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This evening's music features Louisiana swamp bluesman Slim Harpo. Enjoy!

“Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.”

-- Douglas Adams

News and Opinion

U.K. Court Clears the Way for Assange Extradition to U.S.

High Court Allows Assange Extradition, Quashing His Discharge

The High Court in London on Friday ruled in the U.S. appeal against a lower court decision not to extradite imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange by sending the case back to Magistrate’s Court with instructions to send the case to the secretary of state to decide on Assange’s extradition.

The matter is now in the hands of the home secretary, Priti Patel, unless Assange’s lawyers appeal the decision to the U.K. Supreme Court, which they have said they will do. If extradited, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison on charges under the Espionage Act and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. Assange is the first journalist to be charged with espionage by the U.S. for obtaining and publishing state secrets.

Lord Justice Timothy Holroyde, who read the High Court’s summary decision in court in nine minutes, said the order by a lower court to discharge Assange was overturned and that he was to remain on remand in prison. Holroyde said that the High Court had accepted the U.S. assurances that Assange would not be kept in harsh prison conditions in the U.S. He called them “solemn undertakings from one government to another.”

The High Court was satisfied, Holroyde said, that Assange would not be held under Special Administrative Measures or sent to ADX Florence maximum security prison in Colorado, that Assange would receive adequate medical treatment while incarcerated and that he could serve his post-trial and post-appeal sentence in his native Australia.

“The court rejected various criticism argued on Mr. Assange’s behalf …that the assurances …were not sufficient,” Holroyde said.

“…these are ‘solemn assurances’ from the state whose war crimes and murder of civilians were exposed by Julian Assange…” @CraigMurrayOrg speaking in London (via BBC news). #AssangeVerdict @CredicoRandy pic.twitter.com/8TUJuOYLOI

— ScotNews (@indyscotnews) December 10, 2021

Well of course the High Court accepted assurances from the US that they will treat Julian Assange well. It's not like they secretly plotted to assassinate him or anything, is it?... Is it? Oh. It is.@StellaMoris1, Julian's fiancée, is very powerful in this clip. pic.twitter.com/t42MSDWenQ

— Alex Nunns (@alexnunns) December 10, 2021

“The Forever Prisoner”: Alex Gibney on Abu Zubaydah, Held in Guantánamo Without Charge Since 2006

Iran nuclear talks pulled back from brink as Tehran shifts stance

Efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal have been hauled back from the brink of collapse as Tehran revised its stance after pressure from Russia and China and clear warnings that the EU and the US were preparing to walk away. The cautiously optimistic assessment came at the start of the seventh round of talks on the future of the nuclear deal in Vienna. It follows what was seen as a disastrous set of talks last week in which the US and the EU claimed Iran had walked back on compromises reached in previous rounds.

The Russian ambassador to the talks, Mikhail Ulyanov, said: “We managed to eliminate a number of misunderstandings that created some tension. Everyone confirmed their commitment to productive work [to restore the nuclear agreement].”

Nevertheless, Joe Biden warned that the United States was preparing “additional measures” against Iran, amid lingering fears that the talks could still fail. “The president has asked his team to be prepared in the event that diplomacy fails and we must turn to other options,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

More than half of Israelis support attacking Iran without US backing, poll says

Slightly more than half of Israelis say they would support their country attacking Iran without a "green light" from the United States, according to a poll released on Wednesday by the Israel Democracy Institute.

Israeli and US defence chiefs are expected on Thursday to discuss possible military exercises that would prepare for a worst-case scenario to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities should diplomacy fail and if their nations' leaders request it, a senior US official told Reuters.

Ukrainian crisis | US senator threatens Russia with NUKES

Pentagon orders study to ‘identify critical questions’ on role of nuclear weapons in US defense

The Pentagon has asked a Washington thinktank to draw up a report on the future of the US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programme and deliver it before the end of January. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) will present options based on three rounds of virtual consultations, which began on Tuesday, between Pentagon officials, nuclear weapons experts and arms control advocates.

Critics say the Carnegie Endowment consultations and its final report fall far short of an independent assessment that some congressional Democrats had demanded, scrutinising the main options: extending the life of the current ICBM, the Minuteman III, for a few years; or developing a totally new $100bn missile, known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). ...

