The Evening Blues - 12-21-18



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: James Harman

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues harmonica player and singer James Harman. Enjoy!

James Harman - It's Too Late Brother

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

-- Ursula K. Le Guin


News and Opinion

Saudi and US resistance delays UN resolution on Yemen ceasefire

Saudi Arabian and US resistance has forced the UK to delay plans to table a UN security council resolution on Yemen, raising the prospect a UN-appointed general will fly to the Red Sea port of Hodeidah without a mandate to enforce a fragile ceasefire. The US is demanding that the draft resolution contains reference to Iran’s role in arming the rebel Houthis, a proposal that has led to Russian threats to veto it.

Saudi Arabia is meanwhile insisting the draft contains no reference to an independent investigation into breaches of international humanitarian law during the three-year civil war, so protecting its pilots from UN investigations into the deliberate targeting of civilians.

Negotiations over the resolution reached an impasse on Wednesday, but the UK is pressing all sides to compromise by focusing the resolution on an endorsement of the ceasefire deal struck by the Iranian-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed, UN-recognised government in talks last week in Stockholm. A retired Dutch general, Patrick Cammaert, is on his way to Hodeidah to oversee a two-stage withdrawal of all troops from Hodeidah, but without the legal mandate of a UN resolution, is largely powerless.

The Yemeni government has warned that if a UN mandate is not agreed immediately the ceasefire is in danger of collapse and it will resume its assault. Both Houthis and the Yemen government have each agreed three nominees to sit on a joint monitoring committee that is due to meet under Gen Cammaert for the first time on Saturday.

A previous British attempt to pass a UN resolution on Yemen in November had to be shelved following US and Saudi objections over the wording.


Money changes everything:

Left-Wing Leaders in Spain Condemn the War in Yemen, but Keep Up Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

In September, the defense minister of Spain abruptly canceled the sale of 400 laser-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia. The minister, Margarita Robles, cited concerns that the American-made bombs were likely going to be used against civilians in the ongoing war in Yemen, in violation of both the sale agreement and of Spanish law. Indeed, the same sort of U.S. bomb had been used in August in an airstrike on a school bus that killed dozens of children.

The move took many in the Spanish defense industry by surprise. Days later, a threat rippled through the Spanish press, which quoted unnamed Saudi sources saying that a larger defense contract — Spain’s biggest ever, to build five ships for the Saudi navy, worth over $2 billion — might be canceled in response. The press called it a diplomatic crisis; the government scrambled. Among calls for Robles’s resignation, the prime minister stepped in with assurances that the bomb sale would go through. The king of Spain called the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Shipyard workers took to the streets in protest, and the mayor of Cádiz, the small Spanish city where the ships were supposed to be built, came out in defense of the arms sales.

That mayor, José María González, is from Spain’s far-left populist party, Podemos, and has long considered himself an anti-war activist. In 2015, he publicly advocated for cutting all commercial ties with Saudi Arabia. But with a contract at stake that would fund thousands of jobs and sustain Cádiz’s military shipyard for years, González was clear about his views. “Bring on the [weapons] contracts,” he wrote in an op-ed following the episode.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, also publicly supported the contract. While members of Sánchez’s party, Spain’s center-left Socialist party, were voting in the European parliament to cut all military sales to Saudi Arabia, Sánchez reauthorized the sale of the laser-guided bombs. Spain and Saudi Arabia have close economic ties, including over $2 billion in arms exports each year. And among European leaders, Sánchez wasn’t alone. Many European governments, including those led by left-leaning parties, are still selling arms to Saudi Arabia despite increasing international outrage over alleged war crimes and human rights violations in the Yemen campaign. Of the four largest European weapons exporters, only Germany has stopped sales to Saudi Arabia. ...

In his op-ed, the mayor of Cádiz sought to explain his reasons for supporting the arms sales. Spanish workers, González wrote, were being forced into this situation by economics, politics, and Saudi strong-arm tactics. They were being forced “to decide between defending bread and defending peace.”

Andrew Bacevich on Mattis & Why We Need to End Our Self-Destructive, Mindless Wars in Middle East

Defense Secretary Mattis resigns after Trump ignored him on Syria

President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, just became the latest administration official — and military general — to exit the White House. “General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February, after having served my Administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years,” Trump announced on Twitter late Thursday afternoon. ...

That decision didn't exactly go over well on Capitol Hill, where members of his own party expressed shock and outrage. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham criticized the move and said in an interview with CNN that he thinks Mattis "firmly" believes "the job in Syria is not yet done.” Indeed, Mattis believed the move might cause more chaos in the region, according to the Washington Post, and tried repeatedly to convince Trump to reverse course.


Mattis was the last of Trump’s “generals,” a class including John Kelly, the former White House chief of staff, and H.R. McMaster, former national security advisor.


Trump’s Syrian withdrawal order sparks political firestorm in Washington

An apparent order by US President Donald Trump for the withdrawal of all 2,000 US troops deployed in Syria over the next 60 to 100 days has sparked consternation and sharp opposition from the Pentagon, top Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill as well as Washington’s NATO allies. The withdrawal order, which was leaked to the media by senior officials within the administration and the military, was given what apparently constituted a confirmation by a brief tweet from Trump Wednesday declaring, “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.” ...

