The Evening Blues - 11-30-21



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Ishmon Bracey

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Mississippi bluesman Ishmon Bracey. Enjoy!

Ishman Bracey - Trouble Hearted Blues

"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful."

-- Kurt Vonnegut


News and Opinion

“A Moment of Hope”: Xiomara Castro’s Likely Win in Honduras Ends Years of Right-Wing Rule After Coup

Xiomara Castro, wife of Manuel Zelaya, a leftist former Honduran president ousted in a U.S.-backed coup in 2009, is on track to defeat the candidate of the right-wing incumbent party.

Leftist presidential candidate Xiomara Castro took a decisive lead in Honduras' election on Sunday, setting her up to defeat the right-wing incumbent party's candidate—though progressive observers stressed the need to remain vigilant as ballots continue to be counted and reactionary forces ramp up misinformation following an apparently unsuccessful attempt to suppress voting.

A victory by Castro would represent a repudiation of U.S. intervention in Central America. Honduras' potential next president is the wife of Manuel Zelaya, the country's former progressive president who was deposed in a Washington-backed coup in 2009—after which narco-violence surged under the watch of an authoritarian neoliberal regime installed by the Obama administration and supported by subsequent administrations.

If she wins, Castro would be the first Honduran president to be democratically elected on a socialist platform, as well as the first woman to lead the country. With just over half of ballots processed, the Libre Party's Castro had garnered 53.6% of the vote, compared with 34% for Nasry Asfura, the candidate from the right-wing National Party, which has ruled the country for the past dozen years.

Castro "hopes to restore diplomatic relations with China, legalize abortion and same-sex marriage, and defend the interests of the poor and working class," according to Telesur.

Calling the 62-year-old democratic socialist's solid performance a "triumph for democracy over corruption and election irregularities," Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in a statement that "Xiomara Castro's likely victory is a testament to the will of the Honduran people to have their voices heard and their votes counted."

"Democracy remains very fragile in Honduras," Weisbrot warned. "This is a country that saw the military kidnap the president at gunpoint and fly him out of the country just 12 years ago, and there was very strong evidence that the elections of four years ago were stolen" by the ruling National Party.

Indeed, Castro's current lead materialized despite the best efforts of the incumbent right-wing government to suppress participation.

Progressive International (PI), whose new observatory to protect democracy sent delegates to Honduras to monitor the electoral process, drew attention to reports that the ruling National Party was attempting to buy votes.

On Sunday morning, Salvador Nasralla—a former presidential candidate who led Honduras' 2017 election by 5 percentage points with 57% of votes counted before a 30-hour delay and other "technical failures" ultimately resulted in a National Party victory—said that the website of the National Electoral Council (CNE) had been "intentionally taken down" and that right-wing officials were giving voters inaccurate information about polling places.

Hours later, CNE announced that its server had been attacked, which PI said "has prevented voters from locating their polling station," causing long lines to form.

With polls still open and before a single ballot had been counted, the incumbent right-wing government said on Sunday afternoon that Asfura had won—in violation, Telesur reported, of "national electoral law prohibiting the premature claiming of victory before the competent authorities release their preliminary results... which the CNE did just after 8:00 pm local time."

Journalist Denis Rogatyuk warned that "the party that turned Honduras into a narco-state will be unlikely to relinquish power peacefully."

The ruling National Party's alleged vote-buying and premature victory claims, along with the yet-to-be-resolved attacks on the CNE's website, weren't enough to deter hundreds of thousands of Honduran voters from casting ballots for the opposition Libre Party. Turnout was over 60%.

"Hondurans flocked to the polls in near-record numbers to decide the successor of the deeply unpopular current president, Juan Orlando Hernández," the New York Times reported. "Hernández's presence was palpable at the polls after his government spent the past eight years dismantling the country's democratic institutions and allowing corruption and organized crime to permeate the highest levels of power."

As the election progressed, Castro also declared victory. Once the preliminary tally showed Asfura falling behind by a significant margin, she told "jubilant supporters at her campaign headquarters on Sunday night that she would begin forming a government of national reconciliation starting on Monday," the Times reported.

"We have turned back authoritarianism," Castro told the crowd in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. "Out with corruption, out with drug trafficking, out with organized crime."

Although Castro has taken a commanding lead, it could take days for results to be finalized. In the meantime, electoral observers have emphasized the need to remain vigilant in the coming hours.

Earlier this morning, for instance, a Honduran newspaper shared a misleading graph that suggests Asfura is winning even as he trails Castro by roughly 20 percentage points. Jumping at the chance to use a pun, PI general coordinator David Adler described the chart as an example of "graphic violence."

While Castro's advantage is much larger than the opposition's early lead in 2017, making it more difficult for right-wing forces to subvert the election, The Guardian noted that a close outcome four years ago "led to a contested result and deadly protests after widespread allegations of irregularities."

