Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features soul singer O.V. Wright. Enjoy!

“Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups... So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

-- Philip K. Dick

News and Opinion

Worth reading in full:

The U.S. Media Suffered Its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages: Now Refuses All Transparency Over What Happened

The spectacle began on Friday morning at 11 a.m. EST, when the Most Trusted Name in News™ spent 12 straight minutes on air flamboyantly hyping an exclusive bombshell report that seemed to prove that WikiLeaks, last September, had secretly offered the Trump campaign, even Donald Trump himself, special access to the DNC emails before they were published on the internet. ... This entire revelation was based on an email which CNN strongly implied it had exclusively obtained and had in its possession. The email was sent by someone named “Michael J. Erickson” — someone nobody had heard of previously and whom CNN could not identify — to Donald Trump, Jr., offering a decryption key and access to DNC emails that WikiLeaks had “uploaded.” The email was a smoking gun, in CNN’s extremely excited mind, because it was dated September 4 — 10 days before WikiLeaks began promoting access to those emails online — and thus proved that the Trump family was being offered special, unique access to the DNC archive: likely by WikiLeaks and the Kremlin. ...

There was just one small problem with this story: it was fundamentally false, in the most embarrassing way possible. Hours after CNN broadcast its story — and then hyped it over and over and over — the Washington Post reported that CNN got the key fact of the story wrong. The email was not dated September 4, as CNN claimed, but rather September 14 — which means it was sent after WikiLeaks had already published access to the DNC emails online. Thus, rather than offering some sort of special access to Trump, “Michael J. Erickson” was simply some random person from the public encouraging the Trump family to look at the publicly available DNC emails that WikiLeaks — as everyone by then already knew — had publicly promoted. ...

How did CNN end up aggressively hyping such a spectacularly false story? They refuse to say. Many hours after their story got exposed as false, the journalist who originally presented it, Congressional reporter Manu Raju, finally posted a tweet noting the correction. CNN’s PR Department then claimed that “multiple sources” had provided CNN with the false date. ... All of this prompts the glaring, obvious, and critical question — one which CNN refuses to address: how did “multiple sources” all misread the date on this document, in exactly the same way, and toward the same end, and then feed this false information to CNN?

It is, of course, completely plausible that one source might innocently misread a date on a document. But how is it remotely plausible that multiple sources could all innocently and in good faith misread the date in exactly the same way, all to cause to be disseminated a blockbuster revelation about Trump/Russia/WikiLeaks collusion? This is the critical question that CNN simply refuses to answer. In other words, CNN refuses to provide the most minimal transparency to enable the public to understand what happened here. ...

[See article for explanation of how the story went viral, with CBS and MSNBC claiming to have independently confirmed CNN's story, Josh Marshall at TPM running the story under a picture of an atomic blast - as well as on twitter, with journalists, congressmen and Democratic Party operatives creating a giant wurlitzer of false information. -js]

It’s hard to quantify exactly how many people were deceived — filled with false news and propaganda — by the CNN story. But thanks to Democratic-loyal journalists and operatives who decree every Trump/Russia claim to be true without seeing any evidence, it’s certainly safe to say that many hundreds of thousands of people, almost certainly millions, were exposed to these false claims. Surely anyone who has any minimal concerns about journalistic accuracy — which would presumably include all the people who have spent the last year lamenting Fake News, propaganda, Twitter bots and the like — would demand an accounting as to how a major U.S. media outlet ended up filling so many people’s brains with totally false news.

CNN Retracts Another Bogus Russia-gate Story

CNN Corrects a Trump Story, Fueling Claims of ‘Fake News’

CNN on Friday corrected an erroneous report that Donald Trump Jr. had received advance notice from the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks about a trove of hacked documents that it planned to release during last year’s presidential campaign.

