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This evening's music features blues-rock harmonica player and singer Paul Butterfield. Enjoy!

"Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?"

-- Khalil Gibran

News and Opinion

US Role in Syria Grows More Complex With Trump Claim to Oil

By claiming a right to Syria's oil, President Donald Trump has added more complexity — as well as additional U.S. forces and time — to an American military mission he has twice declared he was ending so the troops could come home. ...

Trump has offered varying descriptions of the military's role in eastern Syria. On Oct. 25 he said, "We've secured the oil, and, therefore, a small number of U.S. troops will remain in the area where they have the oil." Three days later, he went further, declaring the oil to be America's. "We're keeping the oil — remember that," he said in Chicago. "I've always said that: 'Keep the oil.' We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month? Keep the oil."

White House officials since then have declined to explain what Trump meant by "we're keeping the oil" or his estimate of its value. Pentagon officials have said privately they've been given no order to take ownership of any element of Syria's oil resources, including the wells and stored crude. ...

Russia has expressed outrage at Trump's claim to the oil, calling it "state banditry." Foreign Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said grabbing the oil belies U.S. claims to be fighting terrorism and "lies far from the ideals that Washington has proclaimed." For years the U.S. has said its military interventions abroad are meant to enhanced peace and security, not to take any nation's territory or resources.

Stephen Vladeck, a national security law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said there is no solid legal argument the Trump administration can make for claiming Syria's oil.

Trump himself has acknowledged the potential for a fight over the oil. "We're leaving soldiers to secure the oil," he said Sunday. "And we may have to fight for the oil. It's okay. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight."

The Baghdadi Scam

Donald Trump says that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by the United States military. Baghdadi was the founder of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which is also known as ISIS and Daesh. The name is less important than the fact that ISIL carried out a reign of terror against the people of Iraq and Syria. They did so with the blessing and connivance of the United States government, which used Baghdadi and his ilk to continue a 40-year long practice of using jihadists proxies against secular states in the region. ...

The corporate media, Democrats and Republicans all joined in celebrating Baghdadi’s reported demise. Even those who count how often Trump tells lies suddenly expressed complete confidence in the version of events. Once again we see the embrace of Trump by the so-called resistance if he adheres to imperialist orthodoxy. The same man who they claim to want to impeach suddenly gets praise as he did when he launched an attack on Syria in 2017. The man mocked as a buffoon can be seen as “presidential” if he kills or even claims to kill people in a far away land. ...

Trump has been quite consistent in one way. From the days of his presidential campaign he determined the value of any action through the lense of “taking the oil.” He says out loud what other imperialists try to hide behind talk of humanitarian intervention. Now Syria is his target but his detractors rarely care about the blatant theft of other country’s resources. Usually they turn up their noses because of Trump’s lack of finesse. They don’t really oppose what his administration is doing in Syria or anywhere else. ...

The corporate media and Democrats are after Trump, not because they want to remove him from office but because they hope the impeachment process is a tool for his defeat. The last thing they want to do is mobilize their voters with policies that would appeal to them. Dragging Trump through the mud of his own making because of an ill considered phone call to Ukraine is their preferred method of returning to the White House. In the end it doesn’t matter if Baghdadi is dead or when or how he died. The regime change plot failed, other nations like Russia, Iran and Syrian itself are in control of events. Americans may snicker when Trump pays homage to an army dog that he says helped to track Baghdadi but they should remember that Bush and Obama and now Trump are responsible for far greater suffering.

Kurds call on US to block Turkish military drones from Syrian air space

Syrian Kurds are asking the Pentagon to block US-controlled air space over north-eastern Syria to Turkish armed drones which they claim are causing significant civilian casualties. Ilham Ahmed, the head of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), said the Kurds would hold the Pentagon responsible for Turkish war crimes if they did nothing to guarantee protection from the air.

She told reporters during a visit to Washington that armed Turkish drones were a constant presence in the air above north-eastern Syria, striking at will against both military and civilian targets.