According to Telesur, "Fears of the military and business elite repeating a similar scenario to the one from 2017 in which electoral fraud and manipulation stole the presidency from liberal candidate Salvador Nasralla (who has backed Castro) and gave it to the right-wing narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández have, until now, not materialized, with Honduras proving ready to fight for the integrity of their democratic process in the streets and with their life, if necessary, as recent history has shown."

As Weisbrot noted, "The U.S. government supported the 2009 military coup in various ways, and so it will be good if members of Congress who favor democracy will make sure that the executive branch here respects democracy in Honduras more than they have in the past."

"On the positive side," said Weisbrot, "members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have taken steps to hold the OAS accountable for its role in the 2019 military coup in Bolivia, so there are pro-democracy forces in Congress."

"The international community," he added, "should be on guard and ready to defend Honduras' democratic institutions, and the will of its people, against any extra-legal efforts to destabilize or overthrow the new government."

Boo! Scary!

Chinese could hack data for future quantum decryption, report warns

Chinese hackers could target heavily encrypted datasets such as weapon designs or details of undercover intelligence officers with a view to unlocking them at a later date when quantum computing makes decryption possible, a report warns.

Analysts at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm, say Chinese hackers could also steal pharmaceutical, chemical and material science research that can be processed by quantum computers – machines capable of crunching through numbers at unprecedented speed.

In a report titled “Chinese threats in the quantum era”, the consultancy says encrypted data could be stolen by “Chinese threat groups”. It says quantum-assisted decryption will arrive faster than quantum-assisted encryption, giving hackers an edge.

“Encrypted data with intelligence longevity, like biometric markers, covert intelligence officer and source identities, social security numbers, and weapons’ designs, may be increasingly stolen under the expectation that they can eventually be decrypted,” the report says. It says “state-aligned cyber threat actors” will start to steal or intercept previously unusable encrypted data.

However, it adds there is a “very small” likelihood that quantum computing could break the latest encryption methods before 2030. The analysts say quantum computing’s advantages over classical computing – the computing used in everything from laptops to mobile phones – are at least a decade away.

27 more Russian diplomats expelled from US, ambassador says

Over two dozen more Russian diplomats have been dismissed from the United States, the Russian ambassador to the U.S. said in an interview released on Saturday, Reuters reported.

Ambassador Anatoly Antonov said during the interview for the Soloviev Live Youtube channel that "our diplomats are being expelled."

"A large group of my comrades, 27 people with families, will leave us on January 30,” Antonov added, noting that officials are "facing a serious staff shortage." In August, Antonov said that 24 Russian diplomats had been asked by the United States to leave the country by early September as their visas expired.

As NATO Weighs Expansion in Eastern Europe, Russia Amasses Military on Ukraine Border

Germany: Sanctions on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline Would Weaken US Credibility

Amid fears that Senate Republicans will try to use the military spending bill to shoehorn in new sanctions against Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany, German officials have begun lobbying Congress against the idea, warning it would weaken US credibility and damage transatlantic unity. ...

Germany sees the pipeline as a way to get dependable energy from Russia, while the US sees it as undercutting Ukraine. With Ukraine sabre-rattling against its ethnic Russian minority, there is not an easy solution agreeable to all parties, but keeping the gas flowing is vital for the EU nations.

US sanctions in this case would not force the EU into their camp, but rather might force a more direct split with the US to get the energy they need from Russia.

UK and Israel join forces to stop Iran gaining nuclear weapons

The UK and Israel’s foreign ministers have declared that they will work “night and day” to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon as they sign a “historic” 10-year plan for deepening ties.

In a joint article for The Daily Telegraph, Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, and Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign affairs minister, preview their new “memorandum of understanding”.

The agreement, which will be signed on Monday, will enable the UK and Israel to work more closely on issues such as cybersecurity, technology development, defence, trade and science.

The Biden Administration’s Missile Sale to Saudi Arabia Is Offensive, and Must Be Stopped

The Biden administration’s decision to sell $650 million in air-to-air missiles and related equipment to Saudi Arabia is a violation of President Biden’s pledge to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” and to end the sale of weapons that can be used in its brutal war in Yemen, a conflict in which nearly a quarter of a million people have died since it was initiated in March 2015.

To their credit, Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have introduced a joint resolution of disapproval to stop the sale, which is likely to be voted on this week. It deserves support in the service of peace, human rights, and an end to the catastrophic suffering in Yemen.

Senators who are opposed to or sitting on the fence regarding the resolution have claimed that the air-to-air missiles are defensive weapons and therefore should be allowed to go through. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Saudis have imposed an air blockade on Yemen that has not only reduced access to life-saving supplies, but has also prevented people with severe medical conditions from being evacuated for treatment outside the country, a practice that has cost at least 32,000 people their lives. CARE and the Norwegian Refugee Council have also noted that the blockage on Yemen’s airport has caused “prices of some medicine to double, making it unaffordable for most of the population and further contributing to the decline of Yemen’s health system.”

