The Evening Blues - 5-19-20
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features delta blues singer Son House. Enjoy!
Son House - Grinnin' In Your Face
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."
-- Malcolm X
News and Opinion
Glenn Greenwald delivers a devastating critique of our mainstream media that has lost "its societal value" and "becomes just another instrument for societal manipulation, deceit, and coercion." It's long, but worth a click and a full read.
Ben Smith’s NYT Critique of Ronan Farrow Describes a Toxic, Corrosive, and Still-Vibrant Trump-Era Pathology: “Resistance Journalism”
The New York Times’ recently hired media columnist Ben Smith, who spent the previous nine years as editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed as it grew into a media behemoth, did something Sunday night that very few other U.S. journalists would be willing to do: He published an unflinching and sometimes scathing critique of former-MSNBC-daytime-host-turned-widely-beloved-New-Yorker-star-investigative-reporter Ronan Farrow. Farrow’s work in exposing Harvey Weinstein as a serial predator earned him celebrity, wealth, adoration in liberal circles, and — along with two New York Times reporters whose work on Weinstein was crucial — a Pulitzer Prize. ... Few journalists have the stature or courage to criticize his work, especially in the pages of the New York Times, but Smith did exactly that in paragraph after paragraph of a long critique that seriously called into question the reliability and even integrity of Farrow’s reportorial methods.
What is particularly valuable about Smith’s article is its perfect description of a media sickness borne of the Trump era that is rapidly corroding journalistic integrity and justifiably destroying trust in news outlets. Smith aptly dubs this pathology “resistance journalism,” by which he means that journalists are now not only free, but encouraged and incentivized, to say or publish anything they want, no matter how reckless and fact-free, provided their target is someone sufficiently disliked in mainstream liberal media venues and/or on social media:
[Farrow’s] work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.
That can be a dangerous approach, particularly in a moment when the idea of truth and a shared set of facts is under assault. ...
We are living in an era of conspiracies and dangerous untruths — many pushed by President Trump, but others hyped by his enemies — that have lured ordinary Americans into passionately believing wild and unfounded theories and fiercely rejecting evidence to the contrary. The best reporting tries to capture the most attainable version of the truth, with clarity and humility about what we don’t know. Instead, Mr. Farrow told us what we wanted to believe about the way power works, and now, it seems, he and his publicity team are not even pretending to know if it’s true.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected, and one could argue even in the months leading up to his election, journalistic standards have been consciously jettisoned when it comes to reporting on public figures who, in Smith’s words, are “most disliked by the loudest voices,” particularly when such reporting “swim[s] ably along with the tides of social media.” Put another way: As long the targets of one’s conspiracy theories and attacks are regarded as villains by the guardians of mainstream liberal social media circles, journalists reap endless career rewards for publishing unvetted and unproven — even false — attacks on such people, while never suffering any negative consequences when their stories are exposed as shabby frauds.
It is this “resistance journalism” sickness that caused U.S. politics to be drowned for three years in little other than salacious and fact-free conspiracy theories about Trump and his family members and closest associates: Putin had infiltrated and taken over the U.S. government through sexual and financial blackmail leverage over Trump and used it to dictate U.S. policy; Trump officials conspired with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 election; Russia was attacking the U.S. by hacking its electricity grid, recruiting journalists to serve as clandestine Kremlin messengers, and plotting to cut off heat to Americans in winter. Mainstream media debacles — all in service of promoting the same set of conspiracy theories against Trump — are literally too numerous to count, requiring one to select the worst offenses as illustrative.
In March of last year, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi — writing under the headline “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD” — compared the prevailing media climate since 2016 to that which prevailed in 2002 and 2003 regarding the invasion of Iraq and the so-called war on terror: little to no dissent permitted, skeptics of media-endorsed orthodoxies shunned and excluded, and worst of all, the very journalists who were most wrong in peddling false conspiracy theories were exactly those who ended up most rewarded on the ground that even though they spread falsehoods, they did so for the right cause.
Under that warped rubric — in which spreading falsehoods is commendable as long as it was done to harm the evildoers — the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most damaging endorsers of false conspiracy theories about Iraq, rose to become editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, while two of the most deceitful Bush-era neocons, Bush/Cheney speechwriter David Frum and supreme propagandist Bill Kristol, have reprised their role as leading propagandists and conspiracy theorists — only this time aimed against the GOP president instead of on his behalf — and thus have become beloved liberal media icons. The communications director for both the Bush/Cheney campaign and its White House, Nicole Wallace, is one of the most popular liberal cable hosts from her MSNBC perch.
Exactly the same journalism-destroying dynamic is driving the post-Russiagate media landscape. There is literally no accountability for the journalists and news outlets that spread falsehoods in their pages, on their airwaves, and through their viral social media postings.
Lock Him Up: An Army of Prosecutors Is Taking On Michael Flynn, Barr, and Trump
Michael Flynn isn’t going free without a fight. The Justice Department’s attempt to drop the criminal case against Flynn has sparked so much outrage among former department officials and ex-prosecutors that a small army of DOJ alumni has hatched a plan to challenge the move in court.
A group representing almost a thousand former prosecutors and high-ranking officials has drafted a legal brief slamming the motion to dismiss the case against President Trump’s former national security adviser as sheer partisan politics, according to a copy obtained by VICE News on Monday.
The brief accuses Attorney General Bill Barr of having “weaponized” the Department of Justice “to punish the President’s opponents and reward his friends” — and asks Judge Emmet Sullivan to carefully scrutinize the attempt to dismiss the case, and reject it if he finds the move wasn’t in the public interest. ...
Their decision to intervene in the Flynn case marks a dramatic escalation in the long-running feud between Barr and DOJ alumni, who have released scathing public letters attacking Barr’s behavior.
Independent legal observers have accused Barr of attempting to undo the consequences of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, in which Flynn became an early target.
Trump's attorney general dismisses possibility of 'Obamagate' investigations
As Donald Trump continued to propagate his “Obamagate” pseudo-scandal on Monday, the US attorney general, William Barr, said he did not expect a justice department review of the FBI’s handling of 2016 election interference to lead to the criminal investigation of Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
“As to President Obama and vice-president Biden, whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don’t expect Mr Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man,” Barr said.