Arms control advocates fear that Biden will not keep his pledge to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US defence planning, and that the president will be boxed in by a set of options drawn up by nuclear hawks in the Pentagon in the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

The role of the CEIP was laid out in a letter from Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defence for policy, to the Democratic senator Ed Markey, and a series of Pentagon responses to Markey’s follow-up questions about the NPR. “The department has … tasked the Carnegie Endowment to conduct an external study of diverse views on the intercontinental ballistic missile leg of the nuclear triad to inform the NPR,” Markey was told.

However, by the time the Carnegie Endowment delivers its report, in late January, the NPR is due to be delivered to the White House, raising questions on whether its findings will have any influence on decisions about the future nuclear arsenal.

Record-Breaking $788 Billion Defense Budget Passes House

Biden promises eastern Europeans support in event of Russian attack on Ukraine

Joe Biden has phoned the leaders of Ukraine and nine eastern European Nato states promising support if Russia attacks Ukraine and pledging to involve them in decisions about the region.

After a 90-minute call with Biden late on Thursday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Twitter that the two “discussed possible formats for resolving the conflict” in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have carved out a self-declared state.

After Zelenskiy, Biden spent 40 minutes talking to the leaders of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – all of which, unlike Ukraine, joined Nato in the wake of the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Biden reassured the leaders that nothing would be agreed with Russia about the region behind the backs of its countries, an adviser to Lithuania’s president told reporters. ...

Officials in Poland and other eastern and central Nato countries have privately bristled at Biden’s description of seeking an “accommodation” with Russia, worrying that any trade-off could increase the danger they face from an expansionist Russia.

Is Russia really planning a war in Ukraine - or is Washington?

Germany’s foreign minister under pressure over Nord Stream 2 sanctions

Germany’s new foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has been caught a diplomatic vice days into the job, as US puts pressure on the coalition government in Berlin to vow to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the event of Russia invading Ukraine. The controversial pipeline project, which runs from Ust-Luga in Russia to Lubmin in north-east Germany, is also likely to be the first test of the new German government’s unity of approach.

Baerbock, the 40-year-old Green co-leader, has long opposed the near-complete giant pipeline, but the German coalition programme is silent on the issue, due to support for the project from the new German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. ...

The energy link is not only supported by former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, now chair of Nord Stream’s board of directors, but also the centre-left party’s branch in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the local population hopes to draw economic advantages once gas starts running underneath the Baltic Sea.

Scholz indicated that he would not leave it to his Green coalition partners to dictate his government’s language around Nord Stream 2. “The whole country is being watched by the world,” he said. “That’s why we as a government will act in unison – and that starts with the head of government.”

“We have a very clear attitude: we want everyone’s borders to be respected,” Scholz told Die Welt newspaper on Wednesday. “Everyone understands that there will be consequences if that is not the case.” The new chancellor did not go as far as spelling out a threat to abandon the project.

6 LIES Media Is Telling On Inflation

An excellent article detailing (some of) Brandon's corruption. It's worth a click and a full read, here's a bit to whet the appetite:

The Biden White House purports to be worried about corruption — just not the kind now dominating American politics

“Corruption robs citizens of equal access to vital services, denying the right to quality health care, public safety, and education,” the Biden administration wrote Monday, adding that corruption “has been shown to significantly curtail the ability of states to respond effectively to public health crises.” These were the key findings of the first-ever “United States Strategy on Countering Corruption,” coordinated by President Joe Biden’s National Security Council. But the strategy paper noticeably avoided mention of a particular form of corruption: corporate capture, where companies and their financial interests completely dominate the policymaking process.

The Biden administration, as it turns out, is a perfect example of this: Every policy solution they propose involves some sort of corporate giveaway. This is the kind of institutionalized and legalized bribery that’s almost never discussed — the corruption that’s responsible for high health care costs and poor health care outcomes in the U.S., and that has made it effectively impossible for lawmakers to rationally respond to the COVID-19 pandemic here and around the globe.

As if to drive the problem home, within hours of releasing their corruption report, the Biden White House was flailing on TV trying to defend an overly complex COVID testing plan that will keep Americans paying inflated retail prices for at-home tests with the hope that their health insurer will agree to reimburse them at some later point. This plan is wildly impractical, but it would be a boon for the same testing manufacturer that just so happened to start paying Biden’s former top aide shortly after Biden was elected president. The proposed strategy is just the latest example of the Biden administration’s preferred approach for dealing with virtually every health care problem: funnel it through health insurance corporations that bankroll Washington politicians. The situation will continue to drive health care disparities and pad profits in a health care sector that helped finance Biden’s presidential campaign.