The air blockade is enforced by a threat to shoot down any aircraft, military or civilian, that enters Yemeni air space with the goal of landing at Sana’a airport. The provision of air-to-air missiles gives further credibility to this threat, dissuading any government or aid group from bringing in crucial medicines or flying patients in and out of Yemen.

CENSORSHIP: New Twitter CEO 'NOT BOUND' By First Amendment

Dorsey’s Twitter Resignation Sparks Fears Of More Internet Censorship

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has resigned as CEO of the company, leading anyone who’s been paying close attention to the rise of Silicon Valley internet censorship to voice concerns that the platform’s relatively lenient attitude toward speech compared to other major social media services may be drawing to a close.

“Hard not to see this as bad news,” tweeted Glenn Greenwald in response to Dorsey’s announcement. “I don’t think it’s been fully appreciated that on key SV issues – including decentralization, transparency and free speech – @Jack has been far better than most, and way more responsive to critiques. We’ll see what happens but it seems not great.”

“Anyone who harbors concerns that social media have already grown too intolerant of dissenting opinions—too inclined to silence viewpoints that depart from liberal orthodoxy—should be worried about Dorsey leaving,” writes Reason’s Robby Soave. “That’s because the long-serving CEO has occasionally articulated an ideological commitment to the principles of free speech; of all the tech industry pioneers who have been hauled before Congress to answer absurd questions, he was by far the most hostile to the idea that the government should serve as the internet’s speech police.”

Dorsey’s resignation comes the year after it was reported that his removal was being pursued by virulent neoconservative billionaire Paul Singer, whose Elliott Management Corp had just purchased a significant share of the company.

Twitter has been far from perfect when it comes to refraining from interfering with free expression on its platform; it just banned multiple accounts supporting the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea against US-backed militants on what appears to be no legitimate basis mere hours ago after censoring trends in Ethiopia earlier this month, and has a longstanding pattern of censoring the speech of empire-targeted populations.

Still, Twitter has been a free speech paradise compared to other major platforms like Facebook or YouTube, largely because unlike those outlets it doesn’t tend to participate in the large-scale algorithmic suppression of unauthorized perspectives and the artificial uplifting of authorized ones.

And we are seeing some indication that that may be one of the changes we’ll see in the platform going forward. Twitter users are sharing around a 2020 quote by Dorsey’s replacement Parag Agrawal (emphasis added):

“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation. The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed. One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard. The scarce commodity today is attention. There’s a lot of content out there. A lot of tweets out there, not all of it gets attention, some subset of it gets attention. And so increasingly our role is moving towards how we recommend content and that sort of, is, is, a struggle that we’re working through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation systems that we’re building, how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.”

A lot of the commentary we are seeing on this paragraph tends to focus on the bit at the beginning about having no commitment to free speech, and not nearly enough attention is going to the latter half. Agrawal’s notion that it is Twitter’s place to “recommend content” and implement “recommendation systems” sounds far too similar to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s comments earlier this year when she admitted at a World Economic Forum summit that the platform had been elevating mainstream news sources on important political issues and hiding “borderline” content.

“When we deal with information, we want to make sure that the sources that we’re recommending are authoritative news, medical science, et cetera,” Wojcicki said. “And we also have created a category of more borderline content where sometimes we’ll see people looking at content that’s lower quality and borderline. And so we want to be careful about not over-recommending that. So that’s a content that stays on the platform but is not something that we’re going to recommend. And so our algorithms have definitely evolved in terms of handling all these different content types.”

This is a kind of censorship that Twitter has been relatively free from, and it is by far the worst kind. While you will routinely see Twitter posts going viral from people with peripheral political perspectives like communism or antiwar activism, you will virtually never see this occur on outlets like Facebook or Youtube because their algorithms are stacked in favor of “authoritative sources” like The New York Times and CNN which hardly ever give voice to such perspectives.

So we could soon be looking at a Twitter where communists, anarchists, conspiracy analysts, Covid skeptics, antiwar activists, supporters of empire-targeted governments, and other perspectives considered “borderline” by Silicon Valley narrative managers could receive very little visibility on people’s feeds, while authorized opinion-havers like blue-checkmark reporters from mainstream media outlets are given greater amplification.

This is the most pernicious form of internet censorship because unlike permanent bans it goes unseen and unacknowledged, and if you point out that your account isn’t getting the kind of traction it used to you can be dismissed as just paranoid and told that your content probably just hasn’t been as good lately. On a platform like Twitter where high-profile influencers tend to congregate to share ideas and information, this can lead to a dynamic where unauthorized thought becomes far more marginalized than it previously was.