The White House announcement was followed by yet another statement from the Pentagon, whose spokeswoman Dana White flatly contradicted the US president, declaring that “the coalition has liberated ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over.” ISIS is an acronym for the Islamic State terror group. “We will continue working with our partners and allies to defeat ISIS wherever it operates,” she said, giving no details as to a timeline, noting “force protection and operational security reasons.” Meanwhile, Reuters quoted an unnamed US official as stating Wednesday that all US State Department personnel operating inside Syria were being evacuated from the country within 24 hours.

The official also said that the withdrawal plans flowed directly from an agreement reached between Trump and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a telephone conversation last Friday. “Everything that has followed is implementing the agreement that was made in that call,” the official said. The call was reportedly made to discuss Turkey’s concerns over the presence of the Syrian Kurdish separatist YPG militia near the Syrian-Turkish border. The YPG is the main element of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the proxy ground force that the US has backed in northeastern Syria. ... Turkish forces, including armor, have reportedly been deployed to the border.

Just hours before the withdrawal announcement, the State Department informed Congress of a proposed $3.5 billion dollar deal to sell Turkey Patriot anti-ballistic missile systems, manufactured by Raytheon. Ankara had previously signaled its intention to buy S-400 surface-to-air missile systems from Russia. Such a purchase would have precluded Turkey’s purchase of US F-35 warplanes, and would have brought the country’s relations with NATO to a breaking point. The announced withdrawal of US troops may signal a green light to the Erdogan government to launch its threatened invasion of eastern Syria and drive Kurdish forces from the border. ...

Among those who did receive an advance warning was Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The US administration has told me that it was the president’s intention to pull out their troops from Syria. They clarified that they have other ways to wield their influence in that arena,” he told the Israeli daily Haaretz. The main instrument of US “influence” has been devastating US airstrikes, which have been launched from bases in Qatar and elsewhere in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the US maintains a force of at least 5,000 troops across the border in Iraq, capable of delivering artillery fire into eastern Syria. The announced withdrawal of US troops from Syria will undoubtedly intensify the internecine conflicts within the US ruling establishment and state, while at the same time increasing tensions within the Middle East. It is not a harbinger of any deescalation of the armed conflicts in the region. With or without “boots on the ground” in Syria, Washington’s military aggression against Iran and Russia will only intensify.


Worth a full read, Trevor Timm makes a number of excellent points.

Trump is right to withdraw US troops from Syria

Donald Trump unexpectedly announced that the US would be pulling its troops out of Syria on Wednesday, and the entire national security establishment exploded in anger that one of our many wars may be ending. Members of Congress, like Republican senators Bob Corker and Lindsey Graham – who have never met a war they didn’t like – are furious that Congress wasn’t consulted in the decision. Members of the media have proclaimed that the “winners” here are Assad and Putin, despite the fact that the stated mission in Syria was never to fight them in the first place. And pundit after pundit derided that this decision is a win for terrorists, with no thought to whether we are creating just as many terrorists by being there at all.

Lost in the discussion was any semblance of questioning whether it’s in America’s interests to have thousands of troops fighting and dying in yet another Middle Eastern country. Does anyone know what the long-term military strategy in Syria would be, or how we would ever exit? Does anyone care that many legal experts – regardless of how evil Assad or Isis was and is – think sending troops into Syria was illegal, given that Congress never debated or approved sending troops there? Should we fight in Syria forever, just because Russia also thinks we should leave? What percentage of the American public even knew to begin with over 2,000 troops have been on the ground in Syria occupying a third of the country for years?

First under Obama, and then under Trump, the US military quietly built up its on the ground presence in Syria without any public debate and often under the veil of official secrecy. The American public often only found out that troops were stationed there because of leaks to the media or quiet announcements long after they arrived. In fact, just six days ago the Washington Post reported that US troops would be stationed in Syria “indefinitely” and now occupy over one third of the country. The Post referred to it as our “hidden war in Syria”. No one seemed to care about that at the time, but now that troops may be coming home, everyone is upset.

Maybe if Congress has not used the last decade to totally abdicate its constitutional responsibility to debate and approve of wars the US is involved in, and if they were actually up front to the American people about the extreme costs of fighting yet another war, they would have a leg to stand on. But their stance seems to now be: we only get upset when troops get to come home without our approval, not when they are deployed in yet another war zone. If Congress wants to keep the forever war in the Middle East going for another generation, then there’s an easy solution: vote on it! Congress can authorize a military engagement anytime they want. But you can bet they won’t do it; they don’t want to be on the hook for when it inevitably turns into a quagmire costing the US billions in blood and treasure, just like every single other war we have been involved in has been for the last decade and a half.

Trump Planning Afghanistan Withdrawal

Trump wants to yank half the U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, too

President Donald Trump has asked the Pentagon to make plans to pull 7,000 U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, according to multiple reports published Thursday.

The decrease, which defense officials have yet to confirm, would represent around half the current U.S. troop deployment in the country, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the decision.

The withdrawal could start within months, with the ultimate aim of removing all 14,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan, an official told the WSJ.

The Great Saudi Muddle

Does the Senate want Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman to own up to the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi? Is it really seeking an end to Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression against Yemen? The answer to both questions is: kind of, sort of, not really. That’s the takeaway from a couple of resolutions the chamber approved amid great fanfare last week. The first, sponsored by Senator Bernie Sanders, calls on Trump “to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities in or affecting the Republic of Yemen” by, among other things, putting an end to in-flight refueling of Saudi and the United Arab Emirate war planes. The resolution, which passed 56 to 41, was a small step toward ending a war of aggression that has claimed as many as 80,000 lives – although it would have been stronger and less self-serving if it had also called for cutting off arms sales that have allowed US weapons manufacturers to reap vast profits off human misery.

