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This evening's music features r&b singer and musician Johnny Otis. Enjoy!

"I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”"

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

News and Opinion

It’s Really Weird How Little We Talk About Humanity’s Imminent Doom

Did you know the insects are vanishing?

They are. Land-dwelling insects like butterflies, ants and grasshoppers are now half as common as they were 75 years ago; that’s why those of you who remember catching fireflies on summer nights as kids don’t see them much anymore, and why car windshields don’t get covered in dead bugs like they used to.

This is a part of the animal kingdom that the rest of the ecosystem is built upon, and it’s undergone a drastic plummet that we’ve personally witnessed in our own lifetimes. If you were a sapient insect watching it happen, you wouldn’t be thinking in terms of a future armageddon, you’d feel that you were currently witnessing it.

People bicker and argue about global warming and what should be done about it and if it even exists, but climate change is only one of the many ways our biosphere is moving toward death. There’s also been a shocking loss of two-thirds of Earth’s wildlife in the last 50 years, ecosystems dying off, forests disappearing, soil becoming rapidly less fertile, mass extinctions, oceans gasping for oxygen and becoming lifeless deserts while continents of plastic form in their waters, and the aforementioned insect apocalypse. The way the debate fixates solely on temperature and carbon levels is like if someone had stage four cancer throughout their body and they were in a coma and their vital signs were dropping and the doctor said death is imminent, and everyone was stuck on arguing over whether or not low blood pressure is necessarily a bad thing.

And nothing’s being done about global warming anyway. Conspiracy types have been claiming for decades that it’s a hoax designed to advance this or that agenda, and during that time the only thing that’s advanced is the temperature of the planet and the ecocidal capitalist systems responsible for it. The 2021 UN Climate Change Conference has seen world leaders issue a non-binding pledge to achieve carbon neutrality “by or around mid-century” while taking naps and tossing coins into Rome’s Trevi Fountain for “luck” in addressing the issue they could all solve quickly if they actually wanted to. “Carbon neutrality” is itself a highly misleading and potentially completely worthless neoliberal sham designed to allow the continuation of carbon output but attempting to fix it with more consumption.

Meanwhile methane—a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon in the short term—has started hemorrhaging into the atmosphere from thawing arctic permafrost, and no one really knows what to do about it. This, like the albedo effect of polar ice loss and numerous other self-reinforcing warming effects that have been unlocking in recent years, can potentially cause the Earth to continue warming all on its own regardless of future human behavior.

That’s all on top of the western empire ramping up world-threatening aggressions against both nuclear-armed Russia and nuclear-armed China simultaneously, a multi-front cold war the likes of which we’ve never seen before and which is only just barely getting started. And if we don’t wipe ourselves out by climate collapse or nuclear war, we could still easily do it fairly soon with weaponized AI.

So our species is facing existential threats on myriad fronts which could easily lead to horrifying extinction-level events that we could easily see unfold in our own lifetimes.

And it’s just so very strange how we don’t talk about that more.

It’s like if you knew you had a deadly but treatable disease, and not only did you not pursue treatment, you also didn’t think about it much and didn’t talk about it with anyone. None of your friends even brought it up.

The way we’re just sitting around going about our lives like this isn’t happening reminds me of that experiment where participants sit in a waiting room that’s filling up with smoke without knowing that the experiment is already underway. If the participants are alone they’ll generally take action to do something about the problem, but if they’re in the waiting room with other people who are secretly in on the experiment and have been told to ignore the smoke, the participant will also ignore it. The smoke machine can be billowing into the waiting room at levels that would have killed everyone in it if it were real smoke, and they’ll still remain inactive.

We’re all kind of doing that right now with humanity’s impending doom. Nobody else seems to be worried about it, so why should we? If it were a big deal then surely the news would be talking about it, and surely our leaders would be doing more about it. It’s the bystander effect in action, on a worldwide scale.

It’s what Bo Burnham calls “that funny feeling“, that peculiar experience of watching the smoke pouring into the room while no one does anything, of knowing we’re hurtling toward our destruction while the media run headlines like “Elijah Wood touted a newly acquired NFT. A racism scandal ensued.”

A funny feeling indeed.

'Beyond Unacceptable': Sanders Slams Proposed 'Tax Break for Billionaires' in Reconciliation Bill

U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called reports that congressional Democrats are considering lifting the cap on the state and local tax deduction—a move that would largely benefit wealthy individuals—"beyond unacceptable," while imploring his party to find a way to protect middle-class workers without furnishing "tax breaks for billionaires."