It should be obvious to everyone that humanity is headed down a dark path if worldwide public speech is regulated by monopolistic oligarchs with a vested interest in preserving the status quo and a steadily increasing alignment with government institutions. If every platform people flock to in large numbers becomes subjected to iron-fisted establishment narrative management, it will greatly hinder humanity’s efforts to become a conscious species that has a truth-based relationship with the world.

Don’t Believe Everything You’re Hearing About Inflation

Many Americans are noticing the rising price of goods from sour cream to carburetors as politicians sound the alarm on an inflation crisis. ... Some of it is what we can call pandemic inflation. Because our economy bounced back quicker after the COVID-19 shutdowns than anyone predicted — thanks largely to investments from the American Rescue Plan — people have more spending money and demand has risen faster than our underinvested supply chain could handle. This rising demand accounts for price flares in auto manufacturing and lumber, for example. At the same time, you’ll notice prices that had plummeted during the shutdowns returning to pre-pandemic levels. Think: plane tickets.

Meanwhile, recent price spikes on other goods that families depend on — like diapers, meat, and dairy — can be linked to corporate greed. Decades of corporations monopolizing industries and cutting out competition has given them the power to artificially inflate the prices of these necessities under the guise of “inflation.” Big business is simply milking this opportunity to claim that they need to raise their prices while they use those profits to engage in stock buybacks — which benefit shareholders and CEOs, not small farmers or the grocers who stock the shelves. ...

But the price pressures that hurt families the most are not caused by the pandemic — and in fact have been rising for decades. By far the biggest ticket items on struggling families’ budgets are rent and child care. The housing crisis is so bad that no person earning minimum wage full-time can afford rent in any U.S. state. And the cost of child care costs more than college tuition in 30 states. ...

The best thing we can do to offset the pain of inflation — whatever its cause — and for the overall health of our economy, is to raise the standard of living for all of us. That means lowering the poverty rate, raising wages, and reaching full employment. For too long we’ve supported an economy that depends on low-paid jobs, dangerous work, and big businesses monopolizing power. That makes all of us suffer. Slowing down our economy to boost profits for corporations won’t eliminate the need for families to purchase the products they depend on or fix our supply chain issues.

Gov Finds Amazon RIGGED Union Election

Amazon workers in Alabama to get another union election

A new union election for Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, will be held based on objections to the first vote that took place in April. The move is a major blow to Amazon, which had spent about a year aggressively campaigning for warehouse workers in Bessemer to reject the union, which they ultimately did by a wide margin.

It also comes at a time of widespread labor unrest in the US as a somewhat rejuvenated American union movement is flexing its muscles in an economy that is seeking to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

The rare move was first announced on Monday by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which spearheaded the union organizing movement. A National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) spokeswoman confirmed the decision. The RWDSU charged Amazon with illegal misconduct during the first vote. In August, the hearing officer at NLRB who presided over the case determined that Amazon violated labor law and recommended that the regional director set aside the results and direct another election.

The main reason for the determination was a US Postal Service mailbox Amazon installed in the parking lot ahead of the election, which could have left the false impression that the company was running the election. Security cameras in the parking lot could have scared off workers who thought Amazon may have been watching workers vote. About 53% of the nearly 6,000 workers cast ballots during the first election.

Arizona students seek Kyle Rittenhouse removal from online nursing classes

A small but vocal alliance of left-leaning students at Arizona State University (ASU) is demanding Kyle Rittenhouse be removed from online classes, despite the teen’s acquittal this month on charges of murdering two men and injuring another during protests for racial justice in Wisconsin last year. ...

Rittenhouse told the court he had enrolled in nursing classes at ASU. An investigation by an Arizona TV station, 12News, revealed he was taking a virtual class, not attending in person.

Nonetheless, members of groups called Students for Socialism ASU, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition and Mecha de ASU want university officials to “withdraw” Rittenhouse from class and ban him from campus. “Our campus is already unsafe as is and we would like to abate this danger as much as possible,” a spokesperson for Students for Socialism ASU told Fox News in a statement.

“The goal of these demands is to let the ASU administration know that we do not feel safe knowing that a mass shooter, who has expressed violent intentions about ‘protecting property’ over people, is so carelessly allowed to be admitted to the school at all.” ...

Rittenhouse’s enrollment status is also uncertain. In a statement to the Guardian on Monday that did not distinguish between online and in-person classes, a university spokesperson said: “Kyle Rittenhouse has not gone through the ASU admissions process. He is not currently enrolled in any classes at ASU.” Officials earlier told 12News Rittenhouse was not enrolled in the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, and that the class he was enrolled in was for “non-degree seeking students” who might later seek admission to a degree program.