“We have been promised by the United States on a couple of occasions that areas that have US forces will never be attacked by Turkey,” Ahmed said through a translator “However, we saw that the US did not fulfill its promise after the Turkish incursion. Armed Turkish drones are still flying over our region and targeting anything they wish to,” Ahmed said.

“We call on the Pentagon go to stop allowing Turkey to use Syrian air space,” she added. “We hold the Pentagon responsible for all the crimes committed by Turkey if they don’t block the air space.”

Ahmed said said the SDC, which is the political arm of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), had appealed to the Pentagon for help or an explanation but had heard nothing back.

CIA-backed ‘death squads’ in Afghanistan 'commit atrocities' - HRW

CIA-Backed 'Death Squads' Are Committing War Crimes in Afghanistan, Report Says

CIA-backed Afghan strike forces have committed war crimes during night raids targeting the Taliban, a new Human Rights Watch report alleges. The 53-page report describes the Afghan forces committing “summary executions and other grave abuses without accountability” during 14 night raids conducted from late 2017 to mid-2019.

The abuses included extrajudicial killings of civilians, forced disappearances of detainees, and attacks on healthcare facilities that treat insurgents. “These are not isolated cases,” said Patricia Gossman, the report’s author. “They are illustrative of a larger pattern of serious laws-of-war violations — some amounting to war crimes — that extends to all provinces in Afghanistan where these paramilitary forces operate with impunity.”

Based on dozens of interviews with residents and civilians, the report focuses on night raids by Afghan forces in areas controlled or contested by the Taliban. In these raids, the Afghan strike forces, referred to by one diplomat in the report as “death squads,” storm into domestic compounds, questioning, detaining — and sometimes summarily executing — the residents. ...

The Afghan forces under scrutiny are those backed by the CIA, which has run a parallel counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan alongside the U.S. military operation. The forces are recruited, equipped, trained, and deployed under the auspices of the CIA to target insurgents from the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS. Since 2017, these forces have been able to call in airstrikes even without U.S. forces present: according to the report, the result has been an increase in the number of strikes on residential buildings that have indiscriminately or disproportionately killed Afghan civilians.

Senate Democrats block defense spending bill over Trump wall

Senate Democrats blocked a defense spending bill for the second time on Thursday, underscoring the hurdles ahead of next month’s government funding deadline.

Senators voted 51-41 on whether to advance a spending package that was expected to include the defense funding. The bill needed 60 votes to advance.

Democrats warned ahead of time that they would oppose taking up the bill until lawmakers get a deal on top-line spending figures known as 302(b)s. They previously blocked the defense spending bill in September.

“The Republican leader has been accusing Democrats of threatening to block military funding. Now, that is an absurd statement if there ever was one. We’re simply trying to stop Republicans from stealing money from our military and putting it into the wall,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said ahead of the vote.

Russia! Boo! Scary! It's odd and interesting how intelligence claims of Russia interference keep cropping up at critical moments in a variety of countries. Also, certain names keep turning up like bad pennies, in this case William Browder the controversial fellow behind the Magnitsky Act.

Johnson accused of withholding key report on Russia from voters

Downing Street has been accused of sitting on an explosive parliamentary report on the security threat posed by Russia to the UK, which examined allegations that Kremlin-sponsored activity distorted the result of the 2016 EU referendum. The cross-party intelligence and security committee said it had expected Boris Johnson to approve publication of the 50-page dossier by Thursday – and there was now a risk its publication would be prevented before the general election. ...

It is understood that the dossier examines allegations that Russian money has flowed into British politics in general and the Conservative party in particular. It also features claims that Russia launched a major influence operation in 2016 in support of Brexit. ...

The report is understood to have already been cleared by Britain’s intelligence agencies but a Downing Street spokesman said the approval process “usually takes several weeks to complete”. Sources said the process typically lasts six weeks and the document had only been sent over two weeks ago. Intelligence and security committee sources responded by saying that Downing Street’s claims were not true and that the normal approval timescale was not six weeks but 10 working days. Opposition politicians accused Johnson of staging a political cover-up ahead of the election.

