this crisis must be connected to Donald Trump’s very presence in the White House. He is president in large part because he cast Latin immigrants as “rapists and murderers” who would be kept out by a wall he would force the Mexican government to pay for. The inherently racist sentiment propelled him to the Republican nomination that even party insiders never thought he would get. Millions of people agree with him that citizens of “shithole” countries, that is to say non-white, must be kept out by any means. ... Trump’s overtly racist anti-immigrant sentiments differ from those of most Americans only rhetorically. There is little support for admitting the Hondurans in the caravan or the thousands of other would be immigrants who are less visible. There is no useful discussion about immigration. It was the Ronald Reagan administration that supported an amnesty for the undocumented some 30 years ago. Now the Republicans who ordinarily revere any other action he took say no to anything except unrealistic plans to deport an estimated 11 million people.

The United States should be more generous to everyone, citizens and non-citizens alike. There would be less resentment of newcomers if people already here did not live in cut-throat competition with one another. A truly democratic United States would not destroy other countries and would do better by its own people. The migrant caravan and fear of it are proof of failure on both counts.

Louisville Shooter Made Racist Remark Right After Killing Two Black People, but Police Won’t Call it a Hate Crime

In the calm of a sunny afternoon, at a Kroger grocery store in the east side of Louisville, Kentucky, a 51-year-old white man named Gregory Bush walked right into the store with a loaded gun, targeted two black customers, and killed them. ...

When Ed Harrell, a white man in the parking lot, saw Bush coming toward him, he pulled out his own revolver, and yelled to ask what was going on. According to Harrell, Bush replied, “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.”

While Louisville officials are still saying they don’t have a motive for the shooting, it appears to me that Bush made his intentions pretty damn clear in that parking lot. He came there to shoot black people. Trump says the simmering anger in this country is primarily caused by the news media, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what caused Bush to shoot and kill a grandfather in front of his grandson and then a mother pushing some groceries through the parking lot.

Meanwhile:

World's billionaires became 20% richer in 2017, report reveals

Billionaires made more money in 2017 than in any year in recorded history. The richest people on Earth increased their wealth by a fifth to $8.9tn (£6.9tn), according to a report by Swiss bank UBS.

The fortunes of today’s super-wealthy have risen at a far greater rate than at the turn of the 20th century, when families such as the Rothschilds, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts controlled vast wealth. The report by UBS and accountants PwC said there was so much money in the hands of the ultra-rich that a new wave of rich and powerful multi-generational families was being created.

“The past 30 years have seen far greater wealth creation than the Gilded Age” the UBS Billionaires 2018 report said. “That period bred generations of families in the US and Europe who went on to influence business, banking, politics, philanthropy and the arts for more than 100 years. With wealth set to pass from entrepreneurs to their heirs in the coming years, the 21st century multi-generational families are being created.”

The world’s 2,158 billionaires grew their combined wealth by $1.4tn last year, more than the GDP of Spain or Australia, as booming stock markets helped the already very wealthy to achieve the “greatest absolute growth ever”. More than 40 of the 179 new billionaires created last year inherited their wealth, and given the number of billionaires over 70 the report’s authors expect a further $3.4tn to be handed down over the next 20 years.

Republicans wanted to suppress the Native American vote. It's working

Control of the Senate in the 2018 midterms may hang on the fate of Heidi Heitkamp, the right-leaning Democrat from North Dakota. But her victory will be nearly impossible without the votes of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other Native communities across the heavily Republican state. Now, those communities are facing an insidious new threat: voter ID laws designed to strip American Indians of the right to vote.

In 2012, Heitkamp won the race for the US Senate on a razor-thin margin of 3,000 votes. Her path to victory leaned heavily on support from North Dakota’s 46,000 Native Americans, who make up 5.5% of the state population and are a core Democratic constituency across the rural west. In the 2018 midterms, Heitkamp’s re-election strategy – which could determine control of the Senate – relies on this same indigenous demographic.

The Republican party is well aware of this. Just five months after the 2012 election, the Republican-held North Dakota legislature passed a new voting law without any hearings or debate on the bill’s final text. The law requires North Dakotans to present at a polling station a driver’s license, state ID, tribal ID or other form of identification deemed permissible by the secretary of state in order to exercise their right to vote. In 2015, the state made the law even stricter, prohibiting the use of student, military and expired IDs, limiting the use of absentee ballots without ID and freezing the list of acceptable forms of identification. These ID requirements present a significant barrier to Native Americans, whose communities have triple the unemployment and poverty rates of the rest of the state and who often lack transportation to travel long distances to obtain a driver’s license or state ID.

And that’s just the beginning. The law only considers identification that includes a residential address to be valid for voting purposes. This requirement disproportionately impacts Native Americans living on reservations, who often use a PO box because they live in rural homes that lack a residential address or are transient, moving from one family or friend’s house to the next. ...

Tribes are now scrambling to issue valid forms of identification so that their citizens can participate in our democracy. ... Citizens of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation are out knocking on doors to inform their neighbors about the strict new rules, and arranging shuttles to get families to their polling stations. North Dakota has closed polling stations in some rural counties in the western part of the state due to budgetary constraints. The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara offered to subsidize the polling stations their residents rely upon, but were rebuffed. Now some voters in their community have to drive up to an hour one-way to cast a vote in person – and that’s assuming they have access to a car or can hitch a ride on the shuttle. “It’s incredibly frustrating,” Cesar Alvarez, a Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara citizen and an organizer for the Heitkamp campaign told me. “It’s disenfranchising people here.”