How far-right extremist groups face exposure from army of hacktivists

Throughout 2021, websites associated with far-right extremist groups and extremist-friendly platforms and hosts have suffered from data leaks and breaches that have exposed the inner workings of far-right groups, and the nature of the movement as a whole. The data has been exfiltrated in breaches engineered by so-called “ethical hackers” – often assisted by poor security practices from website administrators – and by activists who have penetrated websites in search of data and information.

Experts and activists say that attacks on their online infrastructure is likely to continue to disrupt and hamper far-right groups and individuals and makes unmasking their activities far more likely – often resulting in law enforcement attention or loss of employment.

Numerous far-right groups have suffered catastrophic data breaches this year, in perhaps a reflection of a lack of technical expertise among such activists. Jim Salter, a systems administrator and tech journalist, said: “Extremists, and extremist-friendly entities, have a noticeable shortage of even-tempered, thoughtful people doing even-tempered, thoughtful work at securing sites and managing personnel.”



the horse race



Krystal Ball: How Hillary POISONED Dem Party FOREVER

Capitol riot panel to vote for contempt charges against Trump DoJ official

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack announced on Monday that it will vote to recommend the criminal prosecution of top former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark after he defied a subpoena seeking his cooperation with the inquiry. The move to pursue contempt of Congress charges against Clark reflects the select committee’s aggressive approach to warn recalcitrant witnesses against attempting to derail their investigation as Trump tried during his administration.

Members on the select committee will convene on Wednesday evening to vote on the contempt report – which is expected to be unanimous, according to a source familiar with the matter – and send it to a vote before the full House of Representatives.

The select committee issued a subpoena to Clark last month in order to understand how the Trump White House sought to co-opt officials at the justice department to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory from taking place on 6 January. ...

In targeting Clark, House investigators followed up on a Senate judiciary committee report that detailed his efforts to abuse the justice department and threaten the then acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, to support Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The Senate report found Clark had conversations with Trump about how to upend the election, and pressured his superiors to draft a letter that falsely claimed the justice department had identified “significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election”.



the evening greens


Nurdles: the worst toxic waste you’ve probably never heard of

When the X-Press Pearl container ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean in May, Sri Lanka was terrified that the vessel’s 350 tonnes of heavy fuel oil would spill into the ocean, causing an environmental disaster for the country’s pristine coral reefs and fishing industry. Classified by the UN as Sri Lanka’s “worst maritime disaster”, the biggest impact was not caused by the heavy fuel oil. Nor was it the hazardous chemicals on board, which included nitric acid, caustic soda and methanol. The most “significant” harm, according to the UN, came from the spillage of 87 containers full of lentil-sized plastic pellets: nurdles.

Since the disaster, nurdles have been washing up in their billions along hundreds of miles of the country’s coastline, and are expected to make landfall across Indian Ocean coastlines from Indonesia and Malaysia to Somalia. In some places they are up to 2 metres deep. They have been found in the bodies of dead dolphins and the mouths of fish. About 1,680 tonnes of nurdles were released into the ocean. It is the largest plastic spill in history, according to the UN report.

Nurdles, the colloquial term for “pre-production plastic pellets”, are the little-known building block for all our plastic products. The tiny beads can be made of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and other plastics. Released into the environment from plastic plants or when shipped around the world as raw material to factories, they will sink or float, depending on the density of the pellets and if they are in freshwater or saltwater. They are often mistaken for food by seabirds, fish and other wildlife. In the environment, they fragment into nanoparticles whose hazards are more complex. They are the second-largest source of micropollutants in the ocean, by weight, after tyre dust. An astounding 230,000 tonnes of nurdles end up in oceans every year.

Like crude oil, nurdles are highly persistent pollutants, and will continue to circulate in ocean currents and wash ashore for decades. They are also “toxic sponges”, which attract chemical toxins and other pollutants on to their surfaces. ... Nurdles also act as “rafts” for harmful bacteria such as E coli or even cholera, one study found, transporting them from sewage outfalls and agricultural runoff to bathing waters and shellfish beds. The phenomenon of “plastic rafting” is increasing.

Yet nurdles, unlike substances such as kerosene, diesel and petrol, are not deemed hazardous under the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO’s) dangerous goods code for safe handling and storage. This is despite the threat to the environment from plastic pellets being known about for three decades, as detailed in a 1993 report from the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency on how the plastics industry could reduce spillages.

Get Off Our Territory: Wet’suwet’en Land Defenders Condemn Canadian Police Raid on Pipeline Protest

Shell Slammed for Plan to Blast South African Coastline for Oil and Gas During Whale Season

Environmentalists responded with outrage to reports that oil giant Shell plans to spend the next several months conducting underwater explosions to search for deep-sea oil and gas reserves off South Africa's coastline—a move that threatens to worsen the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, undermine the livelihoods of fishers, and harm marine life.