One of those who gave evidence to the committee was William Browder, a financier and human rights campaigner. His testimony raised concerns about the willingness of former British diplomats, intelligence officers and establishment figures to work on behalf of Russian interests. Browder’s evidence named Boris Johnson’s election adviser Lynton Crosby and former Labour attorney general Peter Goldsmith among those who have conducted advisory and lobbying work on behalf of Russians who wanted to avoid being hit by EU economic sanctions.

Oh looky, it's another bad penny:

Trump-Russia dossier author gave evidence to UK intrusion inquiry

A report on Russian interference in British politics allegedly being sat on by Downing Street includes evidence from Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk whose investigation into Donald Trump’s links with Moscow sparked a US political scandal.

Steele made submissions in writing to parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), it is understood. A counter-intelligence specialist, Steele spent his career tracking Russian influence operations around the world and investigated Alexander Litvinenko’s 2006 murder.

The cross-party committee has been examining Russian interference in British politics for more than a year. It took evidence from both the UK’s spy agencies and experts on Kremlin intelligence and disinformation tactics such as Steele.

Members examined claims that the Kremlin tried to distort the result of the 2016 EU referendum, starting work after the former prime minister Theresa May had warned that Russia was sowing discord by “weaponising information” in the UK.

Useful Idiots : CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou on Impeachment, "Assets," and the Espionage Act

Julian Assange's Life Is at Risk, Says United Nations Expert, Condemning Detention After Exposing War Crimes

The United Nations special rapporteur on torture reiterated Friday a warning that Julian Assange's life is at risk and said the WikiLeaks founder must not be extradited to the United States as a consequence of "exposing serious governmental misconduct."

“While the U.S. government prosecutes Mr. Assange for publishing information about serious human rights violations, including torture and murder, the officials responsible for these crimes continue to enjoy impunity," said special rapporteur Nils Melzer in a new statement.

Free press advocates see Assange as victim of an unprecedented assault on journalism because the WikiLeaks publisher faces 18 charges in the U.S. under the Espionage Act—making Assange the first publisher to face charges under that law. Currently in London's Belmarsh prison for skipping bail seven years ago when he first took refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Assange last month lost a bid to postpone his U.S. extradition hearing in February.

Melzer's new comments come five months after he visited Assange in prison and said Assange exhibited "all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture." But warnings about Assange's treatment, the U.N. expert said, went unheeded.

The U.K. government has shown "outright contempt for Mr. Assange's rights and integrity," said Melzer, and failed to take "any measures of investigation, prevention, and redress required under international law."

Assange has also not been given his right to prepare his defense, Melzer said, because his "access to legal counsel and documents has been severely obstructed."

"In a cursory response sent nearly five months after my visit, the U.K. government flatly rejected my findings, without indicating any willingness to consider my recommendations, let alone to implement them, or even provide the additional information requested," said Melzer.

"He continues to be detained under oppressive conditions of isolation and surveillance, not justified by his detention status," Melzer said of Assange.

The driving force behind the harsh treatment and potential life behind bars appears evident to Melzer.

"In my view, this case has never been about Mr. Assange's guilt or innocence, but about making him pay the price for exposing serious governmental misconduct, including alleged war crimes and corruption," Melzer said. "Unless the U.K. urgently changes course and alleviates his inhumane situation, Mr. Assange's continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life."

CrossTalk on Max Blumenthal: Arresting Speech

WhatsApp 'hack' is serious rights violation, say alleged victims

More than a dozen pro-democracy activists, journalists and academics have spoken out after WhatsApp privately warned them they had allegedly been the victims of cyber-attacks designed to secretly infiltrate their mobile phones.

The individuals received alerts saying they were among more than 100 human rights campaigners whose phones were believed to have been hacked using malware sold by NSO Group, an Israeli cyberweapons company.

WhatsApp launched an unprecedented lawsuit against the surveillance company earlier this week, claiming it had discovered more than 1,400 of its users were targeted by NSO technology in a two-week period in May.