But the second resolution, which passed on a unanimous voice vote, was a muddle that shows just how self-defeating US policy has become. Sponsored by Republican Senator Bob Corker, it began by holding the crown prince responsible for Khashoggi’s murder in an Istanbul consulate on Oct. 2, an act, it said, that has “undermined trust and confidence in the longstanding friendship between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” This generated excited headlines to the effect that the U.S. might at last be breaking with MbS, as Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is universally known. But news outlets failed to mention what the resolution said next. It declared, for instance, that the U.S.-Saudi relationship is “an essential element of regional security.” While saying nothing about arms shipments to Saudi allies, it condemned Iran for supplying rebel forces with “advanced lethal weapons.” It blamed the Houthis “for egregious human rights abuses, including torture, use of human shields, and interference with, and diversion of, humanitarian aid shipments” – this while remaining silent about Saudi-UAE atrocities, which reportedly include a string of torture chambers in which political opponents are roasted over open fires, among other horrors.

Most bizarrely of all, the resolution warned the Saudis that “increasing purchases of military equipment from, and cooperation with, the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China challenges the strength and integrity of the long-standing military-to-military relationship” between Washington and Riyadh. The Senate is thus angry with MBS not only because he sent a seventeen-member hit squad to knock off a US resident in the middle of a European capital, but because he’s consorting with America’s business rivals. The resolution further warns that such purchases “may introduce significant national security and economic risks to both parties,” language that is every bit as threatening as it sounds.

The result is a ball of confusion, one that tries to distance the US from a murderous Saudi prince while at the same time demanding closer relations with the government he heads. ... Joined at the hip with the Saudis, the U.S. appears to have no idea how to go about severing an increasingly toxic relationship, as last week’s incoherent Senate resolutions make clear. The U.S. was happy to build Saudi Arabia up, but it’s clueless now that Saudi Arabia is dragging it down.

Ukraine to send warships back to Azov despite Russian capture

“Russia’s aggression will not stop our plans to create a naval group in the Sea of ??Azov,” Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of the Ukrainian government’s national security and defense council, said in an interview with the local BBC branch.

“If we stop and retreat, Russia will actually fulfill its task of capturing the Sea of ??Azov, present the world with self-determined new sea borders in the Black Sea, de facto legalizing the occupation of Crimea,” BBC News Ukraine quoted him as saying.

Turchynov said Kiev would invite representatives of the transatlantic military alliance NATO and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on board next time to prove Ukraine was not violating any regulations.

He did not say when ships might next attempt to pass, although he added it should not be long.

Responding to the comments, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine’s intention to send warships back through the Kerch Strait was a “provocation”.

Putin Issues Chilling Warning on Rising Threat of Nuclear War

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a chilling warning Thursday about the rising threat of a nuclear war, saying “it could lead to the destruction of civilization as a whole and maybe even our planet” — and putting the blame squarely on the U.S. Speaking at his annual news conference, Putin scoffed at Western claims he wants to dominate the world and said Western countries are antagonizing Russia for their own domestic reasons, and at their own peril. He dismissed claims of Russian interference abroad, from a nerve agent poisoning in Britain to an alleged effort to infiltrate the U.S. National Rifle Association.

Instead he sought to paint himself as the world’s protector. Pointing at the U.S. intention to withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, Treaty, Putin warned that if the U.S. puts intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will be forced to take countermeasures. “We are witnessing the breakup of the arms control system,” Putin said, noting the U.S. plan to opt out of the INF Treaty and its reluctance to negotiate the extension of the New START agreement. U.S. officials say the withdrawal from the INF was prompted by Russian violations of the treaty.

Putin noted that Western analysts are talking about the possibility of using low-yield nuclear weapons. “There is a trend of lowering the threshold” of using nuclear weapons, Putin said. “Lowering the threshold could lead to a global nuclear catastrophe.”

“We will have to ensure our security,” he said. “And they shouldn’t squeak later about us gaining unilateral advantages. We aren’t seeking advantages, we are trying to preserve the balance and ensure our security.” ... Putin said it’s the U.S., not Russia, that’s aspiring to dominate the world. He pointed at U.S. annual defense spending exceeding $700 billion, comparing it with Russia’s military budget of $46 billion.

Media decry ‘inadequate’ US military budget that rivals rest of world combined

It is a sign of our times that our media attempt to decipher future government policy by analyzing the president’s tweets, like some bizarre game of telephone. Throughout November, there was speculation of a coming reduction in military spending, and when Donald Trump took to Twitter (12/3/18) to describe the $716 billion budget as “crazy,” media took this as confirmation. The prospect of a cut to the military elicited a storm of condemnation across the media landscape. The National Review (11/17/18) wrote that “cutting the resources available to the Pentagon is a bad idea,” noting that, “for decades, America has short-changed defense” meaning “America’s ability to defend its allies, its partners, and its own vital interests is increasingly in doubt.” In an article headlined “Don’t Cut Military Spending Mr. President” (Wall Street Journal, 11/29/18),  Senate and House Armed Services committee chairs James Inhofe and Mac Thornberry claimed the military is in “crisis” after “inadequate budgets for nearly a decade,” and that “any cut in the Defense budget would be a senseless step backward.”