"Democrats campaigned and won on an agenda that demands that the very wealthy finally pay their fair share, not one that gives them more tax breaks," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement opposing the proposal. "I am open to a compromise approach which protects the middle class in high-tax states."

"I will not support more tax breaks for billionaires," he added.

The state and local tax (SALT) deduction was capped at $10,000 under Trump-era GOP legislation as a means of funding tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy and corporations. According to reports, Democratic lawmakers are exploring a repeal of the $10,000 limit as part of their pared-down budget reconciliation package, a move favored by many Republicans, as well as right-wing Democrats from high-tax states.

While Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) hailed the prospect of a SALT cap repeal as "a huge win," Sanders (I-Vt.) blasted it as "beyond unacceptable."

"At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the last thing we should be doing is giving more tax breaks to the very rich," the democratic socialist said.

Harvard economics professor James Furman estimates that "a majority of Americans with a net worth of $50 to $300 million would get a tax cut under the Build Back Better plan with a full repeal of SALT."

"The bill would do more for the superrich than it does for climate change, child care, or preschool," added Furman. "That's obscene."

Earlier on Tuesday, an exasperated Sanders expressed his disappointment and anger at Democratic colleagues for cutting key provisions including Medicare expansion, paid family leave, and free community college from the Build Back Better package, asking, "So, we drop what's most popular?"

Sinema Supports TRIMMED DOWN Drug Pricing Deal, Sanders BLASTS Dem's Tax Giveaway To The Rich

Outside Progressives Warn House Dems Trusting Manchin-Sinema 'Would Be a Terrible Mistake'

As Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives continued to signal they intend to vote this week on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Build Back Better package, progressives outside Congress warned Tuesday that trusting a pair of corporate-backed senators "would be a terrible mistake."

Leaders of the Patriotic Millionaires sent a letter calling on members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) to "hold the line" and not vote on the infrastructure bill until the full Senate Democratic Caucus commits to swiftly passing the budget reconciliation legislation.

The letter to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the CPC chair, and the rest of the caucus—signed by the Patriotic Millionaires' president and founder Erica Payne and chair of the board Morris Pearl—declares: "This is getting ridiculous. We are sure you agree."

Though Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are not named, the letter clearly references them, stating that "the two conservative Democrats holding the nation hostage with unreasonable and ever-shifting demands have proven themselves to be unreliable negotiating partners and there is no reason to believe they will do the right thing."

"You have one bit of leverage. Use it," the letter urges CPC members. "The infrastructure bill must not be passed in the House until there is clear, public, and unequivocal support for a reconciliation package from the full Senate caucus."

"Please do not let a manufactured sense of urgency sway you from the fact that, from the beginning, these two bills were intended to pass together," the letter adds. "That is what was promised, that is what must happen."

The message to the CPC—which includes about a fifth of House members, a crucial voting bloc for passing any legislation—came after Jayapal appeared on CNN Tuesday morning and made clear that the plan is still for the House to pass both bills this week.

Echoing her comments Monday in the wake of a Manchin press conference that generated concerns about the reconciliation bill's future, Jayapal said Tuesday that she trusts President Joe Biden will secure the 51 votes needed to pass the Build Back Better bill in the Senate.

Manchin on Monday called for an immediate vote on the infrastructure bill he helped craft, declaring that "holding this bill hostage is not going to work in getting my support for the reconciliation bill," and indicated he still has concerns about the latter.

The Democracy Crisis That Is Never Discussed

In 2014, Northwestern and Princeton researchers published a report statistically documenting how lawmakers do not listen or care about what most voters want, and instead mostly care about serving their big donors. Coupled with additional research documenting the discrepancy between donor and voter preferences, they bluntly concluded that the “preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy.” Seven years later, America is witnessing a very public and explicit illustration of this situation in real time — and the country seems pretty ticked off about it ahead of Tuesday’s off-year elections and in advance of the upcoming midterms next year.

Over the last few weeks, President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers have been making headlines agreeing to whittle down their social spending reconciliation bill at the demand of corporate donors and their congressional puppets. The specific initiatives being cut or watered down in the Biden agenda bill share two traits: 1) They would require the wealthy and powerful to sacrifice a bit of their wealth and power and 2) They are quite literally the most popular proposals among rank-and-file voters.New polling demonstrates the silencing effect that systemic corruption is having on voter preferences. ...