Filed in a Californian court, the lawsuit described the alleged attacks as an “unmistakeable pattern of abuse” that violated US law. ...

Pressure on NSO grew on Friday when the Israeli security cabinet minister, Ze’ev Elkin, insisted the government had nothing to do with the company. In an interview on Tel Aviv radio, he described NSO “as a private player” and said if anyone had done anything wrong, “then the justice system here and in other countries will throw the book at them”.

Fed Secretly Bailing Out Banking System AGAIN!

Fed guarantees more money for Wall Street as attacks on workers intensify

The US Federal Reserve cut its base interest rate by 0.25 percentage points at its meeting yesterday, the third such cut since July, but gave an indication that this may be the last reduction for the year. Financial markets, which have been pushing for lower rates—there was a 95 percent expectation of a cut yesterday—took the indications of a hold for the rest of the year in stride. This was because at his press conference, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell virtually ruled out any rate rises for the foreseeable future.

The S&P 500 index closed at its second record high for the week. The index rose 0.3 percent to top its previous record. The index has risen by 22 percent this year, with a major factor being what Powell called a “substantial” shift in Fed monetary policy. ... The Fed’s latest decision underscores the essential class content of economic policy in the US—unlimited amounts of ultra-cheap money for the financial oligarchs on Wall Street to continue their speculative operations, coupled with austerity, wage cuts, speedup and layoffs for workers. ...

The Fed initially sought to justify its latest round of cuts by maintaining that the rate reductions were an “insurance policy” against the risks to the economy posed by trade tensions, particularly the US-China conflict, and the threat of a no-deal Brexit. In his press conference, Powell said those risks had eased somewhat in the recent period, before making clear that the policy of providing cheap money would nevertheless continue indefinitely. ...

The latest decision came just hours after the release of the latest data on US gross domestic product. The report showed that GDP rose by at annual rate of just 1.9 percent in the third quarter, amid a fall in business investment, compared to a 2 percent increase in the second quarter. ... The low-growth trajectory of the US economy blows apart the lie of the Trump administration that its massive tax cuts of nearly two years ago, which handed out billions of dollars to corporations and the ultra-wealthy, would provide an economic boost. The reality is that the personal income tax rate for ordinary workers is now higher than that for the upper echelons. But the tax cuts for corporations and the rich have been used not to finance investment, but rather for parasitical financial operations, including share buybacks and mergers and acquisitions.

There are clear signs of another financial crisis should interest rates rise, or even if there were an indication that they could rise. These risks were pointed to in a report delivered last month by Fed Governor Lael Brainard to a House of Representatives finance committee. She said business borrowing had risen more rapidly than GDP, and was near its historical peak. ... The outcome of the latest Fed decision is clear: a guarantee to Wall Street that the central bank will meet its demands for the supply of cheap money to finance speculation, intensifying attacks on the working class to feed the all-consuming parasitism of the financial oligarchy, and ever greater risks of another financial crisis.

“This Is a Win for Our City”: Chicago Teachers Celebrate End of Historic Strike After 11 Days

Chicago teachers' strike ends as union reaches labor deal with city

Chicago teachers and the country’s third-largest school district reached a labor contract deal on Thursday, ending a strike that canceled 11 days of classes for more than 300,000 children. Students will be back at school on Friday morning.

The city’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, announced that the district had reached a deal with the Chicago Teachers Union after months of unsuccessful negotiations led to the city’s first significant walkout by educators since 2012. ...

Chicago Teachers Union delegates voted late on Wednesday to approve a tentative deal that includes pay raises over five years, but they initially refused to end the strike unless the mayor added school days to cover the lost time. The union said Lightfoot had agreed to make up five days of lost time. ...

Teachers said the strike was based on a social justice agenda and aimed to increase resources, including nurses and social workers for students, and reduce class sizes, which teachers say exceed 30 or 40 students in some schools. Union leaders said the strike forced the city to negotiate on issues such as support for homeless students.