"The extraction [of oil and gas] would bring devastation to the at-risk marine life, to local fishers whose livelihoods depend on the natural ecosystems and fish stocks, and [to] the communities on the coast of the Eastern Cape," Project 90 by 2030, a South African social and environmental justice organization, told Metro.co.uk.

The timing of Shell's planned blasting is especially concerning to opponents. The fossil fuel corporation has hired Shearwater GeoServices to begin surveying off the Eastern Cape's virtually untouched Wild Coast on December 1, during whale season.

An Oceans Not Oil petition—signed by nearly 350,000 people, calling on Barbara Creecy, South Africa's minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment to revoke Shell's permit—explains that for four to five months, a seismic testing vessel will "drag up to 48 air guns methodically through 6,011 square kilometers of ocean surface, firing extremely loud shock wave emissions that penetrate through 3 kilometers of water and 40 kilometers into the Earth's crust below the seabed. The ship will work around the clock, firing the air guns every 10 seconds."

Shell's underwater explosions would occur as southern right and humpback whales—which migrate each year to southern Africa's warmer waters, where they mate and rear calves from June to December—start returning to Antarctica, with potentially devastating effects.

Resistance to Shell's planned seismic blasting has been growing. Over 100 activists, including some from Extinction Rebellion Cape Town and Oceans Not Oil, held a protest on November 21, which is "when Shell's ship, the Amazon Warrior, arrived in Cape Town's harbor," Metro.co.uk reported, adding that "several other demonstrations have taken place in different parts of the country throughout the week."

In addition to highlighting the likely psychological and physiological damage inflicted on marine animals, opponents of underwater explosions have "tried to bring attention to how local fishing communities would be affected if Shell finds what it is looking for and starts to mine oil and gas," the news outlet noted.

One small-scale fisher from Port St. Johns, a town in the area Shell is surveying, told Metro.co.uk that "the reality is that only big business will benefit from this, while small-scale fishers and our communities will suffer."

Natalie-Jane van Wyk, another fisher from Saldanha Bay, said that "we are familiar with the marine species that live and breed here and are not willing to risk these for a bit of electricity that could be generated in a number of other, more sustainable ways that do not threaten fisher jobs."

Moreover, according to Judy Mann, a conservation strategist at the South African Association for Marine Biological Research's Oceanographic Research Institute, the fast-flowing current off the coast of the KwaZulu-Natal province makes it almost impossible to contain any normal operational or major accidental oil spillage should drilling eventually take place.

Noting that "Shell's oil and gas exploration on South Africa's Wild Coast will be destructive for people and nature," Greenpeace argued that "the best way to mitigate the effects of seismic blasting is NOT TO DO IT!!"

"We cannot allow climate criminals, like Shell, to plunder in the name of greed," reads a Greenpeace petition urging Gwede Mantashe, South Africa's minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, to stop Shell from surveying the area. "We cannot allow them to lock us into a fossil-fueled future, when South Africa needs a just transition to renewable energy to create greener jobs, reduce emissions, and solve our energy crisis."

New Research Finds Climate Emergency the 'Overwhelming Factor' Behind Australian Bushfires

New research finds "a robust and multi-evidence link" between the climate crisis and Australia's trend of worsening wildfires.

Published Friday in Nature, the study was led by researchers at Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, and was based on over 30 years of satellite data as well as nine decades of ground-based climate and weather data.

The trend of worsening fires is clear, the scientists said, noting that bushfires are creating a greater burn area. The study noted as an example that 10 out of 11 fire years that scorched at least 5,000 square kilometers (about 1,930 square miles) have occurred since 2001. The amount of time since the last fire, meanwhile, is decreasing.

Assessing a range of eight wildfire drivers factors including fuel accumulation and prescribed burns, researchers found the key culprit to be climate-related factors such as soil moisture, mean precipitation, and temperature increase.

"While all eight drivers of fire activity played varying roles in influencing forest fires," CSIRO scientist and co-author Pep Canadell said in a statement, "climate was the overwhelming factor driving fire activity."

Canadell said the findings "also suggest the frequency of forest megafires are likely to continue under future projected climate change."

The time period studied included the catastrophic 2019-20 fire season during which 10 million hectares, about 24.7 million acres, burned and over 1 billion animals likely died. In that fire year, according to the researchers, three times the area of any previous year in the 32-year record burned. But even without looking at the year, that trend is clear.

"Forests in Australia experienced an annual average increase of 350% in burned area between the first (1988-2001) and second (2002-2018) half of the record, and an increase of 800% when including 2019," the researchers wrote.

In addition, Canadell and his co-authors wrote at The Conversation:

We are seeing fires growing the most in areas once less likely to be affected by fire, such as cool wet Tasmanian forests unaccustomed to large fires as well as the warmest forests in Queensland previously kept safe from fire by rainfall and a humid microclimate. This includes ancient Gondwanan rainforests not adapted for fire...