In fact, the email to Mr. Trump was sent a day after the documents, stolen from the Democratic National Committee, were made available to the general public. The correction undercut the main thrust of CNN’s story, which had been seized on by critics of President Trump as evidence of coordination between WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign.

It was also yet another prominent reporting error at a time when news organizations are confronting a skeptical public, and a president who delights in attacking the media as “fake news.”

Last Saturday, ABC News suspended a star reporter, Brian Ross, after an inaccurate report that Donald Trump had instructed Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, to contact Russian officials during the presidential race. The report fueled theories about coordination between the Trump campaign and a foreign power, and stocks dropped after the news. In fact, Mr. Trump’s instruction to Mr. Flynn came after he was president-elect.

Several news outlets, including Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, also inaccurately reported this week that Deutsche Bank had received a subpoena from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for President Trump’s financial records.

Hmmm... do you suppose the continuous reporting of false claims by CNN, MSDNC, etc. about RussiaRussiaRussia might be giving Faux News watchers ammunition to complain about the "librul bias of the fake news mainstream media?"

A battle for public opinion: Trump goes to war over Mueller and Russia

Illegitimate and corrupt. Using the FBI as a political weapon and America’s secret police. “Secret surveillance, wiretapping, intimidation, harassment and threats. It’s like the old KGB that comes for you in the dark of the night, banging through your door.” This is special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, as seen through the eyes of news anchor and analyst Gregg Jarrett this week. Anyone expecting him to be challenged live on air was destined for disappointment.

Fox News host Sean Hannity replied: “This is not hyperbole you are using here.” It was one telling glimpse of the parallel universe that Donald Trump hopes will save him from Mueller’s sprawling investigation and potential impeachment. Far from an outlier, it was typical of how in recent days rightwing media, congressional Republicans and Trump’s base have gone to war, seeking to discredit and delegitimise the special counsel.

Even if they do not win in the court of public opinion, they hope to sow enough doubt that should Mueller produce damning evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the reaction will be as divided as everything else in split-screen America, offering the president an escape route. ... Only 56% of Americans are ‘very or somewhat confident’ that Mueller will conduct his investigation fairly, according to a survey of 1,503 by the Pew Research Center. More than two in three Democrats (68%) say they are at least ‘somewhat confident’ that Mueller’s investigation will be conducted fairly. Less than one in two Republicans (44%) think the same way.

There was little doubting the mood among Trump’s core support at a rally in Pensacola, Florida on Friday night. Mike Newell, dressed in gear proclaiming that he was a marines veteran, dismissed the investigation as “a big joke”, adding that it was “all politically motivated and … a shame we’re wasting that kind of taxpayer money on something that’s so ridiculous”. Newell said he followed the story “all over the media, the fake media mostly” and that the most reliable source was Fox News, which Trump consumes voraciously. “They are accurate on what they say,” he said.

Trump's Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel Capitol Diminishes Peace Prospects

Tense scenes as unrest over US Jerusalem move continues

Protests have broken out for a fourth day across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip following a US decision to declare Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The demonstrations on Saturday came as Palestinian leaders were to meet in Ramallah to firm up a response to US President Donald Trump's controversial move.

In East Jerusalem, Israeli forces fired stun grenades and tear gas as they charged - some on horseback - through a crowd of at least 100 peaceful demonstrators in Salah Eddin, one of the city's busiest shopping streets. At least 13 Palestinians were detained and 12 injured as Israeli troops pushed and beat demonstrators at the scene. Among those held was Jihad Abu Zneid, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. ...

Al Jazeera's Alan Fisher, reporting from the protest in Occupied East Jerusalem, said a series of running confrontations erupted after Israeli security forces blocked a small group of protesters from marching. "It started as a small peaceful protest, a handful of people who wanted to make sure their voices could be heard," he said. "But their way was blocked and they were forceably pushed back by Israeli police and soldiers who said the protesters had no permit to march and they were blocking the road." As crowds gathered by the side of the street, police sent in officers on horseback to break up the crowds, creating widespread anger and panic.

