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“One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”

-- Kurt Vonnegut

News and Opinion

An excellent article worth reading in full:

Beware the Race Reductionist

A hostage situation has emerged on the left. And progressive policies like “Medicare for All,” a $15 minimum wage, free public education, a “Green New Deal,” and even net neutrality, are the captives. The captors? Bad faith claims of bigotry. According to an increasingly popular narrative among the center-left, a dispiriting plurality of progressives are “class reductionists” — people who believe that economic equality is a cure-all for societal ills, and who, as a result, would neglect policy prescriptions which seek to remedy identity-based disparities. Of course, race and class are so interwoven that any political project that aims to resolve one while ignoring the other does a disservice to both. ...

The fear that identity-based issues might be “thrown under the bus” in favor of more populist, “universal” policies is legitimate: The Democratic Party has certainly done as much in the recent past for causes less noble than class equality. But the irony is that anxiety over class reductionism has led some to defensively embrace an equally unproductive and regressive ideology: race reductionism. If you’re #online, like I am, you’re probably already familiar with the main argument. It goes something like this: If a policy doesn’t resolve racism “first,” it’s at worst racist, and at best not worth pursuing.

According to one popular iteration of this theme, “Medicare For All” is presumptively racist or sexist because it won’t eliminate discriminatory point-of-service care or fully address women’s reproductive needs if it’s not thoughtfully designed. Perhaps you remember Rep. James Clyburn’s claim that a free college and university plan would “destroy” historically black colleges and universities. Maybe you’ve heard that the minimum wage is “racist” because it “Kills Jobs and Doesn’t Help The Poor,” or that it’s an act of privilege to care about Wall Street corruption, because only the wealthy could possibly mind what the banks do with the mortgages and pensions of millions of Americans. Perchance you’ve even been pitched on the incredible notion that rooftop solar panels hurt minority communities.

Libertarian journalist Conor Friedersdorf recently entered the fray with a piece titled, “Democratic Socialism Threatens Minorities.” His argument? That “top-down socialism” (which progressives want just about as badly as they want top-down capitalism) would create a tyranny of the majority and put minorities at risk. Completely ignoring the market failures of our current system, and eliding the widespread prejudice and violence black Americans face under capitalism, he concern-trolls by imagining a world in which black women struggle to find suitable hair products. Of course, this is a world we already live in. Friedersdorf, though, was merely building an addition on a house of cards first constructed by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential primary campaign: “If we broke up the big banks tomorrow,” she famously asked, “would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community? Would that make people feel more welcoming to immigrants overnight?”

It was a daring and adroit deception: Ignore this structural salve that would upset the status quo, she implied, because it won’t resolve that more personal, more visceral issue which goes straight to the heart of your identity. Notice that this trick is aimed at policies which would threaten significant corporate or entrenched interests: The insurance industry, the banking industry, the energy sector, lenders. As Berkeley Law professor and leading scholar on race Ian Haney-López observed as we discussed the motives behind this framing, mainstream Democrats, like Republicans, “are funded by large donors. Of course they’re concerned about the interests of the top 1 percent.” It’s almost as if the real agenda here isn’t ending racism, but deterring well-meaning liberals from policies that would upset the Democratic Party’s financial base.

Less Than 24 Hours After Senate Rejected Effort to Curb Slaughter, 26 More Children Killed by US-Backed Bombing in Yemen

Less than a day after Republicans in the United States Senate rejected a chance this week "to slam on the brakes and stop [America's] role in enabling the suffering in Yemen," at least 26 more children were slaughtered by a U.S.-backed Saudi-led bombing in the western part of the country.

Condemning the bombing near the Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah that occurred Thursday, but was not widely reported until Friday, the United Nation's humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, and head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore, said the attack—in which four women, in addition to the children, were killed—took place as the victims tried to flee the area. "This is the second time in two weeks that an airstrike by the Saudi-led Coalition has resulted in dozens of civilian casualties," said Lowcock, who noted that "an additional air strike in Al Durayhimi on Thursday resulted in the death of four children."

Yesterday, 26 children were reportedly killed in attacks in ad-Durayhimi, Yemen. Children and families continue to be victims of intense and senseless violence. UNICEF calls on all parties to the conflict to stop the war on children in Yemen once and for all. #ChildrenUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/1JkxkjGVAO

— UNICEF (@UNICEF) August 24, 2018

As the peace advocacy group Win Without War put it: "Shame on those Senators who let our involvement in this war continue. History will not be kind to you."

