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“Criminal: a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.”

-- Howard Scott

News and Opinion

Jeff Bezos aims to save capitalism by expanding capitalist civilization like a cancer across space to extract and exploit.

Bezos Bows To Pressure On $15/hr. Keep Pressuring Him. Keep Pressuring Them All.

In a move that is being widely attributed to pressure from activists and Bernie Sanders’ famous Stop BEZOS Act, Amazon has announced a pay increase for all workers inside the US to $15 an hour as of next month. Which is of course a good thing. It is a good thing that the aggressively anti-union Amazon, which is owned and operated by the planet’s wealthiest man Jeff Bezos, is finally taking a step in the direction of treating its workers like human beings after the sound of sharpening guillotine blades began to echo off the walls of its warehouses. But that isn’t something people should be grateful for, let alone something that causes them to ease up the intensity of the fight against plutocracy. You don’t thank a man for ceasing to punch you in the face, especially not while he’s still stabbing you in the chest. ...

Jeff Bezos is an extremely dangerous plutocrat who is forming extensive ties with secretive government agencies while buying up media influence and working to control the way money itself moves and operates in the world. He is most certainly nowhere near anything like a Bernie Sanders populist, and his plans for our species include shipping all heavy industry along with a trillion humans off of our planet’s surface to inhabit the greater solar system. He wants a trillion human beings out in space toiling to fuel his insatiable capitalist empire while his heirs continue to inhabit the beautiful home for which our species is evolutionarily adapted. Seriously, check it out:

Bezos has openly described this as his grand plan for our species, and said this is why he sees his private space program as the most important work that he is doing currently. He wants a trillion humans working in space colonies while perhaps a lucky billion (0.1 percent) of them get to inhabit our beautiful blue planet, and you can be damn certain that he has no intention for his heirs to be among the 99.9 percent. That’s it. That’s his whole vision. That’s the best possible future we can hope for if we leave control of our species in the hands of the plutocratic class. Not a future in which humanity learns to peacefully coexist with itself and the ecosystem on its home world, but a future in which a trillion of us are bred to turn the gears of the Amazon empire in outer space. Personally I think a much better vision would include shipping Bezos off to space right now, by himself, never to return.

Our cult of personality is leaving real life in the shade

What kind of people would you expect the newspapers to interview most? Those with the most to say, perhaps, or maybe those with the richest and weirdest experiences. Might it be philosophers, or detectives, or doctors working in war zones, refugees, polar scientists, street children, firefighters, base jumpers, activists, writers or free divers? No. It’s actors. I haven’t conducted an empirical study, but I would guess that between a third and a half of the major interviews in the newspapers feature people who make their living by adopting someone else’s persona and speaking someone else’s words. ... The next most-interviewed category, according to my unscientific survey, could be filed as “those who serve the wealthy”: restaurateurs, haute couturists, interior designers and the like, lionised and thrust into our faces as if we were their prospective clients. This is a world of make-believe, in which we are induced to imagine we are participants rather than mere gawpers.

The spotlight effect is bad enough on the culture pages. It’s worse when the same framing is applied to politics. Particularly during party conference season, but at other times of the year as well, public issues are cast as private dramas. Brexit, which is likely to alter the lives of everyone in Britain, is reduced to a story about whether or not Theresa May will keep her job. Who cares? Perhaps, by now, not even Theresa May. Neither May nor Jeremy Corbyn can carry the weight of the personality cults that the media seeks to build around them. They are diffident and awkward in public, and appear to writhe in the spotlight. Both parties grapple with massive issues, and draw on the work of hundreds in formulating policy, tactics and presentation. Yet these huge and complex matters are reduced to the drama of one person’s struggle. Everyone, in the media’s viewfinder, becomes an actor. Reality is replaced by representation. ...

The media’s failure of imagination and perspective is not just tiresome: it’s dangerous. There is a particular species of politics that is built entirely around personalities. It is a politics in which substance, evidence and analysis are replaced by symbols, slogans and sensation. It is called fascism. If you construct political narratives around the psychodramas of politicians, even when they don’t invite it, you open the way for those who can play this game more effectively. Already this reporting style has led to the rise of people who, though they are not fascists, have demagogic tendencies. Johnson, Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg are all, like Donald Trump, reality TV stars. The reality TV on which they feature is not The Apprentice, but Question Time and other news and current affairs programmes. In the media circus, the clowns have the starring roles.