Many of these findings were summarized in a memo last month from the Biden-aligned nonprofit Priorities USA, which warned that “there could be consequences” if Democrats fail to deliver on their promised agenda. The organization wrote that its polling found the most popular issue among swing voters was “the Democratic proposal to make the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share in taxes.” The second most popular item was adding dental, vision, and hearing benefits to Medicare and allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. ...

Taken together, this is the democracy crisis thrumming underneath all the media noise — the day-to-day erosion of democracy by corporations that use a system of legalized bribery to buy public policy, which then erodes Americans’ faith in their government. And yet this erosion does not get discussed in a media-directed democracy discourse that focuses almost exclusively on the January 6th insurrection or Republican efforts to deny election results and limit voting. That dichotomy is an expression of corporate power. Corruption is omitted from most corporate media coverage because their corporate sponsors are the ones doing the vote-buying. By contrast, the insurrection and GOP assault on voting are safe topics for corporate media, because they do not threaten the power of the media’s corporate sponsors. ...

The hostile takeover is not just the rejection of the most popular policies — it is also the media discourse itself. The Washington press is constantly portraying industry-bankrolled opponents of majoritarian policies as “moderates” or “centrists” and depicting supporters of those policies as fringe lunatics who refuse to be reasonable and compromise. Meanwhile, there is a pervasive omerta that silences most media discussion of the corporate influence and corruption that so obviously defines American politics - and there is scant mention that the “moderate” obstructionists are bankrolled by the industries lobbying to kill the popular policies that Americans want. In short: The takeover is so complete, we can’t even talk about it or debate it in the public square — and when someone dares to sneak in a mention of it, it is akin to a fleeting glitch in the matrix or seeing a real-life unicorn.

Blinken won’t rule out military force against Iran over nuclear deal

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US believes diplomacy is the best way to get Iran to return to the negotiating table over the scrapped nuclear deal but wouldn’t rule out a military response if Tehran fails to “engage quickly in good faith.”

Blinken said Iran has said that it would return to talks at the end of November, but “we’ll see if they actually do. That’s going to be important,” he said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”​

“We were also looking at, as necessary, other options if Iran is not prepared to engage quickly in good faith​ ​t​o pick up where we left off in June when these talks were interrupted by the change in government in Iran, and to see if we can get back to mutual compliance – both countries coming back into the agreement as quickly as possible​,”​ ​he told host Margaret Brennan.​

She asked if any of those options included possible military action. “As we always say, every option is on the table,” Blinken said.

‘This is a total fabrication of the government’ – ex-NSA official William Binney on Assange’s case

Facebook to shut facial recognition system and delete 1bn ‘faceprints’

Facebook will delete the “faceprints” of more than a billion people after announcing that it is shutting down its facial recognition system due to the “many concerns” about using the technology.

The social media network has been under political, legal and regulatory pressure over its use of the software, which automatically identifies users in photos and videos – and let’s them know if a fellow user has posted a photo or video with them in it – if they have opted in to the feature. In a statement, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, said it would shut down facial recognition on the platform over the coming weeks and delete 1 billion facial recognition templates.

Meta’s vice-president of artificial intelligence, Jerome Pesenti, said the technology had helped visually impaired and blind users identify their friends in images and can help prevent fraud and impersonation. But Pesenti said the advantages needed to be weighed against “growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole”.

“There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” he said. “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.”

If users have opted into the face recognition setting, the faceprint used to identify them will be deleted. If that face recognition setting is turned off, Meta said there is no faceprint to delete. Pesenti said Facebook will encourage users to tag posts manually.

Deere workers vote to reject national contract, in defiance of the UAW

The United Auto Workers has announced in a tersely-worded, two sentence statement that Deere workers have rejected the second tentative agreement, by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent. At many large locals, the margin of defeat was far higher. According to press reports citing anonymous officials, more than 2,000 out of 3,000 workers in Waterloo voted against the contract.

The vote is a major achievement. It was carried out in defiance of a campaign of lies and intimidation from the UAW, which attempted to force it through after only three days and without even giving workers a chance to look at the contract, which would have lasted for six years.