He was referring to federal prosecutor John Durham, who is reviewing the origins of the investigation of Russia’s 2016 election interference which expanded to include links between the Trump campaign and Moscow. “Not every abuse of power, no matter how outrageous, is necessarily a federal crime,” Barr said.
With Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in November, and leading in most polls, Trump has repeatedly referred to a supposed scandal he calls “Obamagate”, saying without evidence that his predecessor and his vice-president were tied to what he claims was “the biggest political crime in American history, by far!”
Without identifying who he was talking about, Barr said on Monday: “Our concern over potential criminality is focused on others.”
Pushback with Aaron Maté: CIA used Sheldon Adelson's firm to spy on Julian Assange
Defense Workers, Deemed “Essential,” Protest Conditions as Overseas Weapons Sales Continue
With most of the United States on lockdown in late April, the State Department approved billions of dollars in possible weapons sales. Workers at the manufacturing plants that would supply those sales, deemed “essential workers” toward the end of March thanks to the defense industry’s sprawling lobbying apparatus, have been forced to show up to work — even as a number of workers at those factories have tested positive for coronavirus. The transactions approved by the State Department include $2.2 billion in possible weapons sales to India, Morocco, and the Philippines, and $150 million in blanket funds to the United Arab Emirates for order requisitions to repair and support aircraft fleets and do other related work.
The facilities in question belong to some of the world’s largest defense contractors, like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. At Lockheed Martin’s plant in Forth Worth, Texas, workers have protested the reopening of their facility, saying they were concerned about exposing family members to the virus, and that the company wasn’t properly cleaning facilities. Other workers have said that steps being taken to mitigate risk don’t go far enough. Asked about the spread or potential spread of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, at their plants, the contractors generally demurred and declined to answer questions, instead referring The Intercept to company websites, many of which have stopped publicly reporting Covid-19 cases. ...
The weapons industry has so far spent millions of dollars on lobbying Congress and the Department of Defense in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, on issues like getting exemptions from stay-at-home orders and relief under the CARES Act. The push to get 2.5 million defense workers classified as essential came as the United States’s undeclared wars continue, with airstrikes reaching an all-time high in Somalia as the coronavirus spread, and the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition continuing to drop bombs on Yemen.
“As states across the country issued orders requiring businesses to close in a drastic attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, the federal government issued instructions to defense contractors that directly contradicted those local efforts,” the Washington Post wrote in late March, just two weeks after the coronavirus outbreak was deemed a pandemic.
Hundreds of Mexican maquiladora workers dying after back-to-work orders take effect
The decision by Wall Street and the Trump administration to restart production has produced an unprecedented health crisis in northern Mexico, where workers at maquiladora sweatshops that produce parts for export to the US are contracting coronavirus by the tens of thousands and dying at alarming rates.
On Saturday, the health secretary of Northern Baja California announced that 432 of the 519 people who have officially died from the virus in the state were maquiladora workers. In Baja cities like Tijuana and Mexicali, as well as other border cities like Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, doctors report that their hospitals are overflowing with sick maquiladora workers, some of whom are dying in their work uniforms. Mexican maquiladora workers make between US$8 to $10 per day. Hospital officials say the government’s official death toll and total number of positive cases nationwide — 5,177 and 49,219 respectively, as of yesterday afternoon—vastly understate the real impact. They claim that hundreds or thousands more maquiladora workers are dying than is officially acknowledged, and that the Mexican government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is obscuring the real toll in an effort to force workers back to work.
An investigation published yesterday by the San Diego Union-Tribune shows the death toll may be ten times higher than the official count:
“A review of 120 death certificates provided by a worker at a crematorium in the northern border city of Ciudad Juárez showed a total of 63 listed ‘probably COVID-19’ as the cause of death. Another 30 named pneumonia or other respiratory ailments often associated with coronavirus. Only 12 listed COVID-19 as the confirmed cause, meaning that only those cases would become part of the official count.”
The end of the last work week saw a spike in new positive cases nationwide, with 2,400 testing positive on May 14 and 15. But testing is almost nonexistent in Mexico, which has a rate of 0.5 tests per 1,000 people, compared with 27 per 1,000 people in the United States, where the need still far exists current testing levels. ...
The spike is the direct product of López Obrador’s “back to work” initiative, ordered from Washington and Wall Street. In Tijuana, the Mexican government opened 100 maquiladoras at the beginning of May, despite protests from workers. Yesterday, a Tijuana business association said the city’s maquiladoras were functioning at 60 percent capacity. ... Reopening Mexican production is imperative for American industry. Yesterday, the Detroit News explained, “nearly 40 percent of all part imports into the US come from Mexico, meaning the success of any domestic industry restart will rest heavily on a successful simultaneous rev-up south of the border.”
Lessons learned? | French schools close again as new COVID-19 cases emerge
Iran’s Chemical Weapons Survivors Struggle With Coronavirus — and U.S. Sanctions
Volunteers from the Iranian Red Crescent Society crisscross Tehran’s streets, distributing care packages of masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer to residents to prevent the spread of COVID-19. ...
The organization is focused on a unique group in Iran: The more than 70,000 people injured by chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. It’s been over thirty years since that war ended, but many survivors of chemical attacks still struggle with long-term damage to their skin, eyes, and lungs — conditions that can manifest years after exposure and worsen with age.
Iranian officials say that efforts to combat the virus are hampered by U.S. sanctions after its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
Watchdog was investigating Pompeo for arms deal and staff misuse before firing
The government watchdog who was fired last week had been investigating the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for sidestepping Congress to approve arms sales to the Gulf and using staffers for personal errands, according to congressional sources.
Donald Trump declared his intention to fire the state department inspector general, Steve Linick, in a letter sent to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, late on Friday night. The White House said the decision was taken at Pompeo’s advice.