Katie Hill Slams Republicans for Enabling Sexual Predators in Her Farewell Speech

Freshman Rep. Katie Hill took to the House floor to deliver her last speech, with a message for Republicans: Stop enabling accused sexual predators.

“I am leaving now because of a double standard,” said the 32-year-old congresswoman, who just weeks ago was one of the most prominent members of the freshman class. She is now leaving office amid a sex scandal that has touched her campaign staff, Congressional office, and family.

“I'm leaving because I no longer want to be used as a bargaining chip,” Hill said. “I'm leaving, but we have men who have been credibly accused of intentional acts of sexual violence, and remain in boardrooms, on the Supreme Court, in this very body, and worst of all, in the Oval Office. So the fight goes on.”

New Hampshire political reporter, Paul Steinhauser talks Bernie Sanders' slam on Joe Biden

Whacko alert!

Halloween Is a Gateway to Drug Addiction, Claimed Ministry Backed by Amy Klobuchar

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar once requested a $500,000 earmark for Minnesota Teen Challenge, an anti-LGBT ministry that claims that Halloween, Harry Potter, and Pokémon are gateways to drug addiction (via Satanism).

The Minnesota senator sought the earmark — referring to the now-shunned practice of lawmakers diverting federal cash to their pet projects — with former Republican Rep. Jim Ramstad and Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison in early 2008. According to her website, captured by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Klobuchar requested the money for Minnesota Teen Challenge’s “Know the Truth” program to “expand their drug prevention education efforts for teenagers” for fiscal year 2009.

One pamphlet put out by the organization — first captured by the Wayback Machine in 2009, the year Klobuchar’s earmark sought to fund — called Halloween “a day set up totally for Satan,” adding that the “more people who go out dressed up like demons, ghosts, witches and goblins, the more glory Satan receives.” Its newsletter also detailed some of the “evil” things people do on Halloween, including human sacrifices and curses that left kids “sick for weeks” after the holiday, while “drug dealers were out in full force.” A note from the director intones, “Pokemon is loaded in demonic symbolism and evil power.”

Minnesota Teen Challenge is operated by the Assemblies of God, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, and has typically found support among conservative politicians. The Teen Challenge’s application from the time lists “homosexuality” among other “problems” such as drug addiction that the applicant may be experiencing. Aside from a handful of blogs and a story in the Minnesota Independent, which has since shut down, Klobuchar’s support for the controversial rehab program didn’t get much attention at the time. Her presidential campaign did not return a request for comment by press time.

Krystal Ball calls out Joe Manchin's never Bernie hypocrisy

After Sanders Says West Virginia Working-Class Base Will Support Bold Vision, Manchin Says His Vote "Wouldn't Be Bernie" in Head-to-Head With Trump

Sen. Joe Manchin on Wednesday said he would not vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders in a general election contest against incumbent President Donald Trump, just days after the airing of an interview in which Sanders told CNBC's John Harwood that working-class voters in states like Manchin's West Virginia would support progressive policies like Medicare for All and a higher minimum wage.

"It wouldn't be Bernie," Manchin, a Democrat, told Fox News host Neil Cavuto when asked if he would vote for the Republican Trump over Sanders in a hypothetical matchup. "Let's just say I'm going to make decisions based on what's best for my country and my state," Manchin added when pressed on whether he would cast a vote for Trump.

Manchin also told Fox that he would vote against the Sanders agenda, calling it "not practical where I come from."

The West Virginia senator's comments came in response to questions from Cavuto about remarks Sanders made in his Tuesday interview where the Vermont senator, a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, said it was "damn right" that Manchin and Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) would vote for his agenda. Sanders told Harwood that as president, he would go to the home states of recalcitrant senators to ask constituents to pressure the holdouts. ...

Activist Jordan Uhl on Tuesday questioned the premise of Harwood's question, saying that the CNBC host "doesn't quite understand the political makeup of West Virginia."

"He asks if Joe Manchin of West Virginia would vote for Sanders' policies if elected," Uhl said. "Every single county in West Virginia went Sanders in the 2016 primary."