The pundits were wrong about Assad and the Islamic State. As usual, they're not willing to admit it

The Islamic State is a shadow of its former self. In 2014, the extremist group seemed to make substantial inroads in achieving its stated goal of a caliphate. It boasted tens of thousands of fighters and territorial control over an area roughly the size of South Korea. By almost every metric, Islamic State has collapsed in its Syria stronghold, as well as in Iraq. As a former foreign fighter recently admitted, “It’s over: there is no more Daesh left,” using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The rollback of Islamic State must come as a shock to the chorus of journalists and analysts who spent years insisting that such progress would never happen without toppling the regime of Bashar Assad — which is, of course, still standing. A cavalcade of opinion makers long averred that Islamic State would thrive in Syria so long as Assad ruled because the Syrian Arab Army was part of the same disease.

John Bolton, former United Nations ambassador under George W. Bush, insisted in the New York Times that “defeating the Islamic State” is “neither feasible nor desirable” if Assad remains in power. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham asserted that “defeating Islamic State also requires defeating Bashar Assad.” Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution prescribed a policy of “building a new Syrian opposition army capable of defeating both President Bashar al-Assad and the more militant Islamists.” Similarly, Max Boot, a contributing writer to this newspaper, argued that vanquishing Islamic State was futile unless the U.S. also moved to depose the “Alawite regime in Damascus.” Like other regime-change salesmen, he pitched a no-fly zone across the country to facilitate airstrikes against the Assad government, while boosting aid to the so-called moderate rebels.

Prominent Syria analysts also claimed that Assad supported, even sponsored Islamic State. ... The notion that Assad “won’t fight” Islamic State was always wrong. The notion that “defeating Islamic State also requires defeating Bashar Assad” was, likewise, always wrong. By now it should be obvious that the Syrian Arab Army has played a role in degrading Islamic State in Syria — not alone, of course, but with Russian and Iranian partners, not to mention the impressive U.S.-led coalition. In marked contrast to pundit expectations, the group’s demise was inversely related to Assad’s power. Islamic State’s fortunes decreased as his influence in the country increased.

Equally contrary to analyst predictions, the group imploded right after external support for the “moderate” rebels dried up. The weakening of the rebels was a major setback for Islamic State because Assad could finally focus his firepower on the group. Fewer weapon shipments into the theater, moreover, meant fewer arms fell into the hands of Salafi jihadists. How strange, then, that we haven’t heard many pundits acknowledge their mistakes; they’re not itching to atone for having almost forced another regime-change mission based on discredited analysis.

US wants world to isolate North Korea

When President Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador recently urged the world to sever diplomatic ties with North Korea, she was sketchy on the details: Should all embassies close? How about those providing the U.S. intelligence from the largely inscrutable country? And what of Sweden, which helps with imprisoned Americans?

Nikki Haley’s recent call to action underscores the challenge for the United States as it tries to advance a nonmilitary strategy for resolving the nuclear standoff with North Korea. Isolating the reclusive, totalitarian state has been a central component of the U.S. plan, even though Washington says it remains open to talks. ...

Trump’s team has chalked up some successes in narrowing the North’s diplomatic reach. Mexico, Peru, Italy, Spain, and Kuwait have expelled North Korean ambassadors from their countries. Haley said Portugal and the United Arab Emirates have suspended diplomatic relations. Others have cut trade and security ties.

But North Korea isn’t and won’t be completely isolated. ...

Also unresolved is whether Trump and his top advisers have a game plan for the second half of a strategy they’ve called “maximum pressure and engagement.” If North Korea signals a willingness to negotiate, now that Kim has declared that he has “realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force,” how will the U.S. respond?

U.S. officials are starting to worry about North Korea’s bioweapons threat

North Korea’s nuclear weapons tests may make all the noise, but Pyongyang’s suspected bioweapons program has U.S. officials increasingly worried too, the Washington Post reported Sunday.  