Trump Is A Symptom Of A Larger Problem

Rallies Planned for Cities Nationwide to Back Climate Youth Battling Trump in #TrialoftheCentury

Supporters of 21 children and young adults who are suing the federal government will gather in cities and towns across the U.S. in the coming days to urge the justice system to hear the plaintiffs' case. The plaintiffs in the landmark climate case Juliana vs. the U.S. were planning to bring their case to trial this coming Monday, October 29, after fighting in the courts for three years in order to hold the government accountable for its failure to protect their generation from the climate crisis.

The U.S. Supreme Court took the highly unusual step of issuing a stay on the case at the request of the government — which argued the cost of litigation would be burdensome. ...

In response, the young plaintiffs, who are represented by Our Children's Trust, quickly pulled together a 103-page brief "in hopes of receiving a decision from the Chief Justice before the week’s end."

The rallies will be held on Sunday and Monday in cities including Eugene, Oregon, where the trial was scheduled to begin in a U.S. District Court; Washington, D.C.; and New York, with supporters demanding the case be allowed to move forward. A map showing the locations of the events in nearly every state in the nation is available here.

The 21 Juliana v. US youth plaintiffs are suing the federal government for violating their constitutional rights by causing #climatechange. The government continues to try to silence them. Stand in solidarity with these climate heroes on Monday: https://t.co/g2BOsGT4a3 #youthvgov pic.twitter.com/48gym7vyYl

— Our Children's Trust (@youthvgov) October 23, 2018

Trump Admin Opens Up Alaska for Drilling, Threatening Already At-Risk Arctic Biodiversity

'Disaster Waiting to Happen' as Trump Quietly Approves Massive Oil Drilling Project in Arctic Waters Off Alaska Coast

Ignoring once more the existential necessity of keeping fossil fuels in the ground and transitioning to a global energy system powered by renewable sources, the Trump administration on Wednesday delivered another major victory for Big Oil by quietly approving a Texas company's plan to drill in federal Arctic waters six miles off the coast of Alaska.

Kristen Monsell, ocean legal director with the Center for Biological Diversity, denounced the plan developed by Hilcorp Energy as a "disaster waiting to happen" and vowed to do everything possible to ensure that the project doesn't move forward. "This project sets us down a dangerous path of destroying the Arctic," Monsell said in a statement after Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke approved Hilcorp's plan. "We'll keep fighting this project and any new ones that follow. We won't passively watch the oil industry and this inept administration harm Arctic wildlife and leave a legacy of climate chaos."

If completed, Hilcorp's so-called "Liberty Project" would be the first oil and gas production facility in federal waters off Alaska and is expected to produce as many as 70,000 barrels of crude oil per day at peak production. ...

On top of highlighting the catastrophic effects continued oil and gas drilling will have on the climate in the very near future, environmentalists also issued dire warnings that Hilcorp's project could also pose an immediate threat to the Arctic waters and wildlife, given the company's well-documented history of spills and "regulatory noncompliance."

"In December 2017, Hilcorp Alaska discovered crude oil leaking from a subsea pipeline that connected a pair of oil production platforms in the Cook Inlet," the Washington Post reported. "Nine months before that discovery, the Coast Guard was dispatched to investigate a Hilcorp oil leak from an abandoned well head in the Gulf of Mexico. A news release by the Coast Guard reported 'an estimated 840 gallons of crude oil in the water.'"

Deforestation: The hidden soy on your plate

Eighteen US volcanoes considered 'very high threat', government says

Scientists have classified 18 US volcanoes as “very high threat” because of their activity and proximity to people. The US Geological Survey has updated its volcano threat assessments for the first time since 2005. The danger list is topped by Hawaii’s Kilauea, which has been erupting this year. The others in the top five are Mount St Helens and Mount Rainier in Washington, Alaska’s Redoubt volcano and California’s Mount Shasta.

“This report may come as a surprise to many, but not to volcanologists,” said Concord University volcano expert Janine Krippner. “The USA is one of the most active countries in the world when it comes to volcanic activity,” she said, noting there have been 120 eruptions in US volcanoes since 1980.

Kilauea is the most active volcano in the United States “and it’s got a lot of development right on its flanks”, said government volcanologist John Ewert, the report’s chief author. He said Hilo, Hawaii, is probably the biggest city in the United States in a hazard area for a very high threat volcano, Mauna Loa.

Ewert said the threat rankings aren’t about what will blow next, but “the potential severity” of the damage. Eleven of the 18 very high threat volcanoes are in Oregon, Washington and California. Of the highest threat volcanoes, Washington’s Mount Rainier “has the highest number of people in the downstream hazard zone”, with about 300,000 people, said USGS geologist Angie Diefenbach, a report coauthor.

Also of Interest

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

Bernie Sanders: We Must Stop Helping Saudi Arabia in Yemen

10 Reasons Medicare Advantage Plans Will Never Meet Our Needs

'One job should be enough': Marriott hotel workers' strike hits eight US cities

Northern Marianas Islands survey damage from Super Typhoon Yutu

Without power and living in tents: Florida Panhandle struggles after Michael

A Little Night Music

Little Walter - It Ain't Right

Little Walter & his Jukes - I Hate To See You Go

Little Walter - I'm A Business Man

Little Walter and His Jukes - Who

Little Walter - Blue And Lonesome

Little Walter Trio - Muskadine Blues

Little Walter - Teenage Beat

Little Walter - Up The Line

Little Walter and His Jukes - Thunder Bird

Little Walter - Mellow Down Easy

Little Walter (Baby Face Leroy Trio) - Rollin' and Tumblin'