More centrist outlets concurred. Forbes Magazine (11/26/18) began its article with the words, “The security and well-being of the United States are at greater risk than at any time in decades,” recommending a “sensible and consistent increase” to the budget. Bloomberg (19/11/18) recommended a consistent increase in military spending of 3 percent above inflation for five to ten years, while Reuters (12/4/18) noted the increased “risk” of a lower military budget.

What exactly was this “risk” that media were so worried about? Max Boot, neo-con fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations—who apparently still supports the Iraq War and demanded ones in Syria and Libya, while arguing that America should become a world empire—articulated the risk in the Washington Post (12/12/18). Describing a reduction in military spending as “suicide,” and claiming the US is in a “full-blown national security crisis,” he cited the work of a blue-ribbon panel that called for continuous hikes in military spending:

“If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan, Americans could face a decisive military defeat,” the report warns. “These two nations possess precision-strike capabilities, integrated air defenses, cruise and ballistic missiles, advanced cyberwarfare and anti-satellite capabilities, significant air and naval forces, and nuclear weapons—a suite of advanced capabilities heretofore possessed only by the United States.”… So we’re in deep trouble. We are losing the military edge that has underpinned our security and prosperity since 1945.

Thus, the crisis is that the US could not be assured of destroying the Russian military in a Baltic war or the Chinese in the South China Sea. It is important to note that these necessary wars of defense would not be happening in Maine or California, but thousands of miles away, on the doorsteps of our geopolitical rivals. Boot presents these wars on the other side of the world as impossible to avoid—“if the US had to fight”—continuing a tradition of presenting the US as stumbling or being reluctantly dragged into wars against its will, that we at FAIR (6/22/17) have cataloged. ... The media needn’t have worried, as the military industrial complex usually gets its way. President Trump, “with the help of Senator Inhofe and Chairman Thornberry,” according to the Defense Department (London Independent, 12/10/18), agreed to increase the military budget after all, to $750 billion.

North Korea says it will not denuclearize unless US removes 'threat'

North Korea has said it will never unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons unless the US first removes what Pyongyang called a nuclear threat. The surprisingly blunt statement jars with Seoul’s rosier presentation of the North Korean position and could rattle the fragile trilateral diplomacy to defuse a nuclear crisis that last year had many fearing war. The latest from North Korea comes as the US and North Korea struggle over the sequencing of the denuclearization that Washington wants and the removal of international sanctions desired by Pyongyang. ...

Pyongyang’s comments may also be seen as proof of what outside skeptics have long said: that Kim will never voluntarily relinquish an arsenal he sees as a stronger guarantee of survival than whatever security assurances the US might provide. The statement suggests North Korea will eventually demand the US withdraw or significantly reduce the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea, a major sticking point in any disarmament deal. ... North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of denuclearization that bears no resemblance to the American definition, with Pyongyang vowing to pursue nuclear development until the US removes its troops and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan. ...

“The United States must now recognize the accurate meaning of the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, and especially, must study geography,” the statement said. “When we talk about the Korean peninsula, it includes the territory of our republic and also the entire region of [South Korea] where the United States has placed its invasive force, including nuclear weapons. When we talk about the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, it means the removal of all sources of nuclear threat, not only from the South and North but also from areas neighboring the Korean peninsula,” the statement said.

The US removed its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea in the 1990s. Washington and Seoul have not responded to the North Korean statement.

Canada spawns its own yellow vest protests – with extra rightwing populism

Amid growing concerns over Canada’s ailing domestic oil market, protests have erupted in western parts of the country, where some demonstrators have donned yellow reflective vests inspired by France’s gilets jaunes. Like their French counterparts, the protesters have organized on Facebook pages, and focused their fury on a federal carbon tax, but their grievances also include stalled pipeline projects, oil sector layoffs, and – for a small minority – the government’s liberal asylum policies.

Canada, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, has been hit hard by a recent slump in oil prices, and a lack of pipelines to move its crude to markets. Some companies have begun to lay workers off, prompting fears of potentially widespread job losses in the oil-rich province of Alberta, where at least 40,000 jobs were lost during the last oil market crash of 2014. On Wednesday, a convoy of more than 1,000 heavy trucks in Alberta rolled through the town of Nisku, in a show of support for the beleaguered energy sector. ...

While global crude oil prices rallied over the last year, the cost of Canadian crude has remained low because of oversupply. The Alberta government has said the gap in prices is costing the Canadian economy C$80m ($59m) each day in lost revenues. This week, the federal government announced a C$1.6bn bailout for oil and gas companies, and the province’s premier, Rachel Notley, has launched a series of measures to contain the crisis, purchasing rail cars to move oil to markets and ordering a rare cut in oil production to rein in oversupply. But for workers in the resource-rich province, the moves are too little, too late.

Some at the rally wore yellow vests: standard safety clothing for workers in the province’s tar sands fields – but also the symbol of the French protests which began as a revolt over an environmental fuel tax and morphed into an anti-establishment movement against low incomes and tax inequality. ... One Facebook group for protesters, Yellow Vests Canada, has amassed nearly 90,000 members since it was created two weeks ago. A description on its main page reads: “This group is to protest the CARBON TAX and the Treason of our country’s politicians who have the audacity to sell out OUR country’s sovereignty over to the Globalist UN and their Tyrannical policies.”