The report cited U.S. and Asian officials who believe Pyongyang is making serious gains when it comes to developing a biological-weapons program, and could be acquiring machinery with the goal of creating “factories that can produce microbes by the ton” should leader Kim Jong un ever give the go-ahead. ...

Still, officials said they had yet to see clear evidence that Pyongyang had ordered the production of biological weapons, but added that the regime could start industrial production without the West knowing because such facilities would be hidden in plain sight, as part of the country’s civilian infrastructure serving the agricultural and medical community.

Former Military Leaders Want to Expand and Improve Child Care — to Increase Future Recruitment

You wouldn’t think it, but when it comes to child care — one of the biggest expenses families face — the Armed Forces have a lot to offer. That’s because the Department of Defense sponsors the nation’s only federally run universal child care program – serving roughly 200,000 children. What’s more, the care is considered both high-quality and affordable. While the average civilian family spends a quarter of its income on child care, the average military family spends about 9 percent.

Millions of American families would benefit if the Armed Forces’ demonstrably successful federal model were expanded. But while some Republicans and military leaders have been thinking a lot about child care and military service lately, that’s not what they have in mind. Instead, they’re wondering if different state pre-K and early childhood programs could be used to bolster military recruitment. The American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C., organized an event this week with the provocative title, “Military readiness and early childhood: What is the link?”

The link, it turns out, is that the Department of Defense estimates that 71 percent of the 34 million 17- to 24-year-olds in the United States — the military’s target recruitment population — are ineligible to enlist in the Armed Forces. And Mission: Readiness, a group of retired military leaders, has endorsed a novel solution to bring those numbers up: more high-quality child care.

According to the Pentagon, a third of 17- to 24-year-olds couldn’t join the Armed Forces because they lack a high school diploma or would fail the military’s entrance exam. The hope is that better preschool and child care could help improve graduation rates. Other leading factors that preclude enlistment include obesity, criminal records, and history of drug abuse. In 2014, the commanding general of U.S. Army Recruiting Command told the Wall Street Journal that only about 1 percent of people in that age range are both “eligible and inclined to have a conversation with us” about joining the military.

US, Russia missile treaty in jeopardy as tensions escalate

The United States is ratcheting up pressure on Russia over alleged violations of a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty banning intermediate-range missile systems.

The Obama administration in 2014 first accused Moscow of producing and testing a new ground-launched cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty). In March this year, General Paul Selva, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused Russia of actually deploying the missile system, saying it was meant to threaten NATO facilities. In November, a top Trump administration official publicly identified it as the Novator 9M729 missile, or NATO-designated SSC-8.

The 1987 treaty signed between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev bans Russia and the United States from possessing, producing or conducting test flights of ground-launched cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,420 miles). It allows sea-based and air-delivered missiles at those ranges. The INF treaty resulted in the destruction of an entire class of conventional and nuclear-capable missile systems, boosting security toward the end of the Cold War.

Russia has repeatedly denied US accusations, countering that the United States is violating the treaty in three ways. The main accusation relates to the United States deploying the ground-based Aegis anti-missile system in Europe, something Washington has refuted by arguing it is a non-offensive, anti-ballistic missile defense system.

Scuffles break out as artworks removed from Catalan city's museum

Scuffles broke out between police and demonstrators after hundreds of people gathered outside a museum in the Catalan city of Lleida to protest against the removal of 44 works of art that have been at the centre of a long-running dispute between Catalonia and the neighbouring region of Aragón. The pieces, which include paintings, alabaster reliefs and polychromatic wooden coffins, were sold to the Catalan government by the nuns of the Sijena convent, in Aragón, in the 1980s.

The Aragonese authorities have been trying to recover the works through the courts, arguing they were unlawfully sold. At the end of November, Spain’s culture minister, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, received a judicial order for the return of the works.

