Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features r&b singer and early Raelette, Mary Ann Fisher. Enjoy!

"Darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

All our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts - some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
Attrition rules.
Most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

Our progenitors, our
educational systems,
the land, the media, the
way
have
deluded and misled the
masses: they have been
defeated
by the aridity of
the actual
dream.

They were
unaware that
achievement or victory or
luck or
whatever the hell you
want to call
it
must have
its defeats.

It's only the re-gathering and
going on
which lends substance
to whatever magic
might possibly
evolve.

And now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more."

-- Charles Bukowski

News and Opinion

U.S. aid chief says no sign Yemen port blockade easing to allow aid in

There are no signs that a blockade of Yemen’s ports by a Saudi-led military coalition has eased to allow aid to reach communities increasingly at risk of starvation, the head of the U.S. government’s aid agency said on Tuesday.

USAID administrator Mark Green called on the Saudi-led military coalition to open Yemen’s ports and for Yemen’s Houthis to cease firing to allow food and medical supplies to flow to tens of thousands of Yemenis caught in the fighting.

Green was speaking after the U.S. announced another $130 million in emergency food aid for Yemen, bringing U.S. assistance to nearly $768 million since October 2016. The new funds includes nearly $84 million in U.S. food aid and $46 million in emergency disaster assistance. ...

Washington last week warned Saudi Arabia that concern in Congress over the humanitarian situation in Yemen could affect U.S. assistance to allies in the Saudi-led coalition, including the U.S. refueling of coalition jets and some intelligence sharing.

An interesting article. Seems like the US Ambassador to Yemen is working for the Saudis rather than the US. There's too much here to fairly extract, so here's the setup to get you started:

Inside the Failed Yemen Peace Talks, a Hard-line U.S. Diplomat

One night in mid-August 2015, a fleet of warplanes circled over the Yemeni port city of Hodeida. Since that spring, a Saudi-led coalition had been carrying out a devastating bombing campaign. The United States had been helping the coalition with targeting, arguing that its precision guidance of airstrikes would mitigate civilian casualties. But that night, the coalition raid leveled the port, destroying four massive cranes that were essential for unloading cargo ships. Clinging to the shore of the Red Sea, Hodeida is the entry point for nearly 80 percent of Yemen’s imported food.

With the cranes gone, the flow of goods into the country slowed to a trickle, and the international community scrambled to fend off a famine. The U.S. government donated $3.9 million to the World Food Program to purchase new cranes, which took months to arrive. When they did, the Saudi-led coalition turned away the ship that was carrying them. As the famine accelerated, the cranes sailed back to Dubai. Aid organizations accused the coalition of pursuing a deliberate strategy of starvation, one that has led to the worst humanitarian crisis of the century.

Despite the fact that the United States had paid for the cranes, one senior U.S. diplomat opposed their delivery. Matthew Tueller, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, argued that it was pointless to deliver the equipment because it would only be destroyed, either by coalition bombs, the opposition Houthis, or a future military offensive by the United Arab Emirates. The cranes were eventually delivered over Tueller’s objections. But according to multiple current and former State Department officials, the pushback was characteristic of Tueller, who, as the primary U.S. diplomatic liaison to the Saudi coalition, frequently took positions sympathetic to the Saudis and hostile to the rebel Houthis.

Tueller was and remains a central figure in peace negotiations, which have not resulted in a peace deal or a lasting cessation of hostilities.

Trump’s Illegal Syrian Mission Creep

The other day we learned that there are four times more U.S. troops in Syria than any earlier official figure had acknowledged. The discrepancy did not get much public attention, perhaps because the numbers are small compared to some other U.S. military deployments: about 2,000 troops in Syria, with the earlier official figure being 500.