Progressives Introduce FOUR-DAY Work Week Bill

Columbia University threatens graduate workers with replacement if they continue strike

About 3,000 graduate workers at Columbia University in New York City, who have been on strike since 3 November, recently received an email from the university human resources department threatening the workers with replacement if they continue striking. The strike is the largest active strike in the US. The email, sent on 2 December by Columbia University human resources vice-president Dave Driscoll, informed workers their positions would be replaced if they continue striking past 10 December.

“Our interpretation of this email is that it’s basically a threat. They are saying here’s the date, December 10. If you’re still exercising your right to engage in protected activity on or after December 10 there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get your job back. So we think that’s the intention of the threat, but we also think that what they’re doing is unlawful,” said Ethan Jacobs, a graduate student worker in the philosophy department at Columbia University and a member of the GWC-UAW Local 2110 bargaining committee.

Jacobs described the unfair labor practice charges filed by the union against the university with the National Labor Relations Board. They include the university enacting a wage freeze and changing wage disbursement schedules earlier this year without negotiating with the union after its members rejected a tentative agreement after a strike in the 2021 spring semester.

According to the National Labor Relations Act, workers who strike to protest unfair labor practices cannot be discharged or permanently replaced. Jacobs expressed the union’s intent to file additional charges with the NLRB over the university’s threat to replace workers on strike.

Starbucks workers’ efforts to unionize finds success in Buffalo, New York

Starbucks workers have voted to unionize at a store in Buffalo, New York, over the company’s objections, pointing the way to a new labor model for the 50-year-old coffee giant.

The National Labor Relations Board said Thursday that workers voted 19-8 in favor of a union. The board is still counting votes for two other stores.

If the labor board certifies the vote – a process expected to take about a week – it would be the first Starbucks-owned store in the US to unionize.

Starbucks has actively fought unionization at its stores for decades, saying its stores function best when the company works directly with employees, whom it calls “partners”. ...

The “Yes” vote is likely to accelerate unionization efforts at other US Starbucks outlets.

Court rules Trump cannot block release of documents to Capitol attack panel

Donald Trump, the former US president, suffered a major defeat on Thursday when a federal appeals court ruled against his effort to block the release of documents related to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

Trump is expected to appeal to the supreme court.

A select committee in the House of Representatives is investigating the events on and surrounding 6 January, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol in a bid to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election win. Amid scenes of violence that shocked America and the world, five people eventually died and scores were injured.

Trump and a clique of his close advisors have repeatedly engaged in legal action over the committee’s investigations, including refusing to cooperate with it.

But in a 3-0 decision, the United States court of appeals for the District of Columbia said there was a “unique legislative need” for documents that the committee has requested but whose release Trump has sought to keep secret through executive privilege – a legal doctrine that protects the confidentiality of some White House communications.

Chevron foe Donziger released from prison under COVID waiver

Donziger tweeted Thursday afternoon: "Danbury prison officials released me this morning to serve the rest of my sentence (136 days) at home."

Donziger's legal team had requested his release under the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) Act, said Martin Garbus, one of his lawyers.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately reply to a request for comment nor did it respond to a phone call.

Donziger began serving his sentence at the Danbury federal prison on Oct. 27. A prison staffer contacted by phone could not confirm his release.

Navy Fighting Health Department Order to Drain Fuel Tanks over Tainted Water Concerns

The Navy is fighting an order from the state of Hawaii's government to stop using and drain the fuel tanks at its underground bulk storage facility on Hawaii near Honolulu.

The Hawaii Department of Health issued an order to the Navy on Monday to suspend operations at the Red Hill fuel facility, treat contaminated drinking water, and remove fuel from its 20 underground tanks.

But in a letter to Hawaii health officials and others Tuesday, a Navy attorney said the service is contesting the order. He gave no reason why.

Updated Extinction Assessment Drives Fresh Call to 'Save Life on Earth'

The Biden administration was told Thursday it must act urgently to address the biodiversity and climate crises following the release of an updated global assessment that showed the number of species at risk of extinction now tops 40,000.