With Catalonia currently under the control of the Spanish government after Madrid sacked the regional government over its unilateral declaration of independence, Méndez de Vigo authorised their return on behalf of the administration. The move has exacerbated tensions in Catalonia, which were already running high in the buildup to next week’s snap regional election. ...

The former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium after he was sacked, attacked the move on Twitter. He accused the Spanish government of using the cover of night and the Guardia Civil to “take advantage of a coup d’état to plunder Catalonia with absolute impunity”.

Republican moderate Susan Collins undecided on final tax cut vote

The Republican Susan Collins, whose support was crucial in passing the Senate tax reform bill earlier this month, said on Sunday she has not yet decided if she will back the final measure negotiated by House and Senate leaders. The Maine moderate has laid out conditions for her support of a final “conference committee” version of the tax proposal. They include assurances that Medicare payments will not be cut and that Republicans will support two healthcare bills aimed at reducing premium costs.

Collins was one of a group of Republican senators whose no votes sank healthcare repeal attempts earlier this year. She voted for the Senate’s tax reform bill after leaders including majority leader Mitch McConnell promised to support legislation to prop up health insurance markets. But this week The Hill reported that House speaker Paul Ryan told his staff he wasn’t part of that deal. ...

The House-Senate conference will hold an open meeting on Wednesday afternoon as it starts to reconcile differences. “I’m going to look at what comes out of the conference committee meeting to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House bill,” Collins said. “So I won’t make a final decision until I see what that package is.”

How far will Trump go to keep his core supporters on his side?

Donald Trump won the US presidency with the backing of working-class and socially conservative white voters on a populist platform of economic nationalism. Trump rejected the Republican party’s traditional pro-business, pro-trade agenda, and, like Bernie Sanders on the left, appealed to Americans who have been harmed by disruptive technologies and “globalist” policies promoting free trade and migration.

But while Trump ran as a populist, he has governed as a plutocrat, most recently by endorsing the discredited supply-side theory of taxation that most Republicans still cling to. Trump also ran as someone who would “drain the swamp” in Washington DC and on Wall Street. Yet he has stacked his administration with billionaires (not just millionaires) and Goldman Sachs alumni, while letting the swamp of business lobbyists rise higher than ever. ...

All told, Trump has governed like a plutocrat in populist clothes – that is, a pluto-populist. But why has his base let him get away with pursuing policies that mostly hurt them? According to one view, he is betting that social conservatives and white blue-collar supporters in rural areas will vote on the basis of nationalist and religious sentiment and antipathy towards secular coastal elites, rather than for their own financial interests. ...

With the global economy expanding, Trump is probably hoping that tax cuts and deregulation will spur enough growth and create enough jobs that he will have something to brag about. A potential growth rate of 2% won’t necessarily do much to help his blue-collar base, but at least it could push the stock market up to its highest point ever. And, of course, Trump will still claim that the US economy can grow at a rate of 4%, even though all mainstream economists, including Republicans, agree that the potential growth rate will remain around 2%, regardless of his policies.

Whatever happens, Trump will continue to tweet maniacally, promote fake-news stories and boast about the “biggest and best” economy ever. In doing so, he may even create a circus worthy of a Roman emperor. But if gassy rhetoric alone does not suffice, he may decide to go on the offensive, particularly in the international sphere. That could mean truly withdrawing from Nafta, taking trade action against China and other trading partners, or doubling down on harsh immigration policies. And if these measures do not satisfy his base, Trump will still have one last option, long used by Roman emperors and other assorted dictators during times of domestic difficulty. Namely, he can try to “wag the dog”, by fabricating an external threat or embarking on foreign military adventures to distract his supporters from what he and congressional Republicans have been doing.

Not good enough, fellas:

DNC Unity Reform Commission Takes a Whack at Superdelegates

The Democratic Party's Unity Reform Commission on Saturday voted nearly unanimously on a series of proposals aimed at reforming the presidential nominating process, including one that would eliminate 60 percent of superdelegates and require the remainder to follow the wishes of their respective state.