Less transparent than the new data about numbers of U.S. troops is the reason any of those troops are staying in Syria. The one uncontested rationale for the deployment in Syria has been to combat the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). ... The ISIS mini-state is now all but eliminated. Nonetheless, the U.S. military presence in Syria, although down from its peak strength, shows no sign of ending. Mattis has said that the United States “won’t just walk away” from its efforts in Syria.

The United States is exhibiting mission creep in Syria, with new rationales being spun to replace the mission of armed combat against the ISIS caliphate. Underlying the mission creep are some familiar patterns of thinking that have been behind other U.S. military expeditions as well. Donald Trump did not originate these patterns but his administration has slid into them. ...

One habitual thought about ISIS has been that Assad must be toppled if there is to be any hope of killing off ISIS. Max Abrahms and John Glaser catalog the many iterations, voiced over the past two years, of the theme that defeating ISIS would require defeating Assad. Today’s situation, with the ISIS caliphate extinguished while Assad remains ensconced in Damascus, demonstrates how erroneous that argument was. Many who propounded the argument are among those now pushing for continuation and expansion of the U.S. military expedition in Syria, with no acknowledgment of how wrong was their earlier assessment.

There also seems to be forgetfulness of how long the Assads — including the father Hafez, who put down internal opposition at least as brutally as his son Bashar — have been in power. Forty-seven years, to be exact. Anyone arguing that continuation of Bashar Assad in power is intolerable needs to answer the question “why now?” and to explain how the world and U.S. interests somehow have survived nearly a half century of the Assads.

Muslim leaders urge world to recognise East Jerusalem as capital of Palestine

Palestinians no longer accept US as mediator, Abbas tells summit

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has formally declared that Palestinians will no longer accept the US as a mediator in the Middle East peace process following Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In his strongest public statement since Trump’s announcement last week, Abbas said Palestinians would go to the United Nations security council to seek full membership of the UN while asking the world body to take control of the peace process as Washington was no longer “fit” for the task. ...

“Jerusalem is and will forever be the capital of the Palestinian state,” Abbas told delegates. “We do not accept any role of the United States in the political process from now on, because it is completely biased towards Israel.”

The Palestinian president’s comments were echoed later in the summit’s official closing statement, which declared “East Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Palestine” and invited “all countries to recognise the state of Palestine and East Jerusalem as its occupied capital”.

The statement said the OIC summit viewed Trump’s move “as an announcement of the US administration’s withdrawal from its role as sponsor of peace” in the Middle East, describing it as legally “null and void” and “a deliberate undermining of all peace efforts” that would give impetus to “extremism and terrorism”.

US ready for talks with North Korea 'without preconditions', Tillerson says

Rex Tillerson has said that the US is ready to begin exploratory talks with North Korea “without preconditions”, but only after a “period of quiet” without new nuclear or missile tests.

The secretary of state’s remarks appeared to mark a shift in state department policy, which had previously required Pyongyang to show it was “serious” about giving up its nuclear arsenal before contacts could start. And the language was a long way from repeated comments by Donald Trump that such contacts are a “waste of time”.

Tillerson also revealed that the US had been talking to China about what each country would do in the event of a conflict or regime collapse in North Korea, saying that the Trump administration had given Beijing assurances that US troops would pull back to the 38th parallel, which divides North and South Korea, and that the only US concern would be to secure the regime’s nuclear weapons.

Earlier this week it emerged that China is building a network of refugee camps along its 880-mile (1,416km) border with North Korea, in preparation for a potential exodus that could be unleashed by conflict or the collapse of Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Trump signs nearly $700B defense policy bill

President Trump signed a nearly $700 billion annual defense policy bill on Tuesday, touting it as a step toward delivering on his promise to build up the military.

“Today with the signing of this defense bill, we accelerate the process of fully restoring America’s military might,” Trump said at a signing ceremony in the White House's Roosevelt Room.

But though National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes the military to add troops, ships, planes and other equipment, Congress has yet to pass a spending bill to make the buildup a reality.