Congress has 30 days to investigate the decision, but the Senate has so far declined to intervene in a string of dismissals of officials in watchdog roles, as Trump has steadily dismantled the machinery of government oversight.
According to Democratic congressional aides, Linick had nearly completed an investigation into a highly controversial decision by Trump and Pompeo last May to approve $8bn in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without consulting Congress, on the grounds that the regional threat posed by Iran constituted a national emergency. ...
“[Linick’s] office was investigating – at my request – Trump’s phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia,” Eliot Engel, the Democratic chair of the House foreign affairs committee said in a written statement.
“We don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr Linick pushed out before this work could be completed.”
Pelosi Guts HEROES ACT Of Progressive Priorities & Progressives Fold
I wonder why these "activists" aren't protesting at Nancy Pelosi's or Chuck Schumer's house? Couldn't find the address?
'National Day of Mourning' Protests This Week to Condemn GOP Failures Amid Mass Suffering Caused by Covid-19
With Republicans in Congress stonewalling the possibility of any additional coronavirus relief even as tens of millions of people across the U.S are newly out of work, uninsured, hungry, and unable to afford rent, a coalition of progressive advocacy groups is planning nationwide protests this week to condemn GOP obstruction and demand the urgent passage of desperately needed aid for people and families.
On Wednesday, funeral-style actions in more than 20 states across the country will mourn the nearly 90,000 people who have died of Covid-19 and denounce President Donald Trump and the GOP for failing to take sufficiently urgent and bold action against the pandemic. The "National Day of Mourning" was organized by MoveOn, Indivisible, the Center for Popular Democracy, and other groups.
In Washington, D.C., protestors are expected to drive a 200-car funeral procession from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) residence to the White House, passing the Trump International Hotel along the way. Participants are planning to lay down body bags in front of the White House and eulogize loved ones lost to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A similar action is set to take place in South Carolina, where a funeral procession will begin at a local chapel and end at Sen. Lindsey Graham's (R-S.C.) office. Demonstrators plan to leave mock caskets and photos of deceased loved ones in front of the building.
McConnell said last week that Republicans have not yet felt the "urgency" to act quickly on another relief package, and that attitude does not seem to have changed even after House Democrats on Friday passed the HEROES Act, a $3 trillion bill that would extend beefed-up unemployment benefits, provide another round of one-time $1,200 direct stimulus payments, and authorize $1 trillion in funding for state and local governments.
Progressives criticized the bill as deeply flawed and inadequate to the scale of the crisis, but Republicans in Congress and the president have indicated that they are in no hurry to approve any additional aid.
"I'd put the chance of another bill right now at way less than 50 percent for the foreseeable future," Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Sunday. Earlier this month, Trump said he is in "no rush" to negotiate with Congress on another relief package.
Anonymous congressional sources told Politico that the "most likely" target date for passing additional Covid-19 legislation is July 4.
millions of people are suffering and Congress is just giving them the finger https://t.co/1LNHsZiXMB pic.twitter.com/YK9naq5DpV
— jordan (@JordanUhl) May 18, 2020
Rights Groups Demand House Democrats Fix Bill That Gives FBI Power to Search Browser Histories Without Warrant
Over 50 anti-surveillance groups put pressure on the Democrat-controlled House "to seize this moment in defense of Americans' civil liberties" in a new letter urging the chamber to pass the Senate-cleared USA Freedom Reauthorization Act only if it includes a key privacy protecting amendment.
The letter (pdf), sent to House leadership Monday, calls the amendment put forth by Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—which would bar spy agencies from warrantless surveiling of Americans' web browsing and internet search histories—"sorely needed." ...
The letter comes just days after the Senate's Thursday vote to reauthorize sweeping government surveillance powers until December 2023 and after the upper chamber's Wednesday vote in which the Wyden-Daines amendment failed by just one vote. While 10 members of the Democratic caucus voted with Republicans against the amendment, two others—Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—did not attend the vote.
Wyden, speaking on the Senate floor last week ahead of the vote, outlined why he believed the provision was crucial.
"Every thought that can come into people's heads can be revealed in an internet search or a visit to a website," said Wyden. "Their health history and medical concerns. Their political views. Their romantic lives and friendships. Their religious beliefs."
"Collecting this information is as close to reading minds as surveillance can get. It is digital mining of the personal lives of Americans," he said.
McDonald’s accused over 'systemic sexual harassment' of employees worldwide
An international coalition of labor unions has filed a complaint against McDonald’s, alleging systemic sexual harassment of its employees around the world.
The complaint, filed at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s offices in the Netherlands, lists numerous incidents of harassment, including attempted rape and indecent exposure in the United States, a promotion in exchange for sexual acts in Brazil, and a hidden cellphone camera installed in the women’s changing room in France.
“There’s a rotten culture from the top,” said Sue Longley, the general secretary for the International Union of Foodworkers, at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro, adding that the fast food giant has “failed dismally to take meaningful action about the problem”. ...
The complaint, alleges that McDonald’s has failed to comply with the organization’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and is the first-ever case filed related to sexual harassment at a multinational. Organizers said they filed the complaint with regulators in the Netherlands because McDonald’s’ Dutch offices were the company’s “nerve center” in Europe.
The unions claimed any actions filed in the US, where McDonald’s is headquartered, would be met with “unclean hands,” on McDonald’s’ part because sexual harassment “permeates the top ranks of corporate management” there.
Harvard Doctor: As States Rush to Reopen, Lack of COVID-19 Testing Is “Achilles Heel” for U.S.
First human trial results raise hopes for coronavirus vaccine
The first results from human trials of a vaccine against Covid-19 have given a glimmer of hope after a US firm’s study produced positive results in a group of eight volunteers.
These results – which come a day after the UK government revealed a deal to secure 30m doses of a rival Oxford University vaccine, should it be successful – showed that each of the participants produced an antibody response on a par with that seen in people who have had the disease. And they suggest that the vaccine is safe for use in humans.
Part of a first-stage trial of 45 people run by the US company Moderna, the results are from a preliminary safety study and do not demonstrate that the treatment will work. But they will be a sign of encouragement for experts and governments desperate for a breakthrough in the battle to bring an end to the coronavirus pandemic – widely believed to be impossible without a vaccine.