Spring and summer used to be the time most forest fires would start. That's no longer guaranteed. Since 2001 winter fires have soared five-fold compared to 1988-2001 and autumn fires three-fold.

Overall, fires in the cooler months of March to August are growing exponentially at 14% a year.

The forest fires of 2019-20—the so-called Black Summer—the researchers added, should not be seen as an "aberration."

"It is now clear that human-induced climate change is creating ever more dangerous conditions for fires in Australia," they wrote. "We need to be ready for more Black Summers—and worse."


Also of Interest

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

Russian and Chinese Ambassadors: Respecting People’s Democratic Rights

US Warns Iran Not to Use Talks to Accelerate Nuclear Program

Cyber Monday Report Reveals Climate-Wrecking Supply Chain of US Retail Giants

DEFUND Or REFORM? Journalist Breaks Down The Defund The Police Movement In Baltimore


A Little Night Music

Ishman Bracey - Leavin' Town Blues

Ishman Bracey - Saturday Blues

Ishman Bracey - Brown Mamma Blues

Ishman Bracey - Left Alone Blues

Ishman Bracey - Farish Street Rag

Ishman Bracey - The Four Day Blues

Ishman Bracey (New Orleans Nehi Boys) - Mobile Stomp

Ishman Bracey - Stranger Blues

Ishman Bracey - Bust Up Blues

Ishman Bracey and His New Orleans Nehi Boys - Pay Me No Mind Blues


Share
up
11 users have voted.

Comments

It's also called just history

The first complaint filed under Tennessee's new anti-critical race theory law specifically targeted a book about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, calling it "anti-American."

The 11-page complaint — filed by the Williamson County branch of conservative parents group "Moms for Liberty" — alleged that the book "Martin Luther King Jr and the March on Washington" was among a set of lessons promoting "Anti-American, Anti-White, and Anti-Mexican" teaching at Williamson County Schools, a district south of Nashville.

The conservative group specifically protested a photo of segregated water fountains and images showing Black children being blasted with water by firefighters. The group claimed that an accompanying lesson plan showed a "slanted obsession with historical mistakes" and argued it shouldn't be taught.

up
10 users have voted.

@gjohnsit

get to define what is appropriate for teaching?
I think not. Perhaps they should go back to their church
circles and pray for honesty or lucid education ..
maybe their invented god figure will enlighten them

up
10 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

i just read in the guardian that the cited complaint was denied by the tennessee authority. not on the merits, mind you, but on a technicality - that it addressed a time period not covered by the new law.

i would imagine moms for liberty will be back. i can hardly wait to hear their theories.

up
10 users have voted.
Dawn's Meta's picture

many others have longer staying power than they did months ago. There are new comments on some as far back as two weeks. People are researching, thinking and discussing more. Nice to see.

Nurdles? Just when the big plastic vacuum ship is in full swing, now more plastic than ever.

Poor fish; poor dolphins; poor whales and so on.

up
9 users have voted.

A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.

Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.

joe shikspack's picture

@Dawn's Meta

heh, i guess i'll have to start checking back to look for more comments. i had kind of thought of these eb posts as daily documents that were, like the news, kind of over after the day.

yeah, nurdles were new to me. who knew something with a name that sounds kind of warm and fuzzy would be, i dunno, like the stay-puft marshmallow man in ghostbusters.

up
4 users have voted.

response from Garland.

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/583635-nine-house-progress...

Nine House Democrats on Tuesday called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to intervene in the case of a former environmental lawyer who has alleged his prison sentence is in retaliation for his work against Chevron.

The lawmakers sent the letter ahead of Steven Donziger’s appeal of his six-month sentence on contempt charges. The letter notes President Biden’s assertions of U.S. leadership on climate at the COP26 summit in November, saying “the entire world is watching whether our actions will match our words.”

“That an internationally respected human rights lawyer sits in prison right now while Chevron avoids billions in judgments for intentionally destroying the rainforest is an outrage that highlights just how critical our fight against corporate greed is to our future,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who co-led the letter, said in a statement.

“Chevron is setting a dangerous precedent that other corporate polluters will follow to avoid responsibility for the devastation they cause, and the DOJ should intervene immediately to rectify this situation or risk endorsing it as a blueprint for turning victims and their lawyers into criminals,” Tlaib added.

up
8 users have voted.

@humphrey

.. into criminals

That is the modus operendi far as I ken

The courts are not supposed to be political
but that too has changed

up
7 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

i am not really expecting much out of garland. if judicial corruption on this scale hasn't gotten his attention and action by now, he's going to duck the controversy and let somebody else sort it out.

up
4 users have voted.