Indeed, even as he celebrated the NDAA, Trump hit Congress — specifically Democrats — for not passing a defense spending bill.

Canada to buy fleet of 30-year-old fighter jets from Australia in snub to US

Canada will purchase a fleet of 30-year-old F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets from Australia amid an escalating trade dispute with the US. Plans to buy a newer fleet of 18 Boeing Super Hornets were ditched after the US imposed an 80% tariff on imports of Bombardier passenger aircraft and Canada will instead spend about $500m on the fleet of vintage RAAF planes.

Ottawa announced last year it wanted to buy the Super Hornets as a stopgap measure while it runs a competition for 88 jets to replace its ageing 77 CF-18s fighters, but it scrapped those plans and made clear the company had little chance of winning a much larger contract unless it dropped the trade challenge against the Canadian aircraft manufacturer.

The announcement marks a new low in relations between Canada’s Liberal government and Boeing and casts into doubt the future of defence cooperation with the US aerospace company, which says it supports more than 17,500 jobs in Canada. But Boeing has indicated it is unlikely to back down on the trade challenge and the issue has become a political problem for the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau.

Trump and Trumper: The Czech Republic goes all in on populism

If you thought one Donald Trump was a roller coaster ride, spare a thought for the Czech Republic, where the country’s two most powerful political posts are now occupied with blustery, anti-immigration populists. Czech President Milos Zeman swore in a minority government Wednesday led by new Prime Minister Andrej Babis, an anti-establishment billionaire branded the Czech Donald Trump.

Babis, who was appointed prime minister last week, is the country’s second-richest man, the owner of a sprawling conglomerate worth an estimated $4 billion. His assets include major media outlets that opponents accuse him of using to attempt to shut down critics.

Babis’s populist Action of Dissatisfied Citizens party won a landslide victory in October parliamentary elections on a platform of opposing European Union-mandated refugee quotas, running the country like a business, and stamping out corruption, despite Babis beating back his own fraud charges. He will now share government with his ally Zeman, a chain-smoking Trump-admirer with a pro-Moscow bent, who has been president since 2013. Zeman, who has described Islam as “anti-civilization” and once threatened to deal with conservationists in a “good old medieval way,” is seeking re-election in January.

Judge throws out riot charges against Trump’s Inauguration Day protestors

A judge has dismissed charges of inciting a riot against all six people facing trial for their association with or participation in violent protests on Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day. Approximately 230 people were arrested in Washington during and after the inauguration ceremony and later charged with felony rioting. But D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz dismissed those charges Wednesday morning for the first group of six people, including a photojournalist.

Inciting a riot in Washington, D.C., carries a 180-day prison sentence; when combined with destruction of property charges, that increases to at least 10 years behind bars. The six still face five other charges of property damage as well other misdemeanor charges, although their defense attorneys argued for total acquittal on a case-by-case basis on Wednesday. While some people have pleaded guilty or been let off the hook since their arrests, 188 still face the full plate of charges. ...

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff in turn tried to argue that each of the defendants was in the vicinity of areas where windows were smashed, according to reporters inside the courtroom. Among the six people who appeared in court Wednesday was photojournalist Alexei Wood, who broadcast the days events on Facebook Live, and a medic who brought a first aid kit to the protest. Reporters in the courtroom said her kit was unpacked as evidence in her defense, and included bandages, tampons, and gauze. They also showed videos of her wearing a white medic’s helmet, using a water bottle to flush people’s eyes affected by pepper spray.

Millionaire Senator Rips Poor Kids As Lazy Moochers

Wildfire that scorched Bel Air started in homeless camp – and residents fear backlash

Authorities have revealed the wildfire that razed homes owned by LA’s wealthiest residents was started in a homeless camp inhabited by its most downtrodden. After the Los Angeles fire department announced on Tuesday that the Skirball fire began life as a cooking fire under a freeway about 20 miles from downtown, the homeless services community took a sharp intake of breath. “These kind of reports are never good for us in general,” said Laurie Craft, a director at Hope of the Valley, which runs the only winter shelter in the area where the Skirball fire started.