Although both programmes are in the early stages, the findings also appear to put the US research ahead of the UK’s. While the Oxford vaccine was shown in a safety study to protect macaque monkeys against pneumonia, it did not stop infection – which could leave people liable to spread the virus, even if they do not get sick themselves.
Trump Says He's Been Taking Hydroxychloroquine for 'About a Week and a Half'
President Trump has been dosing himself with the controversial, unproven treatment for COVID-19 known as hydroxychloroquine.
Trump has been taking the drug in pill form for “about a week and a half now,” he told reporters Monday, adding that he’s using the medication as a prophylactic because, he says, front-line workers are doing it too.
"I’m taking it," Trump told reporters. “Right now, yeah.”
Trump’s stunning announcement suggests an unprecedented willingness to conduct a pharmaceutical experiment on himself while running the country as commander in chief. While the drug, made by several companies, has been used to fight malaria for years, recent tests have undercut Trump’s earlier optimism that it could become a miracle drug against COVID-19, the deadly disease caused by the new coronavirus.
Doctors have further cautioned it could be harmful to people with heart conditions.
Krystal Ball: The hard truth about Bernie Sanders and why the Left is in despair
Republicans devote $20m and 50,000 people into efforts to restrict voting
Donald Trump’s campaign and national Republicans are pumping millions of dollars into efforts to restrict voting and aggressively fight Democratic efforts to make it easier to cast a ballot during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Republican National Committee has allocated $20m so far to oppose Democratic lawsuits across the country seeking to expand voting. Republicans are also seeking to recruit up to 50,000 people in 15 key states to serve as poll watchers and challenge the registration of voters they believe are ineligible, according to the New York Times.
The 2020 election will be the first time in nearly three decades that national Republicans will be involved in such a program. After the RNC was sued over intimidating minority voters in New Jersey in the early 1980s, they agreed to a federal court order not to engage in “ballot security” efforts. The order expired in 2018.
Russiagate Liar Evelyn Farkas's Dem Candidacy
The second most disgustingly awful party is feeling lucky.
Democrats feel tide turning their way in battle to flip US Senate
Just three months ago, centrist Democrats were panicking. After strong performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders appeared poised to sail away with the nomination for president. Some in the party feared the self-identified democratic socialist would wreak havoc down the ballot.
“If Bernie Sanders was at the top of the ticket, we would be in jeopardy of losing the House,” the Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of Joe Biden’s campaign, said on a February conference call. “We would not get the Senate back.”
The world looks different now – and so does the Senate map. With Biden the presumptive nominee and Donald Trump facing widespread criticism for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, election experts say the upper chamber is up for grabs.
“Over the course of the last several months the playing field has gotten a little bit bigger, and I’d say Democratic prospects in some of these individual races have also seemed to get a little bit better,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “The overall race for the Senate is more of a coin flip than maybe you would have described it at the start of the cycle.”
New Study Shows Wisconsin In-Person Election Exploded New Covid-19 Infections
A new study published Monday showed a strong correlation between last month's in-person primary election in Wisconsin and an increase in coronavirus infections in the state, bolstering calls for a robust national vote-by-mail system for November.
Researchers at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and Ball State University found clear spikes in cases in counties that had the most in-person voting locations on April 7, and found that far fewer new cases were confirmed in counties with widespread absentee ballot voting.
Though public health experts had urged against holding the election due to the risks, the in-person voting was pushed forward by state Republicans, former Vice President Joe Biden, and a last-minute ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The research proves, wrote journalist David Sirota, that the decision to move ahead with in-person voting "ended up spreading a deadly pandemic."
NEWS: New data prove that the refusal to postpone the Wisconsin election ended up spreading a deadly pandemic https://t.co/QutK79cMqj
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) May 18, 2020
The economists examined the number of new cases in each of Wisconsin's 72 counties, and found that more cases were reported in the two to three weeks after the election—the incubation period for Covid-19—in counties with the highest numbers of in-person polling locations.
"When the average number of votes per voting location increases by 100 (a 0.10 unit change), the rate of positive tests in a county rises by roughly 0.034 to 0.035 (3.4 to 3.5 percentage points) two to three weeks after the election," the researchers wrote.
Meanwhile, the opposite effect was shown in counties that utilized absentee balloting.
"The estimates from absentee ballot voting suggest that every unit increase in absentee ballots (an additional 10,000 absentee ballots), lead to decreases in the positive rate of between 0.07 and 0.08 percentage points two to three weeks after the election," the study reads.
The research was released two days after a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services said that the agency's official count of Covid-19 cases linked to the election stood at 71.
Climate Campaigners Applaud Biden on Vow to Pull Plug on Keystone XL Permit
Campaigners called it the kind of climate leadership they hope to see more of from Joe Biden after the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's campaign on Monday said he would withdraw the federal permit for the Keystone XL pipeline if elected in November.
"Biden strongly opposed the Keystone pipeline in the last administration, stood alongside President Obama and Secretary Kerry to reject it in 2015, and will proudly stand in the Roosevelt Room again as President and stop it for good by rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline permit," Biden campaign policy director Stef Feldman said in a statement to Politico.
While the Obama administration reluctantly rejected the KXL project in 2015 after years of grassroots pressure—including mass arrests outside Obama'a White House—from Native American tribal leaders and a climate coalition spearheaded by 350.org, the Trump administration made approving the project one of its first orders of business when it took over in 2017.
Biden's pitiful climate platform received among the worst grades during the Democratic primary from environmental groups who warned that only the kind of ambition being voice by candidates like Gov. Jay Islee of Washington, Sens . Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren, or billionaire investor Tom Steyer were adequate to the threat posed by the planetary crisis.
Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, North America director for 350 Action—which last year denounced Biden's climate policies as "uniquely bad" — welcomed his new vow to tear up the presidential pipeline order signed by Trump.