"Every new look at extinction shows that we're running out of time to save wildlife and ultimately ourselves," said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

The update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species documents a decline in Earth's dragonflies and damselflies, finding 16% out of over 6,000 species are at risk of extinction amid a deterioration of their freshwater breeding grounds in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. The report says the losses are driven by numerous factors including the climate crisis and land clearance for construction and agricultural crops like palm oil.

Out of the 142,577 species evaluated in 2021 by the IUCN, the analysis found an estimated 28% are threatened with extinction.

As Dr. Ian Burfield, a global science coordinator for BirdLife International, noted in a statement, "The plight of dragonflies is indicative of a wider crisis threatening many wetland species," including major declines in wetland birds over recent years.

Curry similarly called dragonflies "not only gorgeous" but "indicator species that tell us a lot about the health of rivers and wetlands. The serious threats they face are a huge red flag that we have to do better."

"The ongoing damming of rivers and loss of wetlands," she said, "wipes out wildlife and harms humans with increased risks of flooding and diseases."

The plummeting numbers of dragonflies and damselflies is perhaps unsurprising in light of the vast scope of wetland destruction. Despite their crucial role the water cycle and biodiversity, approximately 85% of the world's wetlands have been lost over the past 300 hundred years. That same percentage of loss is true for the U.S. and Canada, though the rate of loss appears to be on the decline.

"The loss of these critical habitats," Dr. Thomas E. Lacher, Jr., Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, said of wetlands, "will have severe impacts on amphibians and migratory birds globally," noting their "exceptional levels of biodiversity in an extremely small land area."

With the new 'Red List' data—and in light of ongoing threats including the climate crisis and toxic pesticides driving an "insect apocalypse"—Curry said President Joe Biden must urgently set the U.S. on a new course in terms of energy production and environmental protection.

"The Biden administration has to muster the political will to move away from dirty fossil fuels, change the toxic ways we produce food, curtail the wildlife trade, and halt ongoing loss of habitat," she said. "We actually can do these things."

"We can and must save life on Earth," Curry added. "In the face of the federal failure to act while the planet melts down around us, individuals, cities, and states have to protect wildlife and fight climate change."

Tropical forests can regenerate in just 20 years without human interference

Tropical forests can bounce back with surprising rapidity, a new study published today suggests.

An international group of researchers has found that tropical forests have the potential to almost fully regrow if they are left untouched by humans for about 20 years. This is due to a multidimensional mechanism whereby old forest flora and fauna help a new generation of forest grow – a natural process known as “secondary succession”.

These new findings, published in Science, could play an important role in climate-breakdown mitigation and provide actionable advice on how to act next. They also suggest that it is not too late to undo the damage that humanity has done through catastrophic climate change over the last few decades.

“That’s good news, because the implication is that, 20 years … that’s a realistic time that I can think of, and that my daughter can think of, and that the policymakers can think of,” said Lourens Poorter, professor in functional ecology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and lead author of the paper.

This idea of natural regeneration is frequently disregarded in favour of tree plantations, but according to Poorter, the former yields better results than restoration plantings. “Compared to planting new trees, it performs way better in terms of biodiversity, climate change mitigation and recovering nutrients.” The takeaway message is that we don’t necessarily need to plant more trees when nature is doing it by itself, Poorter said.

Also of Interest

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

'Pool of blood': US drone strike hits Syria family

‘Warehouses in their backyards’: when Amazon expands, these communities pay the price

US Supreme Court Poised to Retract a Fundamental Right

Big Business Lobby Taps Trump's 'Chief Union-Buster to Kneecap' Worker Rights

The Fed Pulls a Dark Curtain Around Former Dallas Fed President, Robert Kaplan, and His Trading in S&P 500 Futures

CNN Asks Sinema No Questions About Conflicts

Extreme Weather and Pandemic Help Drive Global Food Prices to 46-Year High

World Screams In Anguish At News That Olympics Won’t Be Attended By Some Western Diplomats

Marco Rubio LAMBASTS US' Economic Love Affair With China, Calls For Working Family-First Capitalism

A Little Night Music

Slim Harpo - I'm a King Bee

Slim Harpo - I Just Can´t Leave You Baby

Slim Harpo - Dynamite

Slim Harpo - Boogie Chillun

Slim Harpo - Moody Blues

Slim Harpo - I Got Love If You Want It

Slim Harpo - Folsom Prison Blues

Slim Harpo - Little Queen Bee

Slim Harpo - Te-Ni-Nee-Ni-Nu

Slim Harpo - Shake Your Hips