The spotlight effect allows the favoured few to set the agenda. Almost all the most critical issues remain in the darkness beyond the circle of light. Every day, thousands of pages are published and thousands of hours broadcast by the media. But scarcely any of this space and time is made available for the matters that really count: environmental breakdown, inequality, exclusion, the subversion of democracy by money. In a world of impersonation, we obsess about trivia.

International court of justice orders US to lift new Iran sanctions

The UN’s international court of justice has reprimanded the US over its re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, ordering Washington to lift restrictive measures linked to humanitarian trade, food, medicine and civil aviation. The Hague ruling, delivered on Wednesday morning, is a victory for Iran after it complained to the ICJ in July that the return to sanctions imposed by Donald Trump following the US withdrawal from the 2015 landmark nuclear agreement was in violation of the Treaty of Amity, a 1955 pre-revolutionary friendship treaty.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, reacted by announcing the US was terminating the treaty, which the US signed with Tehran two years after orchestrating a coup to topple the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh.

“This is a decision that is frankly 39 years overdue,” Pompeo told reporters. Legally it will take a year for US withdrawal to take effect, but the secretary of state, indicated that the administration did not take it seriously, claiming that Iran had been “ignoring it for an awfully long time”. He said the ICJ case had served the purpose of underlining the “absolute absurdity” of the treaty.

Pompeo insisted that there were appropriate exemptions in US sanctions for humanitarian transactions and aviation safety. He described the case that Iran had taken to the ICJ as “meritless”, and made clear that the US would ignore the court’s ruling. “I am disappointed the court failed to recognise its lack of jurisdiction,” said Pompeo.

World economy at risk of another financial crash, says IMF

The world economy is at risk of another financial meltdown, following the failure of governments and regulators to push through all the reforms needed to protect the system from reckless behaviour, the International Monetary Fund has warned. With global debt levels well above those at the time of the last crash in 2008, the risk remains that unregulated parts of the financial system could trigger a global panic, the Washington-based lender of last resort said.

Much has been done to shore up the reserves of banks in the last 10 years and to put in place more rigorous oversight of the financial sector, but “risks tend to rise during good times, such as the current period of low interest rates and subdued volatility, and those risks can always migrate to new areas”, the IMF said, adding, “supervisors must remain vigilant to these unfolding events”.

A dramatic rise in lending by the so-called shadow banks in China and the failure to impose tough restrictions on insurance companies and asset managers, which handle trillions of dollars of funds, are highlighted by the IMF as causes for concern. The growth of global banks such as JP Morgan and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to a scale beyond that seen in 2008, leading to fears that they remain “too big fail”, also registers on the IMF’s radar.

The warning from the IMF Global Financial Stability report echoes similar concerns that complacency among regulators and a backlash against international agreements, especially from Donald Trump’s US administration, has undermined efforts to prepare for another downturn. The former UK prime minister Gordon Brown said last month that the world economy was “sleepwalking into a future crisis,” and risks were not being tackled now “we are in a leaderless world”.

Texas detention camp swells fivefold with migrant children

It was meant to be small and temporary. But the precise rows of US government tents by the lonely border crossing just a few feet from Mexico keep multiplying. The detention camp for migrant children in the south-west desert at Tornillo, Texas, not only remains in place weeks after it was expected to shut down, but is expanding fast. Children are being brought by the busload and kept here on this remote patch of federal land surrounded by scrub and pecan nut farms. Hidden from public view on the ground, its proliferation is clearly visible from the air.

The camp sprouted up four months ago in the midst of Donald Trump’s crackdown on unauthorized border crossings and immigration, starting with about two dozen neat, brown tents and one or two larger, white communal tents. ... Seen from a small aircraft on Sunday morning, it was clear the camp has expanded exponentially from when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) opened it in June and initially said it would operate for a few weeks, which turned into three months. Around 100 uniform brown tents are now visible and several more of the larger, white utility tents. ...

According to recent HHS statistics released to Congress and some media outlets, HHS now has in its custody across the country 12,800 undocumented minors – a fivefold increase in the span of 16 months.