What Biden's new position on Keystone XL Pipeline really means
While Pushing Big Oil Bailouts, Trump Slaps Wind and Solar Industry With $50 Million in Old Rent Bills
While giving fossil fuel companies access to relief funds ostensibly meant for small businesses struggling due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration on Monday slapped solar and wind power firms with retroactive rent bills dating back two years.
The Interior Department is demanding rent payments from renewable energy companies operating on federal lands, two years after it suspended rent for the operators as it investigated whether the Obama administration had charged too much.
The administration plans to collect $50 million in rent this year from 96 companies operating on federal property—the same amount of money that a recent report showed is going to fossil fuel companies in loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the oil and gas companies may not have to pay those loans back.
Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette also admitted last week that the White House pushed the Federal Reserve to open its Main Street Lending Program to the oil and gas industries.
Susan Hassol of the climate research firm Climate Communication wrote that the Trump administration's charging of "huge retroactive rents" for wind and solar operations while simultaneously pushing for tax giveaways and bailouts for the oil and gas companies is robbing from a clean energy future to prop up a dirty past."
The retroactive rent bills come as the solar, wind, and geothermal industries have seen many projects delayed due to the pandemic. The crisis has left many companies unable to access federal subsidies and has cut the industries' projected growth for this year by as much as 10%.
On Twitter, Doug Parr of Greenpeace UK called the administration's treatment of renewable energy companies versus its insistence on aiding fossil fuels "not just bad" but "pathological."
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.
Ronan Farrow: master #MeToo reporter hit by surprise New York Times takedown
Ryan Grim Examines: NYT columnist takes down resistance journalism, Ronan Farrow
The False Choice of Deaths V.S. The Economy
RAY McGOVERN: Turn Out the Lights, Russiagate is Over
Virus Blows Away Myth of ‘First’ & ‘Third’ Worlds
Keiser Report | What Went Wrong With Warren Buffett
Cell Data Reveals Right-Wing Lockdown Protesters May Be Spreading Covid-19
Cross Immunity, Nicotine Patches And Other New Covid-19 Science
Germany's AfD thrown into turmoil by former neo-Nazi's expulsion
Should America Aspire To Be More Like China? w/Danny Haiphong
Professor Harvey J. Kaye: I've studied FDR, Joe Biden is no FDR
Krystal and Saagar: Fmr Goldman Sachs CEO says we need to risk people get COVID to save economy
Storks Hatch in UK for First Time in 600 Years – Why That’s Great News for British Wildlife
A Little Night Music
Son House w/Buddy Guy - How to Treat a Man
Son House - Pearline
Son House - Clarksdale Moan
Son House - Low Down Dirty Dog Blues
Son House - The Jinx Blues (part 1 and 2)
Son House - Death Letter
Son House - Levee Camp Blues
Son House - John The Revelator
Son House - Sun Going Down
Comments
Grayzone reporter puts the lie
to the Uighur being abused/jailed in Xinjiang province. Excellent expose of US propaganda push to misinform.
evening cb...
thanks for the vid! sounds like the mainstream media's sourcing for the claims about uighur concentration camps in china is a little bit thin. it would be nice to get to the bottom of the story from a credible source.
Most of the stories you have heard
on MSM about detention and abuse of Uighur's are completely false. I would hate for this propaganda to spread on C99% as it has done on TOP.
For a more detailed investigation with a good historical backgrounder:
Don't worry about the depraved US narrative on Uighurs
...spreading here. There have been many documentaries and interviews on RT that keep track of the progress being made in Xinjiang. It's been a fascinating process, actually. The US has no evidence; they have bullshit propaganda. We are reality based, here. That why we saw through the completely preposterous Russia Hoax. There is a wealth of factual information from many different sources. The Chinese are proud of the achievements of the Uygur communities and their children. The Uygurs are more mobile, now, and are encouraged to visit more of China.
This text is actually taken from an extensive infographic.
Denigration of China with "Crimes against Humanity"
once left simmering on the back burner, is now being heated to a rolling boil with a major propaganda push.
Meanwhile China is preparing for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Their new fully automated HS train to connect Beijing with the Olympic site is now in full operation.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A9PRJTFzHA]
Can't the US Senate find anything more
meaningless to do than this? How did politicizing the 2014 Winter Olympics work out for Obama? Although he didn't take it as far as Carter took the 1980 Summer Olympics which didn't work out for him either.
I'm curious
What do you consider a "credible source"?
heh...
there are very few single sources that i would consider totally credible. i usually read a variety of sources that i am familiar with the biases of and try to interpolate what the truth of a matter is.
in this case, i would like to see what un rapporteurs have said about the matter (assuming that they have been allowed in to investigate). i'd take with a larger grain of salt anything that amnesty international or human rights campaign might have to say about the matter, but i would take it into consideration (if only to see what the cia thinks about it.)
i'm sorry that i can't really come up with a single authoritative source, but that isn't the way that the world seems to work these days.
Answer of the day.
I've seen many skirt around on a question like that.
Very succinct was your answer.
I applaud you.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
evening pricknick...
thanks!
i have been a news junkie for most of my life and the quality of the news that i read has gone down every year. there are almost no journalists and even fewer journalism outlets that i have much trust in.
some years ago, it seemed that much of the time journalism outlets reported the same facts, but contextualized them differently. nowadays, it seems more like journalism outlets often have entirely different sets of facts.
even within some publications that i read, there are topics that are covered from a very different perspective. for example, i refuse to read or post articles from the guardian about venezuela or assange anymore - because they are generally pure propaganda. i may as well post an article from fox news about either of those two topics, because it will be pretty much the same bias reflected. on other topics, the guardian does a half decent job.
so, yeah, i don't fully believe anything i read anymore because we are in the midst of an information war and the news media are catapulting the propaganda a lot of the time.
Russiagate Retrospectives ...
Good afternoon everybody,
Glenn Greenwald did a long one, here, Taibbi & Maté took a look back here.
Here's yet another retrospective, this time from RT's Peter Lavelle, good stuff.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGq9V_9N6fo width:500 height:300]
Greenwald mentions several "resistance journalists" in the piece linked above. He lists Rachel Maddow, David Corn and empty-headed Marcy. He neglects to mention one of my favorites, Luke Harding. Who can forget this classic ?