Congress is enraged at Facebook: “These guys are out of control”

The walls seem to be closing in on Facebook in D.C. as politicians from both sides of the aisle fume over the company’s handling of private user data and messages — and look to revive efforts to regulate Silicon Valley when Congress goes back to work in January. Bipartisan rage had been simmering for months, but it boiled over this week after the New York Times reported the social media company has been secretly selling users' private messages to the likes of Netflix and Spotify while also giving Microsoft’s Bing access to people’s private friend lists.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the powerful Finance Committee, told reporters at the Capitol this week that civil penalties aren’t enough for tech executives who break privacy laws. “A CEO, under my bill, not only would they face significant economic penalties, but they could serve jail time,” Wyden said. “The absence of real privacy protections is a real national security issue – people need to understand that.” ...

The bombshell report that users' private messages were being mined and sold to the highest bidder wasn’t the end of Facebook’s woes this week. The District of Columbia sued the tech giant Wednesday for allowing Cambridge Analytica – a third-party political consulting firm – to launch an app that allowed them to access private user data.

And this week the Senate Intelligence Committee also dropped its long-anticipated report on how Russian agents were allowed to manipulate tech companies in the midst of – and even after – the 2016 elections. That report accused Twitter, YouTube (and its parent company Google) and Facebook (along with Instagram, which it owns) for misrepresenting and evading questions from lawmakers. ...

But it’s not just Democrats; Republicans are now fuming too. “We were told that this wouldn’t happen again,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who serves on the Judiciary Committee that Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of last spring, told VICE News. “The first time it might have been a mistake, but the second time it was a choice. I don’t want to have to regulate Facebook, but they’re going to give us no choice here.”

'Mass Starvation Plan': Trump USDA to Push Work Requirements for Food Stamps That Congress Left Off Farm Bill

After Congress passed the $867 billion Farm Bill last week without the House's "cruel" and "shameful" provisions to tighten work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—often called food stamps—the Trump administration is pushing to impose such restrictions through changes at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

While critics including Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter charged that the final Farm Bill "fails to fix critical problems in our food system," she and many others expressed relief that it "does not include many of the horrible provisions from the House bill that would have gutted the safety net provided by SNAP."

The USDA's new proposed rule is supposedly a trade-off for President Donald Trump's support of the Farm Bill, which he is expected to sign as early as Thursday. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue reportedly said on a press call that "the president has directed me to propose regulatory reforms to ensure those who are able to work do so in exchange for their benefits." Under current SNAP policy, although able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs) can only receive three months of food benefits within three years if they don't work at least 20 hours per week, states with high rates of unemployment can waive those restrictions and grant extensions to 15 percent of the ABAWD population. Unused exemptions can be saved for later.

That will all change if Trump has his way. As the Associated Press outlined:

The USDA's proposed rule would strip states' ability to issue waivers unless a city or county has an unemployment rate of seven percent or higher. The waivers would be good for one year and would require the governor to support the request. States would no longer be able to bank their 15 percent exemptions. The new rule also would forbid states from granting waivers for geographic areas larger than a specific jurisdiction.

Noting that by the administration's own calculations, "the rule could jeopardize food assistance for some 755,000 Americans struggling to find stable work," Rebecca Vallas, vice president of the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress (CAP), delivered a scathing takedown of the proposal on Twitter.

"As we know, Trump doesn't give up when he can't get his cruel agenda through Congress," she said. "The Trump [administration] is dressing up their cruel cuts in the language of work, claiming their mass starvation plan is about the 'dignity of work.' Well, I've got news for them. Making struggling workers hungrier won't help them find work any faster."

Trump moves towards US government shutdown with vow not to sign bill

Donald Trump veered toward a shutdown of the federal government by vowing on Thursday not to sign a stopgap spending bill passed by the Republican majority in the Senate, taking his colleagues by surprise and catching many legislators who have already left town for the holiday break unawares.

Trump, at a signing ceremony at the White House for unrelated legislation, said: “I’ve made my position very clear. Any measure that funds the government must include border security – has to. “Not for political purposes but for our country, for the safety of our community. It is our sacred obligation. We have no choice.”

Scrambling to keep up with the president, Republicans in the House of Representatives late on Thursday passed a remade spending bill with $5.7bn for Trump’s wall built in. But with many senators having left town and a narrow Republican majority in that body to begin with, it seemed highly unlikely that the Senate would be able to take up and pass the legislation for Trump’s signature in advance of a shutdown deadline of Friday at midnight.


This Congressmember Camped in the Cold to Escort an Asylum-Seeking Honduran Mother Across Border

Trump’s immigration policies would have stopped Jesus himself from fleeing, Democratic representative says

Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez charged that the Trump administration’s immigration policies were plainly unchristian and would have blocked Jesus Christ and his family from fleeing to safety in Egypt.

The congressman from Illinois slammed Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as she testified Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee, where she announced that asylum seekers would no longer be able to wait in the U.S. while their claims of persecution proceed through the U.S. court system. Instead, they’d have to wait their turn in Mexico instead, potentially for years, in a dramatic deviation from previous U.S. immigration policy.

But some of what Democrats see as the Trump administration’s past indiscretions on immigration policy also came up — like its now-defunct “zero tolerance policy,” which effectively separated undocumented migrant children from their families at the border.