When it first opened, the facility had a capacity to house 400 children. It has since grown to 2,400 beds and a further 1,400 beds will be placed on reserve status in case the number of minors being held in detention continues to rise, HHS said, while declining to answer questions regarding the exact number of detainees there now.

White supremacist fight club members slapped with federal riot charges from Charlottesville

Four alleged members of a white supremacist street fighting club are facing federal rioting charges for their involvement in the violent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, which left one dead and dozens injured. The criminal complaints were filed in late August and unsealed Tuesday, naming Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, Thomas Walter Gillen, 34, Michael Paul Miselis, 29, and Cole Evan White, 24, as defendants, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Virginia. ...

“The four defendants traveled to Charlottesville for the August 2017 Unite the Right Rally with the intent to encourage, promote, incite, participate in, and commit violent acts in furtherance of a riot,” the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a statement. ...

Prosecutors say the men are members of Rise Above Movement (RAM), an organization described as an “alt-right street-fighting club” in a ProPublica report last October. The criminal complaint, first obtained and published by Huffington Post, contains photos of RAM training and propaganda, as well as images of the defendants fighting protesters in Charlottesville. ...

“RAM and its members openly identify themselves on various social media platforms as 'alt-right' and 'nationalist’,” the complaint states, “and frequently posts videos and photographs of its adherents engaged in vigorous physical training and mixed martial arts (MMA) street-fighting techniques in order to prepare to engage in fighting and violence at political rallies."

Mental Health Experts Demand Psychological Assessment of Kavanaugh for Drinking, Instability

Trump mocks Christine Blasey Ford at Mississippi rally as supporters cheer

In a raucous campaign-style rally in Mississippi on Tuesday night, Donald Trump mocked Christine Blasey Ford, who in wrenching testimony at a hearing before the Senate judiciary committee last week said the supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager. As hundreds of supporters cheered, Trump delivered a crude imitation of Ford from her testimony, in which she vividly described a violent sexual assault she alleges Kavanaugh committed against her in the early 1980s, while admitting that certain details of the time and place were lost to memory.

Early on Wednesday, the Republican senator Jeff Flake, a key member of the Senate judiciary committee that held the hearing, called Trump’s remarks “kind of appalling”. ...

At his rally, the president mocked Ford’s testimony with a question-and-answer patter that brought cheers from the crowd in Southaven, Mississippi. “How did you get home?” Trump said, echoing a question Ford was asked by the committee. “I don’t remember,” the president said. “How did you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know.’ What neighborhood was it? ‘I don’t know.’ Where’s the house? ‘I don’t know.’” Trump concluded the riff by lamenting the personal cost to Kavanaugh of Ford’s allegations and by insinuating that Ford was part of a partisan conspiracy. “They destroy people, these are really evil people,” Trump said. ...

On Tuesday night after the remarks, Michael Bromwich, a member of Ford’s legal team, condemned “a vicious, vile and soulless attack”.

President Trump mocks Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, during a rally in Mississippi. https://t.co/yjrqDcwzmE pic.twitter.com/NhBMhJhCwo

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 3, 2018

Hundreds of law professors sign letters rejecting Kavanaugh nomination

Hundreds of US law professors are urging the Senate to reject Brett Kavanaugh’s supreme court nomination because of his conduct at last week’s hearing on sexual misconduct allegations.

Signatures are being collected for two letters arguing that Kavanaugh disqualified himself with his angry and tearful remarks to the Senate judiciary committee. Kavanaugh claimed an allegation that he committed a sexual assault aged 17 was “a calculated and orchestrated political hit” by Democrats.

The professors say in their letters that Kavanaugh displayed contempt towards members of Congress and showed a political bias that could call into question his future rulings. They also say his temperament is unsuited to a lifetime position on the highest court.

Democrats Hope the FBI Investigation Will Sink Brett Kavanaugh — but Such Probes Are Inherently Limited

As the FBI explores whether Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted women while in high school and college, elected officials and others have suggested that federal agents can authoritatively get to the bottom of an alleged attack said to have occurred three decades ago. The FBI’s only impediment, these people allege, is possible meddling by the White House to limit the investigation’s scope. Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican whose last-minute show of leverage forced the new FBI inquiry, has told the White House and the FBI that he expects “a fulsome” investigation. Newspaper editorial boards have warned that the Trump administration’s interference in the investigation would taint the FBI’s findings. ...