Minneapolis REJECTS Defund Police In Wake Of George Floyd, MAJOR Blow To Police Abolition Movement

Minneapolis votes on whether to replace police department

Voters in Minneapolis will decide on Tuesday whether to replace their police department with a new Department of Public Safety, more than a year after the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer launched a national movement to defund or abolish police.

The Democratic mayor, Jacob Frey, is also in a tough fight for a second term, facing opponents who attacked him in the wake of Floyd’s death. Frey opposed the policing amendment. Two of his leading challengers in a field of 17, Sheila Nezhad and Kate Knuth, strongly supported the proposal. ...

The future of policing in the city where Floyd’s death in May 2020 launched a nationwide reckoning on racial justice overshadowed everything else on the ballot. The debate brought national attention as well as out-of-state money seeking to influence a contest that could shape changes in policing elsewhere.

The proposed amendment to the city charter would remove language that mandates Minneapolis have a police department with a minimum number of officers based on population. It would be replaced by a new Department of Public Safety that would take a “comprehensive public health approach to the delivery of functions” that “could include” police officers “if necessary, to fulfill its responsibilities for public safety”.

Supporters of the change argued that an overhaul is necessary to stop police violence, to re-imagine what public safety can be and to devote more funding to approaches that don’t rely on sending armed officers to deal with people in crisis.

Kyle Rittenhouse ‘the only person who killed anyone’ in Kenosha unrest, prosecutors say

The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse trial began on Tuesday in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where the 18-year-old is charged with killing two people and wounding one during unrest in the city last August.

Prosecutors said that although “hundreds” of people were out on the street during protests over the shooting of a Black man by a white police officer, Rittenhouse was “the only person who killed anyone”. ...

In his opening statement, Kenosha county assistant district attorney Thomas Binger portrayed Rittenhouse as an antagonist who chose to exacerbate tensions. “Like moths to a flame, tourists from outside our community were drawn to the chaos here in Kenosha,” said Binger. “People from outside Kenosha came in and contributed to that chaos.

“The evidence will show that hundreds of people were out on the street experiencing chaos and violence, and the only person who killed anyone was the defendant, Kyle Rittenhouse.” Binger added: “When we consider the reasonableness of the defendant’s actions, I ask you to keep that in mind. We’re not asking you to solve a mystery in this case.”

Byron Brown declares victory in Buffalo mayor race

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown declared victory on Tuesday night, saying he's ready to serve a fifth term. ...

With 97 percent of the precincts reporting Tuesday night, write-in candidates have nearly 33,900 votes, or 59 percent. The results do not say who received those write-in votes, but Brown has waged an aggressive write-in campaign since he lost the Democratic Party primary back in June.

Absentee ballots also have to be counted. More than 19,000 absentee ballots have been sent out with approximately 11,000 returned. As long as the absentee ballots are postmarked November 2, they will be counted next week.

India Walton, who won the June primary, has more than 23,500 votes, or roughly 41 percent, as of 10:55 p.m. Tuesday.

Eric Adams, former police officer, wins New York mayor’s race

Former police officer Eric Adams will be the next mayor of New York City, after the Democrat defeated Curtis Sliwa in Tuesday’s election.

Adams was on course to beat Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, after the Associated Press called the race. Adams will take charge of the largest city in the US in January, when he will be faced with overseeing recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 34,500 New Yorkers.

Adams, 61, becomes only the second Black person to be elected New York mayor, after David Dinkins, who led the city from 1990 to 1993. Adams, who defeated several progressive candidates in the Democratic primary, has pledged to cut government inefficiency and made public safety a central part of his campaign.

The Nation’s John Nichols: Democrats Must Deliver on Promises or Voters Will Punish the Party

FEC Met W/ Bipartisan BACKLASH After Ruling FOREIGN ENTITIES Can Donate To U.S. Referendum Campaigns

'Complete Attack on Our Democracy': FEC Rules Foreign Corporations Can Donate to Influence US Elections

Democracy defenders expressed concern Tuesday in response to new reporting on a Federal Election Commission ruling that affirmed foreign entities—including overseas corporations—can fund U.S. state-level ballot campaigns.

"This is egregious," tweeted former Ohio congressional candidate Nina Turner. "A complete attack on our democracy."

Axios reported on the FEC's 4-2 July ruling that concerned a Montana ballot initiative on hardrock mining regulations and accusations that a Canadian subsidiary of Australian company Sandfire Resources violated federal campaign law by funding a campaign opposed to the measure.