Craft fears a backlash against the homeless community as a result of the disaster, which included the destruction of six Bel Air homes valued at $20m, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Yet assigning blame in this situation is far more complicated than it might be if the fire had been started by a careless hiker or a driver unthinkingly disposing of a lit cigarette. “Are people going to react the same way to someone who works a job and has a car [as] to someone who’s homeless?” Craft asked. “Or is it worse in their eyes?” ...

Victor Hinderliter, an associate director at the Los Angeles homelessness services agency argued that the fires are merely a consequence of a much broader and more important issue. There is approximately one shelter bed available for every three people who are homeless in Los Angeles county, and a recent study found that the county would need an additional half-million affordable housing units to keep up with its growing low-income population.

“For me, this [fire] really highlights the urgency of getting people off the street and into housing,” he said. “Where people have to rely on warming fires in the middle of the night to survive, we should get them a roof over their heads, so they don’t have to make that difficult decision.”

FCC Set to Roll Back Digital Civil Rights with Thursday’s Vote to Repeal Net Neutrality

The Fight to Control the CFPB Isn’t Over Yet

Weeks into a legal and political dispute at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the case of the two popes is far from being settled. There are multiple ongoing litigation efforts — with the potential to be appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court — that have already made an impact on the way the bureau is being run. President Donald Trump’s appointee to lead the CFPB, Mick Mulvaney, has rolled back, to some degree, his efforts to cripple the agency amid the legal uncertainty and heightened scrutiny of his role.

A federal court ruling last month, which denied CFPB Deputy Director Leandra English’s request to block Mulvaney from assuming the directorship, was widely seen in the media as legitimizing Trump’s appointment of Mulvaney and ending English’s challenge. But that decision pertained to a temporary restraining order, and the court has not yet ruled on the merits of the case. English’s lawyers filed a request for a preliminary injunction last week, and U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, set a December 22 hearing date for oral arguments. The ruling could come any time after that. ...

The administration believes that the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, or FVRA, provides an option for the president to appoint a Senate-confirmed official to a position, like CFPB acting director, regardless of the specific statute. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in an opinion written by a former counsel for a payday lender fighting the CFPB, agreed. ...

[In one of the five separate amicus briefs supporting English’s position], more than 30 current and former members of Congress, including Dodd-Frank architects Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, wrote that they intended the deputy director to take over in the absence of the director to insulate the CFPB from politics. “In creating the Bureau, lawmakers determined that it needed to be independent in order to fulfill its mission,” the amici argued. Indeed, legislative history shows that Congress considered making the CFPB subject to the FVRA standard, but then rejected that approach, a position that the legislators who actually authored the law reinforce.

Doug Jones’s victory over Roy Moore could mean a dramatic shift in Congress

Doug Jones’s stunning victory over Roy Moore in Alabama – which handed Democrats a rare win in the Republican South on Tuesday night – threatens to imperil Donald Trump’s legislative agenda and raises the prospect that the 2018 midterm elections could dramatically shift the balance of power in Congress. ...

Tuesday’s results put the House and the Senate majorities in play next year, [Tom] Perez said, setting an ambitious goal ahead for an election year focused on the November midterms. Democrats have a plausible path to a House majority in 2018, but the midterm map was widely expected to favor Republicans in the Senate. Democrats must defend 10 seats in states where Trump won while, until Alabama shifted the ground, only two Republican seats were seen as vulnerable. ...

Chuck Schumer said the turn-out in Alabama followed a similar pattern as elections earlier this year in Virginia and New Jersey: an energized Democratic base; strong turnout by African American voters; decisive support from millennials; and significant gains among suburban white voters – an especially ominous sign for Republicans who are contemplating elections in affluent districts with highly-educated and high-income voters.