'Iraq is dying': oil flows freely but corruption fuels growing anger

After years of sanctions and neglect, oil production in southern Iraq is picking up. A two-lane road that crosses the Bani-Mansour land has become a busy highway for lorries carrying drilling equipment and buses ferrying foreign oil workers back and forth. The windows of nearby homes rattle as the traffic passes. The opening up of Iraq’s enormous verified oil reserves to foreign expertise in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein was hailed as the means to kickstart its economy and potentially transform the south into an economic stronghold. Instead, ordinary Iraqis have seen little or no benefit from the proceeds of the country’s multibillion-dollar oil industry, much of which has been siphoned off by corrupt politicians. Across the south in recent months, simmering anger over corruption and unemployment has been fuelled by the dire state of public services, regular power cuts and water shortages.

Once there was a time when the Bani-Mansour land, not far from where the Tigris and Euphrates meet, had water and more than 300,000 palm trees, villagers said. Large numbers of buffaloes and cows cooled themselves in the green muddy waters of its canals. But drought and the intrusion of saltwater from the Gulf have wiped out most of the palm groves, the cattle have been sold, local rivers have dried up and the canals have stagnated, clogged with rubbish. Corruption and mismanagement on the part of local and central government, both dominated by a kleptocracy of religious parties that have ruled Iraq for more than a decade, has exacerbated a slow-motion environmental disaster.

The oil companies, which are supposed to train and hire a workforce from local populations and invest back into development projects, are forced to hire those with connections to powerful tribal sheikhs and the Islamist parties. Funds for those populations rarely materialise and almost none of the oil revenues trickle down to the population. Meanwhile, local militias with links to clans and political parties have formed their own companies, which land lucrative security contracts with subsidiaries of foreign oil firms. In the eyes of the local villagers, the heavy traffic rumbling along the narrow road has become a daily reminder of the contrast between the boundless wealth lying underneath their homes and the abject poverty above ground.

The flashpoint came in early July, when the temperature soared to nearly 50C, the electricity failed repeatedly, and the tap water ran hot and as salty as sea water. Two dozen men gathered outside the gates of one of the oil company compounds, blocking the section of the road adjacent to their village. Under the scorching Iraqi summer sun, they stomped their feet, raised their arms and angrily denounced the oil firms and the politicians. A police unit stationed in the compound moved out to face the protesters while a larger army unit in charge of protecting the oilfields arrived in armoured vehicles. The two units sandwiched the protesters, who started pelting the armoured vehicles with stones. The soldiers and police responded with live ammunition, and within half an hour a young protester had been killed and three others injured. ...

That night, other communities in oil-rich areas held protests and the next day large demonstrations were held in Basra, spreading to other southern cities a few days later. Across the south tens of thousands of people took to the streets. Some called for better electricity and water supplies, others demanded employment – but everyone denounced the corruption and nepotism of the political parties. Party headquarters were attacked and ransacked. Much of the anger was directed at Iran, which has also been beset by weeks of street protests over economic grievances. Many of the Iraqi protesters saw Iran as the protector of Iraq’s corrupt political parties. ... Now, in the post-Isis era, a Sunni revolt toppling the state is no longer considered a viable threat. Instead it is the Shia majority, who shed blood defending the country from Isis who are questioning the legitimacy of the Iraqi state. The government has responded to the protests with violence, firing live rounds and killing at least 11 people. Hundreds have been detained and tortured, according to activists, lawyers and security officials who spoke to the Guardian. Some are still missing.

Iran take US to international court of justice

Accusing Trump of 'Naked Economic Aggression,' Iran Urges UN High Court to Halt US Sanctions

Amid reports of the "devastating" impact U.S. President Donald Trump's newly reimposed sanctions are having on ordinary Iranians' ability to afford basic necessities and life-saving medicines, Iran accused the U.S. of "naked economic aggression" before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday and called on the United Nations body to order the suspension of the penalties.

"The U.S. is publicly propagating a policy intended to damage as severely as possible Iran's economy and Iranian national companies, and therefore inevitably Iranian nationals," Mohsen Mohebi, a lawyer representing Iran before the U.N.'s highest court, declared on Monday, arguing that Trump's sanctions violate the bilateral Treaty of Amity. "This policy is nothing but a naked economic aggression against my country. Iran will put up the strongest resistance to the U.S. economic strangulation, by all peaceful means." ...

The trade penalties are just one component of the Trump administration's broader push to "foment unrest" in Iran, an effort that critics have condemned as a thinly veiled push for regime change. In an interview on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused the Trump administration of waging a "psychological war against Iran."