Just imagine the anger directed at the Bernie camp if a lawmaker supporting him (or even a prominent support of his) said they wouldn’t support for the centrist Dem candidate against Trumphttps://t.co/oeseK2iXVC

— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 31, 2019

With Detailed Pay-For Plan, Warren Touts Medicare for All as 'Bigger Than the Biggest Tax Cut' in US History

It won't be a burden. It will be a relief. And for the large majority of those living in the United States—a huge tax break.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a 'Paying for Medicare for All' proposal on Friday morning, laying out her detailed approach to financing a federal health care plan that would provide comprehensive coverage to all Americans by demanding the top 1% and corporations take the brunt of the costs while promising "not one penny" more in taxes for working-class and middle-class families.

"No middle class tax increases," Warren said of her plan in a detailed blog post as she vowed to put "$11 trillion in household expenses back in the pockets" of U.S. families. That figure, she said, is "substantially larger than the largest tax cut" in the nation's history. ...

As summarized by CNN, Warren would pay for her plan in the following ways:

• Employer contributions: Instead of paying premiums to insurers, companies would send an estimated $8.8 trillion over 10 years to the federal government as an "Employer Medicare Contribution."
• Taxes on the wealthy: Billionaires would be subject to a new tax of three cents on the dollar on net worth above $1 billion. This is in addition to the wealth tax she announced earlier this year, which would also place a 3 percentage point levy on billionaires. Also, the wealthiest 1% would be taxed on capital gains income annually, rather than at the time of sale, and the capital gains rate would be raised to match income tax rates. Combined, this would raise $3 trillion.
• Reducing tax evasion: Warren argues that she can collect $2.3 trillion by empowering the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax evasion and fraud, redirecting the agency's focus to high-income earners.
• Levies on financial sector and large corporations: Warren would impose a financial transaction tax of .01% on the sale of stocks, bonds and derivatives. She would also make several significant changes to corporate tax law. All together, these would generate $3.8 trillion.
• Taxing additional take-home pay: Since employees would no longer have to pay their share of health care premiums, their take-home pay would go up. This would raise $1.4 trillion.

Everything got worse under Obama/Biden

Again!

Keystone Pipeline Leaks (at Least) 383,000 Gallons of Crude Oil in North Dakota

Environmentalists were outraged but not at all surprised to learn Thursday that the Keystone pipeline sprung yet another massive leak, this time spilling 383,000 gallons of crude oil in North Dakota.

"I wish I could say I was shocked, but a major spill from the Keystone pipeline is exactly what multiple experts predicted would happen," Greenpeace USA senior research specialist Tim Donaghy said in a statement. "In fact, this is the fourth significant spill from the Keystone pipeline in less than ten years of operation. History has shown us time and again that there is no safe way to transport fossil fuels, and pipelines are no exception."

As 350.org founder Bill McKibben tweeted in response to the leak, "It happens over and over and over and over and over."

The latest Keystone spill was first detected Tuesday night by TC Energy, the pipeline's owner, and the extent of the damage to the surrounding areas is not yet known to the public. According to Greenpeace, the leak "is already the eighth-largest pipeline oil spill of the last decade."

Brent Nelson, emergency manager for Walsh County, North Dakota, told the local Grand Forks Herald that the cleanup process could take months. ...

TC Energy, previously known as TransCanada, denied that the spill had any impact on drinking water, a claim that was met with skepticism.

Keystone Pipeline leak spills oil in northeastern North Dakota

Corp says the oil hasn’t contaminated any drinking water & they’re cleaning it up but anyone who drives to the site will be fined by their security so who knows what’s going on. #NOKXL https://t.co/7H6Dcz4bsm

— Ruth Hopkins (@RuthH_Hopkins) October 31, 2019

Keystone's leak in North Dakota was detected just hours after the U.S. State Department held a public hearing in Billings, Montana to solicit comments on the department's new analysis (pdf) of the potential environmental impact of the Keystone XL project.

The Trump administration has worked hard to approve and accelerate the project over the protests and legal challenges of indigenous rights organizations and green groups.