“The suburbs are swinging back to us,” Schumer said. “Republicans, with their policies, are going to lose them in 2018. And now they’re even making it worse with their tax bill, which is an anti-suburban tax bill.”

No Moore! Doug Jones Rides GOP Storm to Senate in Victory That Could Add Momentum to #MeToo Movement

FBI agent removed from Russia investigation called Trump an 'idiot'

Two FBI officials who would later be assigned to the special counsel’s investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign described him as an “idiot” and “loathsome human” in a series of text messages last year, according to copies released on Tuesday.

One said in an election night text that the prospect of a Trump victory was “terrifying”.

Peter Strzok, an FBI counterintelligence agent, was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team earlier this year following the discovery of text messages exchanged with Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer.

Hundreds of the messages, which surfaced in a justice department investigation of the FBI’s inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, were provided to congressional committees.

The existence of the text messages, disclosed in news reports earlier this month, provided a line of attack for Trump, who used the revelation to disparage FBI leadership as politically tainted. Republicans have also seized on the exchange to suggest the Mueller team is biased against Trump.

Global warming made Hurricane Harvey deadly rains three times more likely, research reveals

Hurricane Harvey’s unprecedented deluge, which caused catastrophic flooding in Houston in August, was made three times more likely by climate change, new research has found. Such a downpour was a very rare event, scientists said, but global warming meant it was 15% more intense. The storm left 80 people dead and 800,000 in need of assistance.

The scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) initiative usually publish their assessments of the role of climate change in extreme weather events around the world as soon as possible. However, in this case they waited for the work to be confirmed by peer review because of the current US government’s opposition to strong action on climate change.

The researchers said their new work shows global warming is making extreme weather events worse right now and in the US. The cost of the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey has been estimated at $190bn (£140bn), which would make it the most costly weather disaster in US history, more than Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy combined.

A series of new reports have found that extreme heatwaves, droughts, floods, storms and wildfires across the planet have been made more likely or more intense by rising global temperatures. The UK’s Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) analysed 59 studies of the influence of climate change on extreme weather published in the last two years and found warming has made matters worse in 70% of cases and better in just 7%.

Another report, published on Wednesday by the American Meteorological Society, assesses 21 different extreme weather events in 2016, from US snowstorms and South African drought to ocean hotspots and Arctic heating. Most of the events can be attributed, at least in part, to human-caused climate change, the scientists found.

Court upholds Obama-era ban on new Grand Canyon uranium mines

A powerful court ruled on Tuesday that an Obama-era ban on new uranium mines around the Grand Canyon should stay in place, though celebration on the environment side was tempered by expectations the government itself will now side with mining interests to end the ban. A separate, but linked, ruling on an older mine was a defeat for a Native American tribe. The mining industry and a coalition of Republicans in Arizona and Utah had hoped for court support to tear down an order from the Obama administration in 2012 that protected a million acres of land around the Grand Canyon from mining development for 20 years. But they lost in the ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The court ruling effectively confirmed that the ban is lawful and the government has the power to impose it. But the government is now represented by Donald Trump and, in the case of mining, interior secretary Ryan Zinke, who are mining enthusiasts. The National Mining Association, which had fought for the ban to be struck down as illegal by the courts, declared itself disappointed with the decision. But it added, in a statement: “It is now time for the Congress and the administration, working with the impacted states, to re-evaluate whether the withdrawal [from uranium mining claims – ie the ban] was justified based on the scientific, technical and socio-economic facts.” ...

Roger Clark, program director at the Grand Canyon Trust, an environmental advocacy group in Arizona, said it was “fortunate” that the judge ruled there was “sufficient evidence of risks to water, wildlife and people to justify a 20-year ban on new uranium mines”. The court upheld what it called the order’s “risk-averse approach” to protecting the Grand Canyon.