Iran's legal case against the U.S. sanctions comes as ordinary Iranians report being unable to access crucial medicines as a result of the Trump administration's so-called pressure campaign.

"Sanctions hurt ordinary people on the streets and do not inflict pain at all whatsoever on the government," Meisam, an Iranian-American doctor whose grandmother has been unable to access her chemotherapy medicine because of the new restrictions, told The Independent. "How is withholding chemotherapy from my 80-year-old grandmother helpful to anyone's objective?"

Obit Omit: What the Media Leaves Out of John McCain’s Record of Misogyny and Militarism

Sen. John McCain, Republican War Hawk, Dead at 81

Longtime U.S. Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona whose pro-war record includes aggressively pushing for the illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003, has died. He was 81.

.@SenJohnMcCain called me a low life scum. I took it as a compliment coming from a man who bombed Vietnamese, pushed for war in Iraq, called for bombing of Iran and supported the Saudi destruction of yemen. RIP

— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) August 26, 2018

It’s easy to feel great respect and admiration for John McCain as long as you believe that Vietnamese, Iraqis, Yemenis, etc., etc. aren't human

— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) August 25, 2018

Meanwhile, media critics Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson offered this pre-spin news brief—titled "Don't Let the Media Erase McCain's Far Right Legacy"—as a warning against the inevitable narrative that will dominate the coming days in which efforts to venerate the lawmaker will steadfastly ignore the sizeable and documented damage his political career left in his wake:

"McCain has passed," Shirazi and Johnson write. "Don't let the media forget the thousands of Arabs and Asians he helped displace, injure or kill. Their lives mattered too."

Craziest Eulogy Of John McCain Comes From Democrat

Why Do Our Heroes Always Let Us Down?

Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is drawing fire from the antiwar left, and not for the first, second or third time. The same leftist contingent which has been energizing Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and elevating her to the public spotlight has been voicing increasing concerns about her antiwar platform temporarily vanishing from her campaign website, about her walking back from her position on the Israeli government’s massacring of Palestinian protesters with sniper fire, about her weirdly hawkish criticism of the GOP as being “weak on national security”, and her deference to the establishment Russia narrative.

And now, as multiple outlets have documented in articles released in the last few hours, many of Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters have been upset with a statement she made praising the recently deceased warmongering psychopath John McCain and his blood-soaked legacy. “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service,” tweeted the candidate upon McCain’s death, which, for anyone who cares about the late Arizona senator’s relentless push to inflict military violence around the world at every opportunity, is incredibly offensive. McCain was easily the single most virulent warmonger on Capitol Hill, so praising him and his legacy as exemplary of human decency necessarily clashes with the “Peace Economy” platform that has had so many of Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters so excited.

What remains of the American left (and for my right-wing readers I here mean the actual anti-war, socialist left, not the Hillary Clinton “Make sure we refer to everyone on our drone kill list by their preferred gender pronouns” corporatist Left™ that Americans are permitted to support) has become very suspicious of anyone who rises to a position of leadership among their ranks, especially anyone who appears to lend legitimacy to the profoundly corrupt Democratic Party. ... Why does everyone we elevate to fight the oppression machine always end up becoming a cog in that very machine? Is there a lesson here we’re meant to be learning? I think there is. Out of the constant rise and fall of hope and then disappointment, over and over the lesson is that we aren’t going to get a savior. ... If people could simply shift to trusting themselves and their own inner sense-maker more than the voices of perceived authority in their lives and on their digital screens, our species could very quickly move into health and harmony, because we’d no longer be streamlined into supporting the unwholesome agendas of an elite class of plutocrats. ...

I no longer jump on bandwagons for the same reason I don’t go around babbling about “sheep dogs” and aggressively trying to tear down anti-establishment heroes who aren’t being anti-establishment enough: if you put someone on a pedestal, eventually you’re going to have to knock them off of it, because the solution isn’t in them. It’s in each of us.

'It's definitely intimidation': police accused over raids on activist's family

The peace and quiet of a south Memphis neighborhood gave way to chaos on Monday, as more than two dozen police cars, most unmarked, blocked off the street before officers raided two homes. Witnesses described more than 50 heavily armed officers: local police, sheriff’s deputies, some from other agencies. Many shielded their identity with black ski masks. The score from this elaborate, multi-agency gang taskforce effort? A single “roach” from an ashtray, containing a quantity of marijuana too small to trigger an arrest. The homeowner was given a written citation.

Minutes away, at a downtown courthouse, the police department was entering its first day on trial. The case, brought by activists and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges the Memphis police department (MPD) engaged in illegal surveillance of activists involved with Black Lives Matter and Fight for 15, including “catfishing” them with fake social media accounts.