Unfortunately the Clinton sycophants are embedded so deeply within all aspects of the Democratic party that nothing will ever change.

up
12 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

exhibit #nnnnn in the long-running display of ideas and artifacts that indicate that people should abandon the democrat party.

up
5 users have voted.

now it's Hillary.
Reagan was institutional, he transformed the American government into a racist kleptocracy. But Hillary infected American people with a mass insanity based on total hatred. The people she infected roam the internet randomly attacking people, calling for the functional, effective, and even literal death, for reasons that change by the day and so cannot be protected against. Reagen lied about everything, but if one of his lies was exposed he doubled down, refusing to admit something he espoused was untrue. Hillary's infected lie about everything, but change their lies constantly, so that if a lie is disproven it was "yesterday's" lie and so it never happened. Hillary has replaced Mao with Stalin.

up
9 users have voted.

On to Biden since 1973

joe shikspack's picture

@doh1304

yeah, one interesting similarity between clinton and reagan is that they are both able to mesmerize the mainstream media and bend it to their sinister will.

up
4 users have voted.

Thanks for the news and blues! The blues is what helps keep me going as I read through the news you have posted. Not anything positive in the news about the environment.

The news about hurdles was very discouraging. When visiting with friends in Hawaii in December of 2019, we would walk along the beach and pick up bags of the small plastic that washed ashore. This is even worse.

Doing my small part to try to minimize my contributions to the destruction of the environment and when possible shop local and stay away from the big polluters you mentioned in the article about the marine pollution caused by the major companies supply chains.

Lots of stuff to unpack and reflect on this evening.

up
7 users have voted.

Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

joe shikspack's picture

@jakkalbessie

yeah, the news is not exactly comforting and we are definitely running on blues power here at chez shikspack. Smile

i do my best to limit my carbon footprint, too. however, our economy is structured to prevent us from getting the job done. sooner or later we are either going to have to take on those that organize the "commanding heights" of the economy. but, well, nobody can do it by themselves.

up
5 users have voted.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cnn-chris-cuomo-suspended-text-messages/

CNN has indefinitely suspended Chris Cuomo over his communications with Andrew Cuomo's team about the sexual assault allegations against the former governor, a spokesperson for the network said Tuesday. The suspension comes one day after New York Attorney General Letitia James released a series of text messages between him and Andrew Cuomo's top aide in which he asked to play a larger role in the response.

CNN said the documents "shed new light on Chris Cuomo's involvement in his brother's defense" and "raise serious questions."

When Chris admitted to us that he had offered advice to his brother's staff, he broke our rules and we acknowledged that publicly. But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second," the statement said. "However, these documents point to a greater level of involvement in his brother's efforts than we previously knew. As a result, we have suspended Chris indefinitely, pending further evaluation."

up
7 users have voted.
Azazello's picture

Arizona Report
A Sun Devil no more: Kyle Rittenhouse reportedly quits ASU
Last night a Tucson cop on special "loss prevention" detail at WalMart pumped nine rounds into a guy in a wheelchair. I guess he brandished a knife.
Details, and video, here: Tucson Police move to fire officer who killed man in a motorized wheelchair
From The Lancet: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified
Jimmy Dore:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz46ZQSRdRE width:600 height:360]

up
7 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

wow, who knew that toolboxes were more valuable than human life in tuscon?

i guess if kyle rittenhouse can't get an education at asu, he ought to be a shoe-in for a job opening with the tpd.

have a great evening!

up
6 users have voted.

i'm going to use this graph in an essay later

profits.PNG

and a few others

gas.PNG

share.PNG

up
8 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@gjohnsit

seems to me that biden is using the wrong tool on the economy. rather than bitching in the bully pulpit, perhaps he ought to examine whether there are monopoly powers that are to blame for jacking up prices.

up
8 users have voted.

https://apnews.com/article/elections-honduras-caribbean-presidential-ele...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras ruling party conceded defeat Tuesday in presidential elections held two days earlier, giving victory to leftist opposition candidate Xiomara Castro and easing fears of another contested vote and violent protests.

Tegucigalpa Mayor Nasry Asfura of the National Party said in a statement that he had personally congratulated Castro, despite only about half the voting tallies being counted from Sunday’s election.

Castro had 53% of the votes and Asfura 34%, with 52% of the tallies counted, according to the National Electoral Council. The council has 30 days from the election to declare a winner.

I bet he said this through clenched teeth

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated Castro minutes later.

“The United States congratulates the people of Honduras on their election and Xiomara Castro on her historic victory as Honduras’ first female president,” Blinken said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the next government of Honduras. We congratulate Hondurans for the high voter turnout, peaceful participation, and active civil society engagement that marked this election, signaling an enduring commitment to the democratic process.”

up
8 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@humphrey

then blinken, thinking that the mic was turned off said, "and the cia looks forward to working on another castro."

up
10 users have voted.