The FBI agents probing whether Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when they were both in high school lack something that most serious government investigations require: subpoena power. Unlike agents tasked with investigating a crime, the FBI must rely on witnesses to cooperate voluntarily with its investigation. A possible witness approached by the FBI may simply slam the door in agents’ faces with no repercussions. At any time, witnesses who choose to cooperate can refuse to answer a specific question, and they won’t have to provide any explanation for their refusal. ... The only way to compel someone to speak as part of this inquiry would be for the Senate to subpoena witnesses. The Republican majority appears unwilling to exercise that power. ...

Despite Trump’s frequent dismissals of critical press reports as “fake news,” the media has been key to unearthing facts about Kavanaugh’s personal history. The Intercept in September first disclosed that Sen. Dianne Feinstein was in possession of Blasey Ford’s letter. More recently, the New York Times discovered something previous background checks on Kavanaugh apparently hadn’t: that he had been questioned by police about a bar fight in 1985. Perhaps this one-week FBI investigation will substantiate or undermine the charges that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted women. But it’s more likely that the news media, chasing a story that has captured the world’s attention, will be the ones doing the most “fulsome” inquiries here.

Sick of Being Confronted, McConnell Vows GOP 'Will Not Be Intimidated by "These People"

An apparently perturbed Senate Majority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says that the loud, outraged, and determined constituents who have been letting Republican lawmakers know just how much they do not want Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court will not be listened to or have an impact on his effort to ram the nominee through in the coming days.

"There is no chance in the world they're going to scare us out of doing our duty," McConnell declared on the Senate floor Wednesday morning, after referencing lawmakers who have been confronted at airports, in their offices, or in Senate offices on Capitol Hill.

"I don't care how many members they chase, how many people they harass here in the halls," McConnell continued, "I wanna make one thing perfectly clear: we will not be intimated by these people."

Bombshell Report Details Tax Evasion and 'Outright Fraud' Through Which Trump Accumulated His Wealth From Daddy

Undermining the narrative President Donald Trump has aggressively promoted of his success as a "self-made" billionaire—the platform upon which he has built his success as a business mogul as well as his campaign for president in 2016—the New York Times released an explosive in-depth report on Tuesday detailing schemes which allowed Trump to avoid paying taxes on wealth that was transferred from his parents to himself and his siblings.

The "dubious tax schemes" Trump helped coordinate include cases of "outright fraud," according to the Times.

Trump has for years been fond of telling audiences that through hard work and financial know-how he was able to transform a single $1 million loan from his father, Fred Trump, into a $10 billion fortune—a tale that made him a popular figure with those who voted for him in 2016. But the Times reveals that based on 100,000 pages of financial records—including 200 pages of Fred Trump's tax returns and those of the Trump empire's partnerships—and interviews with Fred Trump's former associates, Trump has received the equivalent of $413 million in 2018 dollars from his father's real estate empire—starting "when he was a toddler and continuing to this day."

Contrary to Trump's preferred origin story, the Times revealed that Fred Trump lent his son at least $60.7 million to help him fund his business ventures—equivalent to $140 million in today’s dollars. While Trump has claimed he had to pay the initial loan back "with interest," tax returns show most of money was not repaid.

There you have it: Donald Trump is no self-made man, he was a millionaire at age 8 and only survived on his Daddy's money. The Trump family grew richer by tax fraud. This is a profile of a world-class criminal family. #CriminalTrump https://t.co/o0qYjiLNNZ

— Carl Dunn (@CarlDunnJr) October 2, 2018

Trump tax scheme: NYT report accuses US President of fraud

New York tax authorities investigating Trump fraud allegations

New York state tax authorities are investigating after the New York Times reported that Donald Trump engaged in “dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud”, as he and his siblings took control of a real estate empire built by Fred C Trump, the president’s late father.

“The tax department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation,” the state taxation authority told the Washington Post.

In a blockbuster investigative report built on interviews with the elder Trump’s former employees and more than 100,000 pages of documents including tens of thousands of pages of confidential records, the Times unfolds the story of how Trump “received the equivalent today of at least $413m from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day”. Little of the information had previously come to light. Its publication, which was subject to blanket denials by a lawyer for the president and by the White House but which was not refuted in detail, fundamentally alters the visible facts establishing the centerpoint of Trump’s identity: his wealth.