A second decision issued by the ninth circuit on Tuesday, in a related case, was a direct defeat for the Havasupai Native Americans, who have been fighting for many years against a part-finished uranium mine they say is a safety threat and a violation of sacred ancestral land. The court rejected the tribe’s appeal against Canyon Mine, belonging to the mining company Energy Fuels Resources, which is being sunk on National Forest land five miles south of the rim of the Grand Canyon. The mine avoids the Salazar ban because it’s based on a historic claim and is a revival of a dormant site.

The mine sits above groundwater that ultimately flows into a side canyon just west of Grand Canyon national park and becomes the sole water source for the Havasupai’s traditional homeland deep in the gorge, which is famous for its turquoise waterfalls. ... They claim that if radioactivity leaks from the uranium mine into their only water source it will poison their village, posing an existential threat to such a small ethnic community, as well as contaminating the Colorado river into which that flows.

Guatemalan women take on Canada's mining giants over 'horrific human rights abuses'

On the 20th floor of an office tower in the heart of Toronto’s financial district, Irma Yolanda Choc Cac’s bright pink embroidered blouse and handwoven skirt contrasted with the suits of the lawyers around her as she detailed the hardest day of her life. It was the first time Choc Cac had ever left Guatemala. But the story that she and 10 other Maya Q’eqchi’ women had come to tell is at the heart of a precedent-setting legal challenge pitting indigenous people against a transnational corporation – and which has cast a chill over Canada’s vast mining industry.

The case centres on allegations dating back to 2007, when the women say hundreds of police, military and and private security personnel linked to a Canadian mining company descended on the secluded village of Lote Ocho in eastern Guatemala. A few days earlier, security personnel had set dozens of homes ablaze in a bid to force the villagers off their ancestral lands, according to court documents.

But on 17 January, the men were out in the fields, tending to crops of corn and cardamom, and the women were alone. The 11 women say they were raped repeatedly by the armed men. Choc Cac – three months pregnant at the time – was with her 10-year-old daughter when she was seized by the men, some of whom were in uniform. Twelve of the men raped her, she said. She later suffered a miscarriage. The women link the violence to the nearby Fenix mine – one of the largest nickel mines in central America – and the Guatemalan subsidiary that was overseeing its operations. At the time, the subsidiary was controlled by Vancouver-based Skye Resources. In 2008, Skye was acquired by Toronto’s Hudbay Minerals, who sold the mine to a Russian company in 2011.

A team of Toronto lawyers seized on the Canada connection, filing civil lawsuits that argue that the Canadian parent company, later acquired by Hudbay, was negligent when it came to monitoring the actions of its Guatemalan subsidiary. The lawsuits may offer a legal means of addressing a longstanding obstacle for human rights campaigners: the perceived legal disconnect between multinationals and the local subsidiaries who carry out their operations abroad. “These are some of the first attempts in Canadian legal history to try and bring some accountability to a Canadian mining company for horrific human rights abuses in another country,” said Cory Wanless of Klippensteins Barristers and Solicitors, the Toronto law firm representing the women.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Full Metal Jackass

Why Are Democratic Senators Enabling One Of Trump’s Worst Decisions?

How Black Voters Lifted Doug Jones Over Roy Moore

The Washington Post Also Misreported CNN’s False WikiLeaks Story

Catalan secessionists face steepest challenge in Barcelona's bruised beltway

What is net neutrality? It protects us from corporate power

Silencing of Courageous Documentaries

A Little Night Music

Mary Ann Fisher - Put On My Shoes

Mary Ann Fisher - I Can't Take It

Ray Charles w/Mary Ann Fisher - What kind of man are you

Mary Ann Fisher - Wild As You Can Be

Mary Ann Fisher - Forever More

Mary Ann Fisher - It's A Man's World

Mary Ann Fisher - Cloudy Weather Blues

Mary Ann Fisher - Yes, I Love You

Mary Ann Fisher - I Keep Comin' Back For Me

Ray Charles - Mary Ann