Jimmy Dore will be LIVE in an hour or so with Dylan Ratigan.
Have a nice night.
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
evening azazello...
this is an interesting moment in the course of the mainstream media wherein even some of its liveried propagandists don't want to be associated with the sort of dreck churned out as "news" in the current information war.
i hope that they have a good brawl.
Great segment with Dore & Ratigan.
They're doing this every Tuesday, calling it "Corona Money Talk".
No gut-bucket for me tonight, joe.
I'm still listening to yesterday's earworm.
Love the guitars in that tune. It's a studio album so it's not just Keith does one part and Ronnie another. There's probably 4 or 5 Keith overdubs in there.
I tracked this one down. I've been wondering where my earworms come from and how I get them.
I was talking to a Democrat a couple days ago, told him I wouldn't vote for Biden. I told him Joe could change that with three little words, Medicare for All. Hell, I'd vote for Donald Trump, I'd vote for Satan himself if he promised M4A. So, three little words reminded me of "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley which played in my head and something in that tune, maybe the bass line, reminded me of "Send it ...". Case solved.
Also, get this, House Dems are planning another bullshit impeachment: Jonathon Turley
We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.
wow...
perpetual impeachment. oh, my. that's not going to set an unpleasant precedent.
it's clearly just harassment, since they have no ambition to launch the sort of charges (emoluments, war crimes) that have the virtue of being undeniably true and clearly violations of the constitution.
How do you call this anything other than MURDER
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/19/mexi-m19.html
Hundreds of Mexican maquiladora workers dying after back-to-work orders take effect
By Eric London
19 May 2020
The decision by Wall Street and the Trump administration to restart production has produced an unprecedented health crisis in northern Mexico, where workers at maquiladora sweatshops that produce parts for export to the US are contracting coronavirus by the tens of thousands and dying at alarming rates.
In this Friday, Dec. 27, 2013 file photo, workers manufacture car dash mats at a maquiladora belonging to the TECMA group in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (AP Photo/Ivan Pierre Aguirre, File)
On Saturday, the health secretary of Northern Baja California announced that 432 of the 519 people who have officially died from the virus in the state were maquiladora workers. In Baja cities like Tijuana and Mexicali, as well as other border cities like Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, doctors report that their hospitals are overflowing with sick maquiladora workers, some of whom are dying in their work uniforms. Mexican maquiladora workers make between US$8 to $10 per day.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
evening ggersh...
ah, but mass murder and profit maximization are such similar things. it's so easy to get them confused.
I’m sure that the party that oversaw the end of habeas corpus
will jump at the chance to roll back the FBI’s power to spy on us.
One down, many more to go.
More information on Wheeler is in the Greenwald article you excerpted. Good times and long over due.
People are asking how Marcy could fall down the rabbit hole like this. I think it started after Obama became president and people refused to see him for who he was. Just a guess.
evening snoopy...
heh, yeah, i used to read marcy wheeler from time to time and then, when she turned to the dark side, i stopped.
i sometimes wonder to myself if maybe she wasn't always working for the dark side.
Long before then --
back when she first popped up at dKos. She dredged up minutia --not always factual -- then obsessed over it to get all the little bits to link together. Never understood why she became so popular as I found her alternating between incredibly boring and a lousy analyst. Not that I bothered reading her missives after the first few, but later when she was on her own, I did check out a few of her pieces which confirmed my original conclusion. She does have a high opinion of herself.
A very high opinion of herself
I thought she had been on DK back when it was against unending war and worshiping the spy agencies that they have rehabilitated. Never thought I’d see the day when they would take to the streets to defend Mueller, but they were. Pussy hats and all.
The paragraph that Tracey excerpted by Glenn is awesome. That CNN and WaPoo defended Marcy turning her source over to the FBI just proved his point of how illegitimate the journalists who went down the rabbit hole were.
iirc Wheeler wasn't an early presence at dKos
not that rational sanity ever predominated there. From inception it was a gathering place for anti-GOP people that wanted to figure out why Democrats were being so easily beaten by Republicans. A large niche in 2002 of people still in shock over SCOTUS installing GWB; many of whom like myself, viewed Gore as decent and qualified, but still ignorant and/or naive as to the destructiveness of the Clinton administration.
Kos was never worth reading; he was more ignorant and a poorer political analyst than I was: pronouncing in the spring of 2002 that an Iraq war wasn't going to happen (I knew in 2000 that this was on GWB's "to do" list), in October 2002 that Democrats were going to big mid-term winners (the polls I was reading said that they were going to lose), and coyly trumpted Wesley Clark as the "just like Ike" for the '04 nomination. While there were many informed and principled among the few contributors that opposed an Iraq War prior to "Shock and Awe, it was very difficult to discriminate between them and those that for political advantage simply opposed all things championed by Bush and Republicans. And weren't bothered in the least to get all in with Kerry/Edwards, two Senate votes for GWB's war, and many had foreshadowed their politics above principles in touting Wesley Clark.
It really did devolve very quickly into a poor person's, on-line text and partisan alternative to Fox and Rush. Albeit on a very small scale. For the majority, emotional partisanship always trumped policy and principles. (One exception on the anti-war issue was Meteor Blades (iirc he arrived shortly after "Shock and Awe"). Alas, he only held out until Obama went along with Clinton/Rice/Power's attack on Libya. On Libya, MB wasn't objective and doubt he appreciated me telling him so and to recuse himself on this issue.) Emotional partisanship gains a wider loyal audience and by extension enriches those offering that fare. Once kettled or siloed, rationality and sanity are diminished.
I joined in 2005 specifically to join the conversation
on the Iraq war. And then I got caught up in the daily outrage of the things that Bush/Cheney and republicans were doing. I wasted a lot of energy signing petitions, emailing democrats asking them to stand up to the GOP and on numerous other issues. It wasn't until Obama became president that I finally saw through the two party system and realized that it was just one party that took turns doing nefarious and criminal acts. Hard lessons to learn.