In defiance of the mountain of tax returns, incorporation and loan documents, press secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement Tuesday evening noting that Fred Trump “has been gone for nearly twenty years” and calling the Times report “misleading”. “Many decades ago the IRS reviewed and signed off on these transactions,” Sanders said. But as damaging as the revelation of his massive inheritance might be to the myth Trump has carefully maintained, the documentation in the Times report of alleged tax fraud by Trump, which if true could still be subject to civil fines, might represent the greater hazard to the president.

Toxic algae won’t leave Florida’s coasts alone

Rust-colored, toxic algae blooms have choked Florida’s coasts for several months now, killing thousands of fish and other marine life and even making beachgoers ill. Now, the problem has reached its potential peak: hitting all three coasts of the Sunshine State. The naturally occurring but harmful algae bloom, often called a “red tide,” produces brevetoxins that can kill fish in massive numbers. ... The algae has reached state’s east coast only eight times since the early 1950s.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing red tide hit the Carolinas,” said Bob Weisberg, distinguished university professor of physical oceanography at the University of South Florida. Although red tides occur frequently in Florida, its endurance this year, he explained, has allowed the algae to stick around long enough for natural currents to drop it near other shorelines.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission tested the water in Palm Beach County after some beachgoers reported respiratory problems over the weekend, according to the Palm Beach Post. Researchers found the highest concentration of the organism that produces the red tide in the Jupiter Inlet, less than 10 miles away from the Trump National Golf Club and about 30 miles away from the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. But overall the commission recorded low-to-medium concentrations of the red tide in water samples taken off the coast of the county, the Palm Beach Post reported. ...

The severity and persistence of the red tide this year is troubling — especially given the overwhelming presence of other harmful algae blooms across as well. Sunlight, nutrients, and salinity can stoke algae growth, combined with helpful wind direction and currents. The state’s waters have also experienced harmful blue-green algae blooms, aided by a heavy rainy season last spring.

Trump races against clock to roll back major Obama-era environment rules

Donald Trump’s administration is racing against the clock to rescind or rewrite every major pro-environment policy enduring from Barack Obama’s presidency. But the government will probably not be able to usher those changes through the courts before the next presidential election. Green-minded states and advocates cannot sue until regulations are final, and it could take years for the courts to rule. In the interim, the lengthy slate of rollbacks will slow progress on reducing air pollution and greenhouse gases that warm the planet, health experts say.

Bruce Buckheit, who worked in the Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement division under both Democratic and Republican presidents, said the first year of the Trump presidency was “a bunch of press releases”, but “now we’re getting to the point where they’re actually doing things”. “The timetable that they’re rushing toward is to try to get these things done in time so that the judicial review process is done before the end of the Trump term,” Buckheit said. ...

“They’re moving forward on many fronts,” said Alan Krupnick, a senior fellow at the economics-focused environmental group Resources for the Future. “I think they could well be saying we want to just throw as much stuff out there so if a Democrat wins in 2020, or we lose in the interim, it’ll take a longer time to undo things.” ...

Most Trump officials don’t acknowledge man-made climate change, although agency analysis has recognized temperatures could rise 7F (about 4C) by 2100.

How Well Does Fossil Fuel Divestment Combat Climate Change?

Also of Interest

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

Seven Days in September

Could Trump Take Down the American Empire?

Kavanaugh’s 1983 Letter Offers Inside Look at High School Clique

Intercepted Podcast: Raging Bullshit: The Injustice of Brett Kavanaugh and His Enablers

Is Brett Kavanaugh’s High School Ditching Him? Nearly 100 Alumni Sign Petition Against the Supreme Court Nominee.

‘A Hidden History Runs Through Our Social Movements in This Country’

How America Can Free Itself From Wall Street

How your Patagonia bag and toilet paper fund the Koch brothers

A Little Night Music

Charles Mingus - Devil's Blues (The Drifter)

Charles Mingus - Moanin'

Charles Mingus - Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Charles Mingus - Better Git It In Your Soul

Mingus Big Band - Haitian Fight Song

Charles Mingus - Freedom

Charles Mingus - Boogie Stop Shuffle

Mingus Big Band - Moanin' Mambo

Charles Mingus - Free Cell Block F 'Tis Nazi USA