“Just in time for the holidays, the remorseless secretary,” Gutierrez said, as he accused Nielsen of lying after she tweeted that the administration didn’t have a policy of separating any children.

Lawmaker calls Trump official 'liar,' storms out

Ruth Bader Ginsburg just underwent surgery for lung cancer — but she’s going to be fine

The Supreme Court’s oldest justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, underwent surgery to remove two malignant nodules in her lung Friday and is expected to recover.

The disease was discovered incidentally during testing after Ginsburg, a stalwart liberal voice on the high court, fell in her office and broke three ribs in November. There’s no evidence that there’s additional disease in her body, according to a statement released by the Supreme Court.

Ginsburg’s health has been the subject of immense speculation. Since 2012, the 85-year-old — known to fans as the "Notorious RBG" — has broken her ribs twice as a result of falls. The pulmonary lobectomy she underwent Friday in New York City is her second public health scare in just two months. She has also survived two bouts of cancer.



the horse race



Surprise! Heh, if you're interested in this sort of thing, this article has a detailed exploration of O'Rourke's record and his disqualifying failures on key issues.

Beto O’Rourke frequently voted for Republican legislation, analysis reveals

Beto O’Rourke’s spirited run for the US Senate in Texas last month has prompted powerful voices in the Democratic party establishment to tout the outgoing Texas congressman as a 2020 presidential candidate who, as the party’s standard-bearer, would offer a vision of America contrasting against that of Republicans. However, a new analysis of congressional votes from the non-profit news organisation Capital & Main shows that even as O’Rourke represented one of the most solidly Democratic congressional districts in the United States, he has frequently voted against the majority of House Democrats in support of Republican bills and Trump administration priorities.

Capital & Main reviewed the 167 votes O’Rourke has cast in the House in opposition to the majority of his own party during his six-year tenure in Congress. Many of those votes were not progressive dissents alongside other left-leaning lawmakers, but instead votes to help pass Republican-sponsored legislation.

O’Rourke has voted for GOP bills that his fellow Democratic lawmakers said reinforced Republicans’ anti-tax ideology, chipped away at the Affordable Care Act (ACA), weakened Wall Street regulations, boosted the fossil fuel industry and bolstered Donald Trump’s immigration policy.

Consumer, environmental, public health and civil rights organizations have cast legislation backed by O’Rourke as aiding big banks, undermining the fight against climate change and supporting Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. During the previous administration, Barack Obama’s White House issued statements slamming two GOP bills backed by the 46-year-old Democratic legislator.

That Time Democrats Secretly Used Russian Social Media Tactics

According to The New York Times, “a group of Democratic tech experts” mimicked Russia’s social media tactics in the infamous 2017 Alabama senate race between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones:

An internal report on the Alabama effort, obtained by The New York Times, says explicitly that it “experimented with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections.”

The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says. …

The project had a budget of just $100,000, in a race that cost approximately $51 million, including the primaries, according to Federal Election Commission records. … Despite its small size, the Alabama project brought together some prominent names in the world of political technology. The funding came from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who has sought to help Democrats catch up with Republicans in their use of online technology.

The money passed through American Engagement Technologies, run by Mikey Dickerson, the founding director of the United States Digital Service, which was created during the Obama administration to try to upgrade the federal government’s use of technology. Sara K. Hudson, a former Justice Department fellow now with Investing in Us, a tech finance company partly funded by Mr. Hoffman, worked on the project, along with [Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of the cyber security firm New Knowledge].

[Recognize that name, "New Knowledge?" Curiously enough, as the NYT article notes, "Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee." Interesting that they turn out to be Democrat party operatives. Perhaps that ought to be taken into account when assessing the credibility of that Senate report, eh? - js]

RT reports on Democrat false flag (fake Russian) attack on Roy Moore:

Good old bots: Democrats reportedly pretended to be Russians to fake Alabama election meddling



the evening greens


Risks of 'domino effect' of tipping points greater than thought, study says

Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45% of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another. The authors said their paper, published in the journal Science, highlights how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises.

“The risks are greater than assumed because the interactions are more dynamic,” said Juan Rocha of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “The important message is to recognise the wickedness of the problem that humanity faces.”

The study collated existing research on ecosystem transitions that can irreversibly tip to another state, such as coral reefs bleaching and being overrun by algae, forests becoming savannahs and ice sheets melting into oceans. It then cross-referenced the 30 types of shift to examine the impacts they might have on one another and human society. Only 19% were entirely isolated. Another 36% shared a common cause, but were not likely to interact. The remaining 45% had the potential to create either a one-way domino effect or mutually reinforcing feedbacks.

Among the latter pairings were Arctic ice sheets and boreal forests. When the former melt, there is less ice to reflect the sun’s heat so the temperature of the planet rises. This increases the risks of forest fires, which discharge carbon into the air that adds to the greenhouse effect, which melts more ice. Although geographically distant, each amplifies the other. By contrast, a one-way domino-type impact is that between coral reefs and mangrove forests. When the former are destroyed, it weakens coastal defences and exposes mangroves to storms and ocean surges.

The deforestation of the Amazon is responsible for multiple “cascading effects” – weakening rain systems, forests becoming savannah, and reduced water supplies for cities like São Paulo and crops in the foothills of the Andes. This, in turn, increases the pressure for more land clearance. Until recently, the study of tipping points was controversial, but it is increasingly accepted as an explanation for climate changes that are happening with more speed and ferocity than earlier computer models predicted. The loss of coral reefs and Arctic sea ice may already be past the point of no return. There are signs the Antarctic is heading the same way faster than thought.