Excellent, worth a full read:

From Climate Denial to “Green” Petroleum: Massachusetts Accuses Exxon Mobil of Deceptive Messaging

Exxon Mobil’s relationship with the New York Times is a case study in how the fossil fuel industry’s climate denialism has evolved over the past 20 years. Beginning in the 1970s, Exxon Mobil published an “advertorial” every Thursday on the New York Times editorial page. The quarter-page, essay-style ads were designed to mimic a Times op-ed. Starting in the 1980s, doubt about the seriousness of human-driven climate change was a repeated theme. The ads came with titles including “Apocalypse no,” “Reset the alarm,” “Less heat, more light on climate change,” and “Climate change: a degree of uncertainty.”

According to a lawsuit Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed against Exxon Mobil last week, the oil company’s use of the New York Times editorial section “to shift public perception was among the most significant and longest regular — in this case, weekly — uses of media to influence public and stakeholder opinion in modern U.S. history.”

The ads failed to mention that Exxon’s products’ emissions risked effects that would be “catastrophic (at least for a substantial proportion of the earth’s population),” as an Exxon scientist advised in 1981. ...

A recent Exxon ad published on the New York Times website was titled “The Future of Energy? It May Come From Where You Least Expect.” The heavily designed, article-style ad focused on Exxon’s biofuels research. “We’re aiming to have the technical ability to produce 10,000 barrels of algae-based biofuel a day by 2025,” Rob Brown, an algae researcher, is quoted as saying.

The ad does not mention that the goal only equates to 0.2 percent of the corporation’s current refinery capacity, nor does it note Exxon’s plans for fossil fuel production in the years to come. Last March, the company estimated that by 2024, it would produce 1 million barrels per day of oil and gas in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico — five times more than what it produces today. And it certainly doesn’t mention scientists’ assertion that governments and corporations need to cut carbon emissions by 45 percent before 2030 to have a shot at avoiding catastrophic climate impacts. According to Healey, Exxon ads like the one by T Brand Studios are “false and misleading” and violate the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Act.

Five Indigenous Leaders Massacred in Colombia; New Wave of Violence Feared as 2,500 Troops Deployed

Quarter of world's pig population 'to die due to African swine fever'

About a quarter of the global pig population is expected to die as a result of an epidemic of African swine fever (ASF), according to the intergovernmental organisation responsible for coordinating animal disease control.

In the last year the spread of the disease has taken policymakers by surprise, and has been particularly devastating in China – home to the world’s largest pig population. The disease is also established in other Asian countries such as Vietnam and South Korea, and continues to wreak havoc in eastern Europe, where the current outbreak began in 2014.

The severity of the crisis means that global pork prices are rising, spurred largely by the demand from China, where as many as 100m pigs have been lost since ASF broke out there last year. In recent months, China has been granting export approval to foreign meat plants and signing deals around the world at a dizzying rate. US pork sales to China have doubled, while European pork prices have reached a six-year high.

Dr Mark Schipp, vice-president of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), told a press conference this week that ASF was “the biggest threat to any commercial livestock of our generation”. He claimed that the spread of the disease in the past year to countries including China, which has half the world’s pig population, had inflamed a worldwide crisis. Schipp said veterinary scientists worldwide were trying to find a vaccine for the disease, but that it was a “complex challenge” because of the nature of the virus. While the disease does not spread to humans, it is virtually 100% fatal once embedded in pig populations.

ASF can be transmitted through direct contact with infected animals, such as wild boar, and via ticks.

PG&E: what’s next for the utility at the center of California’s wildfires

PG&E has seen multiple stages of chaos and crisis in recent years, from the liabilities incurred from igniting wildfires, to the public safety power shutoffs meant to stop those fires, to this new nightmare scenario, featuring both potentially utility-created disasters at once. The power safety shutoff plans that were supposed to prevent just this kind of blaze are proving untenable. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, is placing blame and hinting at more regulation to come. Others are calling for the state to take over PG&E, or break it up. The company’s ongoing troubles and danger pose an existential question for California: what is needed to adapt this infrastructure for the climate-changed state, and who’s willing and able to pay for it? ...