In a statement to the Guardian, the MPD said the timing of the raid was “not related to the ACLU lawsuit in any way”.

Activists feel differently – the homes raided belonged to the uncle and grandmother of Antonio Cathey, one of the city’s more well-known activists and one of the targets of the alleged police spying. Following the raids, activists reported police searching a community garden, tailing activists in unmarked cars, and in one case pulling over a vehicle in which one passenger was an ACLU lawyer representing the activists. The lawyer was briefly detained, in handcuffs.

“It’s most definitely intimidation and it’s to show us that even the courts can’t stop them doing what they want to do,” said Keedran Franklin, a prolific activist who has described being watched and targeted by Memphis police over the last two years.

Becoming Serfs

You know the statistics. Income inequality in the United States has not been this pronounced in over a century. ... We live in a new feudalism. We have been stripped of political power. Workers are trapped in menial jobs, forced into crippling debt and paid stagnant or declining wages. Chronic poverty and exploitative working conditions in many parts of the world, and increasingly in the United States, replicate the hell endured by industrial workers at the end of the 19th century. The complete capture of ruling institutions by corporations and their oligarchic elites, including the two dominant political parties, the courts and the press, means there is no mechanism left by which we can reform the system or protect ourselves from mounting abuse. We will revolt or become 21st-century serfs, forced to live in misery and brutally oppressed by militarized police and the most sophisticated security and surveillance system in human history while the ruling oligarchs continue to wallow in unimagined wealth and opulence.

When capitalism collapsed in the 1930s, the response of the working class was to form unions, strike and protest. The workers pitted power against power. They forced the oligarchs to respond with the New Deal, which created 12 million government-funded jobs, Social Security, the minimum wage and unemployment compensation. The country’s infrastructure was modernized and maintained. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) alone employed 300,000 workers to form and maintain national parks. “The message of the organized working class was unequivocal,” economist Richard Wolff said. “Either you help us through this Depression or there will be a revolution.” The New Deal programs were paid for by taxing the rich. Even in the 1950s, during the Eisenhower presidency, the top marginal rate was 91 percent.

The rich, enraged, mounted a war to undo these programs and restore the social inequality that makes them wealthy at our expense. We have come full circle. Dissidents, radicals and critics of capitalism are once again branded as agents of foreign powers and purged from universities and the airwaves. The labor movement has been dismantled, including through so-called right-to-work laws that prohibit agreements between unions and employers. The last remaining regulations to thwart corporate pillage and pollution are removed. Although government is the only mechanism we have to protect ourselves from predatory oligarchs and corporations, the rich tell us that government is the problem, not the solution. Austerity and a bloated and out-of-control military budget, along with the privatization of public services and institutions such as utilities and public education, we are assured, are the way to economic growth. And presiding over this assault and unchecked kleptocracy are the con artist in chief and his billionaire friends from the fossil fuel and war industries and elsewhere on Wall Street. ...

There is no discussion in the corporate-controlled media of the effects of our out-of-control corporate capitalism. Workers struggling under massive debts, unable to pay for ever-rising health care and other basic costs, trapped in low-wage jobs that make life one long emergency, are rendered invisible by a media that entertains us with court gossip from porn actresses and reality television stars and focuses on celebrity culture. We ignore reality at our peril. “We’ve given a free pass to a capitalist system because we’ve been afraid to debate it,” Wolff said. “When you give a free pass to any institution, you create the conditions for it to rot right behind the facade. That’s what is happening.”

New York gig economy under threat as city cracks down on app-based services

The gig economy is having a bad summer in New York City. New York this month became the first major city to cap the number of cars that companies like Uber and Lyft are allowed to put on the road. Just weeks earlier, the city council approved and New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, signed a law to crack down on Airbnb, requiring the company to hand over the names and addresses of all its hosts to an enforcement office.

With the one-two punch, New York has jumped to the forefront of a push in cities around the world to clamp down on the app-based companies that are now among the biggest players in the transportation and lodging markets. “What we did should at least make it clear to other cities that commonsense regulation is possible,” said Corey Johnson, the city council speaker who made the tech company crackdowns among his first high-profile legislative pushes.

Each app presented its own set of challenges for city officials in New York – and each mounted a fierce but failed bid to stop the new rules. Uber flexed its political muscle in 2015 and was able to beat back a similar effort to impose a cap, which collapsed after a public lobbying blitz by the company. This time around, the company again argued that a cap would drive up prices and make it harder to get a ride in the city’s outer boroughs where transportation options are more sparse than in Manhattan – asking its customers to contact their representatives with the message: “URGENT: Your ride is at risk.” And it enlisted civil rights leaders to make the case that ride hailing was essential for black New Yorkers, who have faced discrimination from the city’s yellow cabs. The legislation, which puts a cap in place for one year, quickly passed anyway.