Climate Migrants: Millions More Could Be Displaced by Global Warming as Carbon Emissions Rise

Trump administration moves closer to opening Alaskan Arctic to drilling

The Trump administration has moved a step closer to opening the Alaskan Arctic to oil and gas drilling as soon as next year. The interior department’s Bureau of Land Management has published its draft environmental impact study, following Congress voting in 2017 to allow drilling within the Arctic national wildlife refuge.

Leasing the long-protected Arctic area could be most problematic for indigenous populations, many of which rely on subsistence hunting and fishing, according to the government assessment. The move would also increase greenhouse gas pollution. With high oil production, the department said, the increase each year could be 5m metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, equal to putting about a million more cars on the road and up to .01% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

There could also be negative effects for birds, marine mammals and polar bears, as well as a loss of permafrost, vegetation and wetlands. An internal memo obtained by Mother Jones warned that the department could have trouble advancing the plan because oil exploration and seismic testing could be particularly bad for polar bears.

Taking Path of a 'Pirate Whaling Nation,' Japan Reportedly Set to Resume Commercial Whale-Hunting in Its Waters

Greenpeace joined a number of Australian wildlife conservation groups in condemning a reported Japanese plan to openly flout three decades of international law banning commercial whaling, saying the country's expected decision to withdraw from a global commission on the issue and allow the killing of whales in its waters for profit would put it "out of step with the rest of the world."

Kyodo News Agency originally reported Thursday that Japan is planning to announce its withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) by the end of the year, resuming commercial whaling in its coastal waters.

Under the plan, Japan would end its regular so-called "research" whaling trips to the Southern Ocean off the coast of Antarctica that already enable it to sell whale meat. Last year alone, Japan killed 122 pregnant whales and 53 juvenile females. Such killings have violated international law, the International Court of Justice (IJC) said in 2014, and showed that the purpose of Japan's trips south were not truly for scientific research.

"We would like to wholeheartedly celebrate an end to Japan's whaling in the Southern Ocean, but if Japan leaves the International Whaling Commission and continues killing whales in the north Pacific it will be operating completely outside the bounds of international law," said Nicola Beynon, head of campaigns at Australia's Humane Society International, in a statement. "This is the path of a pirate whaling nation, with a troubling disregard for international rule."

Japan has denied that it plans to leave the IWC but a fisheries official acknowledged to the Guardian that the country wants "to resume commercial whaling as soon as possible."

Great Pacific garbage patch $20m cleanup fails to collect plastic

A giant floating barrier launched off the coast of San Francisco as part of a $20m project to cleanup a swirling island of rubbish between California and Hawaii, is failing to collect plastic. The mastermind behind the Ocean Cleanup, an ambitious plan to clear a swathe of the Pacific twice the size of Texas of floating debris, reported four weeks into testing that while the U-shaped device was scooping up plastic, it was then losing it.

Inventor Boyan Slat, 24, said that the slow speed of the solar-powered 600m-long barrier means it is unable to hold on to plastics, but a team of experts is now working on a possible fix. “What we’re trying to do has never been done before. So, of course we were expecting to still need to fix a few things before it becomes fully operational,” Slat explained. A crew of engineers will work for the next few weeks to widen the span of the floating barrier so that it catches more wind and waves to help it go faster, he said.

The marine apparatus known as System 001, or ‘Wilson’, was towed out to the area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in September, after Slat’s team of 70 scientists and engineers spent five years testing 273 models and six prototypes. ... A crew will now perform new tests and collect additional data to explore the root cause of the issue.

Brazil environmental minister still likely to serve Bolsonaro despite misconduct

A judge has found that Brazil’s new environment minister altered plans for an environmentally protected area in order to favour businesses, but he is still likely to assume his role in the far-right government of president-elect Jair Bolsonaro on 1 January. Ricardo Salles told the Guardian he will appeal and said the new government will “dedicate a lot of attention” to rising deforestation.

A judge in São Paulo found Salles had committed “administrative improbity”, suspended his political rights for three years, and ordered him to pay a fine worth ten times his monthly salary. Judge Fausto Seabra also found against the São Paulo state federation of industry, known as FIESP, and ordered it to pay the same fine.

The civil action concerned an environmental management plan for a protected area around the River Tietê in São Paulo state. Prosecutors alleged that Salles, two others and FIESP “committed fraud in order to benefit business sectors, in particular mining companies and others associated with FIESP”, arguing they modified maps and altered the environmental plan decree.

The judge found that Salles violated legal and regulatory norms, impeded the participation of other sectors of the environmental system and “attended the economic interests of a restricted group in detriment to the defence of the environment”. He also said there was no “effective loss” to the environment because the process was not approved.