The commission, made up of 21 members selected by Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, held its final meetings on Friday and Saturday in a conference room at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel in Washington, D.C. The commission also debated reforms to voting registration, caucuses, and general transparency within the party.

Cutting the number of superdelegates by about 400 and having the remaining ones vote according to the results in their state, the commission decided, would be a step toward healing wounds from the 2016 primary. ...

But these recommendations are nowhere close to being officially adopted by the Democratic Party. The Unity Commission’s report is only the first step in a wonky process, and victory is anything but assured. After being finalized, the recommendations are sent to the DNC’s rules and bylaws committee, then to all 447 DNC members in the fall of 2018, where two-thirds support will be needed.

Nomiki Konst, a Sanders appointee, was pleased with the results of the commission’s final meeting, saying strong recommendations were made in any areas in the Democratic Party “where there was an opportunity for malfeasance or lack of transparency.”

Corporate Democrats Totally Clueless Of Progressive News Network

Women accusing Trump demand Congress investigate sexual misconduct claims

A group of women who have accused Donald Trump of sexually inappropriate behavior have demanded that Congress open an investigation.

The three women, Samantha Holvey, Rachel Crooks and Jessica Leeds, came forward among others during the 2016 presidential election. Crooks and Leeds have accused Trump of unwanted kissing and groping. Holvey says Trump barged into a Miss USA dressing room while he was a part owner of the beauty pageant. More than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual assault and several more have accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior. Most of the accusers came forward in the turbulent final month of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump has denied all such claims and the White House has said all women making allegations against the president are lying. ...

“Let’s try round two,” said Holvey on Monday, appearing on NBC’s Today show with Megyn Kelly. “The environment’s different, let’s try again.” Hours later, at a press conference at the Lexington Hotel in New York City, Holvey said lawmakers should extend the same scrutiny to Trump they did to Al Franken, the Minnesota senator who faced an ethics investigation before he resigned his seat over claims of groping and unwanted kissing.

Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death

The trouble begins where everything begins: with soil. The UN’s famous projection that, at current rates of soil loss, the world has 60 years of harvests left, appears to be supported by a new set of figures. Partly as a result of soil degradation, yields are already declining on 20% of the world’s croplands.

Now consider water loss. In places such as the North China Plain, the central United States, California and north-western India – among the world’s critical growing regions – levels of the groundwater used to irrigate crops are already reaching crisis point. Water in the Upper Ganges aquifer, for example, is being withdrawn at 50 times its recharge rate. But, to keep pace with food demand, farmers in south Asia expect to use between 80 and 200% more water by the year 2050. Where will it come from?

The next constraint is temperature. One study suggests that, all else being equal, with each degree celsius of warming the global yield of rice drops by 3%, wheat by 6% and maize by 7%. These predictions could be optimistic. Research published in the journal Agricultural & Environmental Letters finds that 4C of warming in the US corn belt could reduce maize yields by between 84 and 100%.

The reason is that high temperatures at night disrupt the pollination process. But this describes just one component of the likely pollination crisis. Insectageddon, caused by the global deployment of scarcely tested pesticides, will account for the rest. Already, in some parts of the world, workers are now pollinating plants by hand. But that’s viable only for the most expensive crops. ...

All this would be hard enough. But as people’s incomes increase, their diet tends to shift from plant protein to animal protein. ... The shift in diets would be impossible to sustain even if there were no growth in the human population. But the greater the number of people, the greater the hunger meat eating will cause. From a baseline of 2010, the UN expects meat consumption to rise by 70% by 2030 (this is three times the rate of human population growth). Partly as a result, the global demand for crops could double (from the 2005 baseline) by 2050. The land required to grow them does not exist.

‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025

The communications industry could use 20% of all the world’s electricity by 2025, hampering attempts to meet climate change targets and straining grids as demand by power-hungry server farms storing digital data from billions of smartphones, tablets and internet-connected devices grows exponentially.

The industry has long argued that it can considerably reduce carbon emissions by increasing efficiency and reducing waste, but academics are challenging industry assumptions. A new paper, due to be published by US researchers later this month, will forecast that information and communications technology could create up to 3.5% of global emissions by 2020 – surpassing aviation and shipping – and up to 14% 2040, around the same proportion as the US today.

Global computing power demand from internet-connected devices, high resolution video streaming, emails, surveillance cameras and a new generation of smart TVs is increasing 20% a year, consuming roughly 3-5% of the world’s electricity in 2015, says Swedish researcher Anders Andrae. In an update to a 2016 peer-reviewed study, Andrae found that without dramatic increases in efficiency, the ICT industry could use 20% of all electricity and emit up to 5.5% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2025. This would be more than any country except the US, China and India.

He expects industry power demand to increase from 200-300 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity a year now, to 1,200 or even 3,000TWh by 2025. Data centres on their own could produce 1.9 gigatonnes (Gt) (or 3.2% of the global total) of carbon emissions, he says. ... US researchers expect power consumption to triple in the next five years as one billion more people come online in developing countries, and the “internet of things” (IoT), driverless cars, robots, video surveillance and artificial intelligence grows exponentially in rich countries.

Amid Worst Winter Wildfires in California History, Farmworkers Are Laboring in Hazardous Air

Largest California wildfire expected to grow as it enters second week

As southern California entered its second week engulfed in flames, fire officials said they anticipated more growth and danger due to continued strong wind gusts, no rain and decades-old dry vegetation. A powerful flare-up on the western edge of the largest and most destructive wildfire sent residents fleeing on Sunday, as wind-fanned flames ripped down hillsides toward coastal towns north-west of Los Angeles. New evacuations were ordered as the fire sent up an enormous plume near Montecito and Carpinteria, seaside areas in Santa Barbara County.

“The winds are kind of squirrely right now,” said county fire spokesman Mike Eliason. “Some places the smoke is going straight up in the air, and others it’s blowing sideways. Depends on what canyon we’re in.” Southern California’s gusty Santa Ana winds have long contributed to some of the region’s most disastrous wildfires. They blow from the inland toward the Pacific ocean, speeding up as they squeeze through mountain passes and canyons. Gusts of up to 40mph (64kph) are expected through Monday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

Containment increased on Sunday on other major blazes in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego counties. Resources from those fires were diverted to the Santa Barbara foothills to combat the 270 sq mile fire that started on 4 December in neighboring Ventura County. As of late Sunday, the Thomas Fire had destroyed 790 structures and damaged 191.

“This is the new normal,” Democratic governor Jerry Brown warned on Saturday after surveying damage from the deadly Ventura fire. The governor and experts said climate change is making wildfires a year-round threat. High fire risk is expected to last into January.

Also of Interest

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

In a Moving Dialogue, Disabled Activist Confronted Jeff Flake About Tax Bill on His Plane Ride Home

Native American tribes call Trump’s revamp of tribal advisory commission a ‘slap in the face’

Behind Closed Doors, U.S. Military Said Sgt. La David Johnson Survived Initial Ambush in Niger

Portland homeless crisis: sportswear CEO's threat prompts soul-searching

A Little Night Music

O.V. Wright & The Keys - That's How Strong My Love Is

O.V. Wright - I’m Gonna Forget About You

O.V. Wright & The Keys - There Goes My Used To Be

O.V. Wright - The Bottom Line

O.V. Wright - You Must Believe In Yourself

O.V. Wright - He Made Woman For Man/Don't Let My Baby Ride

O.V. Wright - I've Been Searching

O.V. Wright - Today I Sing the Blues

O.V. Wright - Drowning On Dry Land