Yep. MB was one of many that went silent when Obama took the reigns and continued PNAC's goals in the middle east. And all the other things that were on the neocons wish list. I did learn though that they Cheney/Kristal/Wolfie dude and Bolton had asked Clinton to get the Iraq war started during his watch, but he had gotten derailed with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Instead he lobbed a few bombs and was accused of wagging the dawg to take the focus of the scandal. And of course the heinous sanctions against Iraq that caused over a million deaths. I was flabbergasted at the time that this could happen under a D administration, but that was before I had woken up. "How could the good guys do that?" Blehh. Any time I criticized Obama I was called a racist. Now no criticism at all of any democrat is acceptable.
It was very easy to get caught up in
the rat-a-tat "conversations" there in those days. No different from what I imagine is the seductiveness of drugs for some.
Am surprised that there were anti-Iraq War conversations in 2005. (By then my participation was limited -- mostly to posting diaries on whatever interested me and interacting with those that responded.) Those ceased early in 2004 when Kerry secured the nomination and later cemented with his poor VP selection.
The other reason I was more disengaged on the purely political level by then was that GWB took his very narrow '04 win as a mandate. Grabbing that "third rail" did more to erode his and GOP voter support than anything Democratic politicians were capable of doing. Katrina was another nail in his coffin. Pelosi etal. needed to do no more than champion an increase in the minimum wage to win big in '06, and all the fretting at dKos in advance of that election was wasted energy.
The Iraq War was revisited within Democratic and left circles in 2007-08. For some, like me, it's a principle that we'll never let go of. For others, undoubtedly tainted by a degree of sexism/misogyny, it was the wedge used to beat Clinton in an election cycle that was there for the Democratic nominee. IOW, a ready made issue that gave Obama a leg up in the primaries. (I didn't lean towards any of the top three, but of those three, Obama was the least objectionable for me.)
Lewinsky had nothing to do with Clinton not acting on the PNAC agenda. He lacked the political capital to pitch a Republican war plan, even as Democrats weren't quite onto all his Republican economic policies. Possibly more importantly, he had close to zero political capital with the US military, practically a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP since 1969 until the full folly of the Iraq War began to be recognized.
Wise words, indeed!
Wow!
In the manner that some over-the-counter medicines have a government-mandated "black box" warning printed on them, these two sentences should be printed in bold text at the top of every political site on the Internet. If the site is a discussion forum, it should be placed between every comment.
Not needed here, of course...........
Thanks, but could probably be phrased better,
and has been said in many ways for a long time because it applies to large areas of the human experience. True believers of anything or anyone -- a family/community/country, employer, religion, a specific pet issue -- are captured or kettled, aka so far within a box that they have no ability to perceive the boundaries and no recognition of when their commitment has veered into insanity.
I actually ran into Marcy on Twitter earlier.
She is such a dumb cluck.
Anyway, Glenn Greenwald was really giving her the business about her lapse of sanity when she thought she had caught her very own Russian spy.
Glenn was off on a rift about how the FBI doesn't want to answer the phone, in case crazy Marcy is calling.
Marcy told Glenn her lawyers told her not to discuss it because it could compromise national security if she did. lol. Glenn was probably rofl somewhere in Brazil.
Despair on the left
evening gj...
yeah, it's funny the way the word "revolution" has changed in its meaning over my lifetime.
thanks to madison avenue we have revolutionary toothpaste and sneakers - and now i have to wonder if sanders' revolution didn't have more in common with toothpaste and sneakers than eugene v. debs.
the people who all cheered for a revolution are still among us for the most part, but there doesn't seem to be much revolutionary action.
We are the victims - Yellow Star on T-shirts
of anti-Corona lockdown demonstrators in Germany.
So, you are against the lockdown regulations the government recommended/imposed on you? Darn, damn, what a poor victim you are. You are a prisoner of a government using the virus to steal all your freedoms. Sure thing it is correct to compare yourself with the Jewish victims of the holocaust and therefore you wear proudly the yellow star on your T-Shirt, while you demonstrate these days in Germany, right?
So, you are against the opening of businesses and against the end of the lockdown? Oh the government kills you now on purpose like the Jews in the Holocaust, You fear you get killed because of the end of the lockdown and infect yourself with the virus? Oh, darn, poor thing. Yes it is all your right to compare yourself with the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and wear proudly the yellow star T-shirt, while demonstrate against the anti-virus-demonstrators.
Viva the Yellow Star, used, abused, and proudly worn by the ... victims of todays covid-19. We are bigger and more victime than those Jews, especially if you compare the number of deaths caused by the virus and caused by restricting your god-given free-speech rights.
German evening news showed videos from the demonstrators. I felt so disgusted that I planned to search for those videos online. I ran into images of demonstrators in Idaho.
One guy in Idoaho looked like one in Berlin. Who paid his plane ticket?
In case you are unsure of where I stand on this. The trick works for both sides the anti-lockdowners and the pro-lockdowners. As they both wear the Yellow Star and victimize themsleves to make anyone, who is not a pervers, sociopath victimizer, just a victimizer, I declare hereby all those victims ripe for a lockdown in the psychiatric ward.
{plonk!]
So, which side are you on ?
Coronavirus Death Toll
324,417 deaths 324,417 people have died so far from the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as of May 19,
versus these numbers:
Deaths-around 6 million Jews[a]
Einige Leute können nicht bis drei zählen. Das erklärt alles. /no fun snark
Zum Kotzen.
https://www.euronews.com/live
evening mimi...
wow, german whackos certainly know what buttons to push to get attention. on the other hand, i can certainly sympathize with people not trusting their governments or institutions given their record of only caring for the wealthy and powerful.
or perhaps my view is tainted by the american experience.
Yesterday I said you have to protect the freedom of speech
and freedom of assembly no matter what.
Today I add that I have sympathies with those listening and watching them free-speechlers, for wanting to close their eyes and ears, while dropping their jaws in awe and remain silent.