Also of Interest

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

Europe responds with alarm to US defence secretary's resignation

We must stop the catastrophe that is Line 3 pipeline in its tracks

Fracking in 2018: Another Year of Pretending to Make Money

Progressives Accuse Steny Hoyer of Trying to Kneecap Green New Deal Committee to Shield Fossil Fuel Execs

Google’s Earth: how the tech giant is helping the state spy on us

Man sues feds after being detained for refusing to unlock his phone at airport

Arizona Judge in No More Deaths Case Had Secret Talks With Federal Prosecutors


A Little Night Music

James Harman - I've Got News For You

James Harman - I Declare

James Harman - Two Sides To Every Story

James Harman - Jimmy's Pink Alligator

James Harman - Night Ridin' Daddy

James Harman & Nathan James - Memory Foam Matress Blues

James Harman - Fineprint

James Harman - My Little Girl

James Harman - Stranger Blues

James Harman - I'm Gone

James Harman & Monkey Junk Tremblant Blues Festival 2011


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joe shikspack's picture

i won't be around this evening as i am going to fight the war on christmas by attending a solstice celebration tonight. Smile

you all have a great evening and i'll check in later or tomorrow.

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack We went hear some friends perform at one of favorite bars last night and jb allowed me to be over served . Smile

Be careful, joe it could happen to you !

Happy Friday, all!

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

heh, i am the designated driver, so there is rarely a danger of being overserved. well, except maybe from ms. shikspack's rum cookies. Smile

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enhydra lutris's picture

@joe shikspack

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

thanks! it worked out great. i stayed out til the wee hours and slept til the crack of noon. it's just like being young again. Smile

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

The Aspie Corner's picture

because the pigs outright refuse to hire unless you have a drivers' license/bachelor's degree for most entry level jobs that don't even come close to requiring either one, Dipshit and his gaggle of pig goons can all go fuck themselves.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

joe shikspack's picture

@The Aspie Corner

i'm sure that the pig goons' time will come. i hope it is soon.

have a good weekend!

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Azazello's picture

Here's a couple pretty good vids.
CNN Cheers On War - Red Baits President Trump
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwUAJybVn0E width:500 height:300]

Obama Admits Bipartisan Capitalist 'Washington Consensus' Fueled Far-Right & Multiplied Inequality

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kwlxN_wwrw width:500 height:300]

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

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

good stuff! dore makes some excellent points. one thing that i wish he would have said to drive his point home is that, if those congressional whiners (graham, corker, etc.) have a problem with trump bringing the troops back home from syria - they are the ones who have the power in the situation, all they have to do is have an honest vote in congress to declare war on syria. (which, of course, they won't do for a variety of reasons.)

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dystopian's picture

Yeah man, love a good pagan celebration! My kind of thing... Thanks for the blues all week JS! James Harman is great, the Howlin' Wolf was too...

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

joe shikspack's picture

@dystopian

thanks! and a happy solstice to you!

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snoopydawg's picture

The inhumanity of putting weapons sales ahead of human lives is appalling! The Yemen massacre will continue because if we pull support for Saudis then they won't buy our weapons. If Trump continues to protect the Kurds then Turkey will buy Russian weapons.

But then there's our inhumanity of treating people who are poor, elderly and disabled like they are bankrupting the government instead of the real culprits people like Bezos and corporations who get million dollar subsidies. The problem with the Food stamps requirements is that most people who are on them are already working one or more jobs and they might not have access to or have computers or the time to report weekly about their situation. This is a huge burden and just one more hoop people have to jump through to stay on them. When's the last time someone in congress suggested that Bezos be drug tested before he gets his tax breaks?

Gutierrez. OMG. He should have stopped his rant and asked if he was boring her, and then he should have interrupted her lying and called her on it. I'm not going to say what I think of her.

"We haven't separated families." Umm yes you have. This is what the protests were about. How about the policy of putting immigrants in rooms without any heat? A 5 month baby's pneumonia got much worse after her family spent 3 days in one. And then there's that girl who died from dehydration and of course the border patrol agents lied about it. Some sociopathic border patrol goons think it's fun to go to places in the desert where they know people will put water and other items to help people who cross the borders and destroy them. How sick and depraved does someone have to be to do that? Then there's the ones who would have failed background checks being put in charge of children.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

ok, i had one for you. you should be feeling much better, now. Smile

have a great weekend!

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WindDancer13's picture

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

joe shikspack's picture

@WindDancer13

heh, better get a bandage for that. Smile

have a great weekend!

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WindDancer13's picture

@joe shikspack

for seeing the earth crumble beneath one's feet while politicians and corporations dance on the graves of millions and starve the rest educationally, physically, mentally and emotionally even as they try to convince that the things they do are for our own good? Well, cool. Hand it over!

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

joe shikspack's picture

@WindDancer13

i guess you meant to link to something, but the link is broken and i read it as the header rather than a link. sorry about that!

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WindDancer13's picture

@joe shikspack

It was just a heartfelt response to recent news, be they truth or be they lies.

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

mimi's picture

a Spiegel reporter, Relotius, wrote.

The Relotius Scandal Reaches a Small Town in America
DER SPIEGEL Reveals Internal Fraud
Reporter Juan Moreno on the Relotius Case
It is much worse than thought in the beginning. He used his talents as a writer even to solicit money to help 'those people strikken by grave miseries' (my wording), which ended up nicely in his own bank account.

Wow, I think that is devastating and destructive to Der Spiegel's reputation. They became a victim of their own growth. It's not the same weekly they were in the pre-internet age of the sixties and seventies. Sadly so.

It is much easier these days to count who is not not a con artist among writers and politicians and thinking stinking heads than who counting who is.

Have a good weekend.

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mimi's picture

@mimi
US ambassador to Germany demands Spiegel fake news investigation

I think the whole affair was a set up to undermine Der Spiegel.

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