The FEC rejected the allegations, saying the ban on foreign donations regards "elections," but does not cover ballot initiatives.

The reporting drew the attention of Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), who tweeted: "Foreign donors shouldn't be influencing our elections, no matter whether it's at the federal, state, or local level. In my first term, I successfully amended #HR1, the #ForThePeopleAct, to outlaw these contributions, and I've introduced legislation this year to do the same thing."

Brendan Fischer, Federal reform program director at the Campaign Legal Center, referenced "a big loophole in the federal ban on foreign money in U.S. elections" because "the FEC interprets the law to apply only to races for elective office, letting foreign interests pour millions into state or local ballot measure campaigns."

Uproot the System: Filipina Activist Mitzi Tan on How Capitalism & Colonialism Fuel Climate Crisis

World’s biggest banks to play a role in limiting greenhouse gas emissions

Hundreds of the world’s biggest banks and pension funds with assets worth $130tn have committed themselves to a key goal in limiting greenhouse gas emissions, the UK government will announce on Wednesday.

The pledge by more than 450 financial institutions in 45 countries is intended to be one of the top achievements by the UK hosts of the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, and comes as some of the other aims of the summit – chiefly, setting the world on a path to limit global heating to 1.5C – are looking hard to reach.

Finance is key to the massive economic transformation required to move away from fossil fuels and reach net zero so the global economy can be run without damaging the climate. But experts and campaigners cast doubt on the government’s finance claims, pointing out that the banks making the pledge are still free to pour cash into fossil fuels, and need only divert a small slice of their funding to low-carbon ends in the next decade.

News of the pledge came at the end of the second full day of the Cop26 conference in Glasgow as world leaders finished their addresses and negotiators were preparing to thrash out details that could form the basis of a final communique next weekend.

Hurricane LUMA: Puerto Ricans Fight Big Coal & Privatized Energy Amid Climate Disasters, Blackouts

World leaders announce plan to make green tech cheaper than alternatives

A plan to coordinate the global introduction of clean technologies in order to rapidly drive down their cost has been agreed at the Cop26 summit by world leaders representing two-thirds of the world’s economy.

A global transition to green energy and vehicles is vital in tackling the climate crisis, and economies of scale mean that costs plummet as production increases – as already seen with solar panels and LED lightbulbs.

More than 40 nations said they would align standards and coordinate investments to speed up production and bring forward the “tipping point” at which green technologies are more affordable and accessible than fossil-fuelled alternatives. At that point, the green transition and cuts in climate emissions accelerate rapidly towards a net zero economy.

Among the countries signed up to the Breakthrough Agenda are the UK, US, China, India, the EU and Australia. The first five breakthroughs will be clean electricity, electric vehicles, green steel, hydrogen and sustainable farming. The aim is to make these affordable and available to all nations by 2030 and create 20m new jobs.

Also of Interest

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

PATRICK LAWRENCE: The Manufacture of Decline

Ukraine Denies Report of Russian Troop Build-Up Near Border

When Russian Troops Training In Russia Are 'Raising Concerns' Its Propaganda

Iran Welcomes Western Calls for Nuclear Talks, Wants to See Action From US

India Is Not The Next China

Respect for US democracy in decline around the world, Pew survey finds

Tracking a Journalistic Cliché: "The Worst Attack on Our Democracy Since the Civil War"

The Inspector General’s Report on JPMorgan’s London Whale Is a Guide to What to Expect from Its Probe of the Fed’s Trading Scandal

To Protect Fauci, The Washington Post is Preparing a Hit Piece on the Group Denouncing Gruesome Dog Experimentations

‘It could be a big tree in 1,000 years’: tiny seedlings of giant sequoias rise from ashes of wildfire

Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth

‘Like a scene from Arachnophobia’: large Joro spiders invade northern Georgia

Ryan Grim: Terry McAuliffe Lost Because Virginia Dems Had NOTHING To Run On

A Little Night Music

Johnny Otis - Willie And The Hand Jive

Johnny Otis - Mambo Boogie

Johnny Otis - Rock Me Baby

Johnny Otis - Shake It

Johnny Otis - Country Girl

Johnny Otis w/Marci Lee - Castin' My Spell

Johnny Otis - The Night Is Young

Otis, Johnny and Orch. - Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Johnny Otis & Lionel Hampton - It's You

Johnny Otis with Shuggie Otis & Roy Buchanan Live

Johnny Otis - The Midnight Creeper