Ahh, those wise monkeys.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the wisest monkey of them all? Is it the one who is grinning in your face? Oh I hear already the words of the 'always a victim no matter what'-apes.
My son and me decided to be all of the above. Now we are out of something to say on the phone.
Ran into that, liked it all:
this was apprently banned once:
[video:https://youtu.be/g4JU-ZdVfgc]
For Johnny:
[video:https://youtu.be/Uf4rxCB4lys]
For those, who give me a dirty look: Yacke-di-yack (special spelling edition for lotlizard
)
[video:https://youtu.be/epCN0f7FTIY]
For me: (you have to wear goggles to not see the google at the end)
[video:https://youtu.be/fMSezPwq2js]
Now I have to turn the mulch upside down in our garden, so that the dirt gets a fertilizing heap of 'Mist'..
https://www.euronews.com/live
Dear mimi, I’m on your side.
'Zum Kotzen' is perfectly descriptive.
"Viva the Yellow Star, used, abused, and proudly worn by the ... victims of todays covid-19.” is not bad either.
I used to think stars were heavenly.
Thank you for your unique perspective ; ).
This is for pricknic
.
Out of nominal amounts of interest
Does Biden actually make personal statements, or do his helpers just release stuff?
Asking for a friend who still has an interest in this farce.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
evening bollox...
heh, having listened to the word salad that comes out of his mouth, i kind of wonder if he could construct a decent sentence much less a press release.
I'm looking forward to a one-on-one
match between Trump and Biden. Basically, it will be a debate between a blowhard with the vocabulary of a 17 year old and a 78 year old man with early stage dementia.
should be riveting ...
entertainment, indeed.
I hope it doesn't come to that.
They need to pull Joe before the convention. Certainly before any debates with Trump.
Trump said he wouldn't run against Joe. He implied that it would be cruel.
This situation looks a lot like elder abuse to me. This is the second time the Democrats forced an unfit candidate on voters. Not that it matters. Citizens United is indifferent to political parties. That sort of distraction is for the little people.
They will have to pull him before
I wonder who he is "place-holding" for? Would the DNC have the unmitigated gall to nominate Her Heinous?
To be honest, I don't think the DNC wants to win. After all, they mostly agreed on the major bills passed by the House/Senate. For 3 1/2 years the dems just made a lot of noise - signifying nothing.
Primary night in Oregon
the polls have closed.
In Portland early results are kind of depressing. My choice for Mayor, Teressa Raiford, is in 3rd place, way, way back. Current Mayor Ted Wheeler is slightly over the 50% he needs to avoid a runoff. Yuppie candidate Sarah Iannarone is in 2nd and would face Wheeler in November if Wheeler falls below that 50%.
Margot Black, Democratic Socialist who graciously took the time to be interviewed by Cassiodorus, is well behind for City Commissioner.
The Secretary of State's site has gotten pretty slow as people start looking for results.
oh god.....Dems....
Biden 67%
Sanders 19%
Warren 10%
Gabbard 2%
Write-ins 2%
It looks like Merkley will face Jo Rae Perkins in November.
Nik Heuertz is ahead in Congressional District 2 (on the Dem side) by 7 votes out of 30,000+ so far!
Haha...lying no-good Knute Buehler, who ran as a "moderate Republican" for Governor two years ago and this time as a Trumpie, is losing on the Repub side.
Albert Lee, also interviewed here by Cassiodorus, is in 2nd but will lose his race for the Dem nom in CD 3.
evening shahryar...
sorry to hear that the better local candidates don't seem to be doing well.
gads, 2/3 of oregonian dems are voting for a demented old hair-sniffing, handsy, possible rapist?
what a country.
turns out to be a shithole country
with shitty democrats. This is an insult and every Biden voter deserves a fist on his eye.
I am glad Gabbard is out of that bunch and understand why she took a hike.
https://www.euronews.com/live
As Jimmy Dore
points out, the democrats
care deeply about the american peopledon't do anything to help the american people in this crisis. Might as well vote for a republican. What good are the dims?Thanks for the EB, love the Son House.
evening randtntx...
i am having difficulty coming up with good uses for democrats. i think that i will likely have to dig up a book of cartoons that somebody gave me back in the late 70's or early 80's entitled "101 uses for a dead preppie."
Good evenng Joe. I think I figured it out. The self-styled
"progressives", in order to be able to eventually successfully "work for change from within" are simply "keeping their powder dry". Mystery solved.
be well and have a good one.
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 --
evening el...
perhaps they are waiting for the "creative destruction" phase and are looking to heroically rebuild from scratch.
Very informative stuff, eb!
And music!
This is a few minutes of music that puts my life in perspective today. Just wonderful that the artists say it.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
evening otc...
a lovely tune, thanks!
have a great evening!
That man
That Damn Man is so handsome and is so damn wonderful in every way and the only thing that diminishes it is me! I grovel, do not deserseve him.
Let the whole world blow, I will find him" ! I Will.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Coming in lately - For those who want to know what Germany
is doing to help those, who have lost income (due to 'Kurzarbeit' (=reduced work hours per day), I post this JD video:
I saw that Jimmy Dore tried to explain it. I am too tired to discuss or listen to it, but as I have read several times from members here, that they wished they had something that was done in the Northern European countries and especially Germany has done to keep unemployment lower.
May be some are interested in it:
[video:https://youtu.be/RW0LyxFQy18]
Good Night and thanks for the EB. Can't keep up with reading all I want to read.
https://www.euronews.com/live
“Medical martial law is liberalism’s final capitulation”
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Medical-Martial-Law-Will-B-by-David-Wi...
Very good picks this eve (or holiday morning here in Germany; Ascension Day / Christi Himmelfahrt), especially that Intercept link about “Resistance Journalism” having been the death of real journalism.
In Germany, there’s a psychologically conditioned fear response that impartiality and even-handedness mean bad, Nazi-ish thoughts will somehow be allowed to creep in (leading to another Hitler for sure!). Therefore it supposedly behooves every journalist and cultural gatekeeper to display open bias in favor of the establishment-approved goodthink of the moment (“Haltung zu zeigen”).