On Tuesday, the California representative Ro Khanna called on Newsom to support turning PG&E into a customer-owned utility. “California needs to be bold and take over PG&E,” he said. ... But breaking up the utility is a more complicated proposition. Wealthy cities like San Francisco seceding from PG&E and creating its own municipal system – which the city has a plan to do – would mean even more of those liability costs concentrated in the rest of the less-wealthy California customer base. “When San Francisco says, ‘we want to secede,’ I hear that and I think, what you actually want is to not have to deal with the problems of your neighbors,” said Jared Ellias, a UC Hastings bankruptcy law professor.

Regardless of who owns the poles and the power lines, making the repairs and upgrades necessary to run electricity mostly worry-free when the wind starts blowing in California will take a long time, and be very expensive – for PG&E investors, for ordinary California ratepayers or both. ...

Michael Wara, Stanford Climate and Energy Policy Program director presents another possible solution: that this crisis, and much-needed climate adaptation as a whole, could be an opportunity for a kind of California Green New Deal for economic investment in the state’s infrastructure. Through a package of home hardening, vegetation management and microgrid backup for blackouts – so that they don’t continue to disproportionately impact low-income people – California could turn PG&E’s crisis into a public climate adaptation project. “Luck is not in our favor, given the evolving climate situation in California,” said Wara. “But we’re a wealthy state. We can make sure that people are not left behind, and that we don’t end up with climate change making inequality worse.”

Ordinary life has vanished in fire-ravaged California

There were two categories of people most affected by the fires in California: those who evacuated because the fires threatened them directly and those who stayed home under blackout conditions. What a blackout means might not be clear to those who are not among the more than one million affected. It means, for the most part, no gas stations, no traffic lights, no stores (including grocery stores and pharmacies), no banks or money machines, no charging of devices unless you have alternative power sources, no wifi, in some cases no cellphone towers so no signal, and therefore no internet, even if you managed to keep your phone charged. Landlines were reported to be out in some locations as well, with nearly half a million people totally cut off from communications services.

In other words, there’s not a lot to do but stay home in houses and apartments without the usual amenities, including refrigeration and electric lights, and, for some people, without much contact with the outside world. If you worked in a place where Pacific Gas and Electric cut your power or depended on electricity and internet to do your work, you weren’t working, and if your business was in the blackout area, it was probably closed, and if you had younger children you had to stay home anyway, because the schools were shut too....

California is the fifth-largest economy in the world and likes to shout about its genius at innovation, but it is a victim of its lack of energy innovation. It’s a climate disaster zone, with the new reality of hotter, dryer conditions made far worse by the outdated power grid and corrupt private corporation in charge of distributing gas and electricity. ...

There was a moment earlier this month, before the fires began, when I wondered why I felt so disoriented in the region I’ve lived in nearly all my life, and then I realized the air was so scorchingly dry it felt like desert air, like Nevada, not like coastal California. Everything has changed; everything must change to respond to it, with global action to limit the extent of climate chaos that is already so destructive, with local action to reinvent how we power our homes and communities and to shift whose interests are served from shareholders to citizens, and from corporations to the web of life. Right now in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, we are paying the price for relying on old systems in a new climate.

Also of Interest

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

Deconstructed: The Noam Chomsky Interview

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India strips Kashmir of special status and divides it in two

Is California a Third World State?

The Militarization of Everything

Adam Schiff Is No Friend of Progressives

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'Unprecedented' murder charges for loggers in deaths of indigenous activists

A Little Night Music

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Just To Be With You

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Mellow Down Easy

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Be Good to Yourself

Paul Butterfield - Louisiana Flood

Paul Butterfield - One More Mile

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - Thank You Mr. Poobah

Rick Danko and Paul Butterfield - Stage Fright

BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert King, Paul Butterfield - The Sky is Crying

BB King, Jimi Hendrix + The Paul Butterfield Blues Band