The number of cars plying the congested streets has exploded – to 113,000 licensed for hire vehicles as of 14 August, when the cap took effect, up from fewer than 47,000 at the beginning of 2014. The turn to e-hailing clobbered the city’s well-known yellow cabs, with some drivers buried in debt from medallions which have plunged in value. Six drivers have killed themselves in less than a year. “You don’t understand how bad it is,” said yellow cab driver Abraham Lobe, a member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. He said that once, a driver could make $200 in a single morning or evening rush hour. Now, it’s less than $50.

In addition to the cap on licenses for hire vehicles, another law will establish minimum earnings for app drivers – requiring the companies to make up the difference if drivers don’t make enough from fares.

Federal Judge Rules Trump's Anti-Worker Order Unconstitutional

A federal judge's ruling late Friday has given public sector unions a major victory—and offered a firm rebuke to President Donald Trump's anti-worker agenda—by declaring unconstitutional administration rules that sought to make it easier to fire government employees and undermine their right to bargain collectively.

Deciding on a challenge first brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and later joined by other unions, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that Trump's orders "exceeded his authority" and violated the workers First Amendment rights.

Trump announces US-Mexico trade deal, setting stage for Nafta overhaul

Donald Trump has said he will strike a new trade deal with Mexico while ripping up the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and threatening a trade war with Canada. “I’ll be terminating the existing deal and going into this deal,” the US president told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “We’ll be starting negotiating with Canada relatively soon. They want to negotiate very badly.”

He added: “One way or the other, we have a deal with Canada. It’ll either be a tariff on cars or it will be a negotiated deal. Frankly, a tariff on cars is a much easier way to go but perhaps the other would be much better for Canada.” Trump also said it might be possible to make a deal involving all three countries, like the 24-year-old Nafta pact, but that separate bilateral agreements are also a possibility.

However, any trade deal would have to first be approved by Congress, and time is running out. Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto will soon leave office and there is no guarantee his successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, will agree to the same terms. Nafta reduced most trade barriers between the US, Mexico and Canada. But Trump and other critics say it encouraged US manufacturers to move south of the border to exploit low-wage Mexican labour.

The agreement with Mexico requires 75% of a car’s value to be manufactured in North America, up from Nafta’s current level of 62.5%, Reuters reported. It would also require 40% to 45% of the car to be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour. Trump has repeatedly called Nafta a job-killing “disaster” for the US.

Unions Working Towards Starting Third Party w/Nick Brana

Zephyr Teachout’s Fundraising Spikes In Wake of New York Times Endorsement in Attorney General Race

The New York Times endorsement of Zephyr Teachout has supercharged her campaign for New York attorney general, with more than 3,000 contributions coming in the five days since it was announced, according to the Teachout campaign. The contributions averaged $62 a pop, totaling more than $200,000, a significant boost as the race heads into its final stretch. ... The Times made its endorsement based on the candidate’s independence from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a willingness to use the power of the office to hold President Donald Trump accountable, terms Teachout has long argued make her the strongest candidate.

Letitia James, New York City’s public advocate, has been both boosted and hampered by her connection to Cuomo, who has endorsed her.

On Friday, the rising progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released a new endorsement video for Teachout and rallied with her in Long Island. A day earlier, Teachout picked up the endorsement of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which also backed her failed 2016 congressional run in upstate New York, and was the only national group to back her 2014 challenge to Cuomo. Teachout was criticized recently by the New York Daily News for getting more than half of her money from outside of New York, and while the PCCC has tens of thousands of New York members, it is a national organization, likely to bring in still more small dollar donations from out of state.

The charge underscores a paradox of the new small-donor movement in Democratic politics. In order to match big dollar fundraising, candidates need a national following, even if they are running for a House seat or a statewide office. But that leaves them vulnerable to the criticism that their support isn’t homegrown. It remains to be seen whether that will be a potent criticism within the party in the long term, but in Teachout’s case, it’s plain to see why people outside New York are interested in who will be the next prosecutor with authority over the Trump Organization.

Sanders Backers Win Major Reforms as Democratic Nat’l Committee Votes to Limit Superdelegate Power

Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people nutrient deficient

Rising levels of carbon dioxide could make crops less nutritious and damage the health of hundreds of millions of people, research has revealed, with those living in some of the world’s poorest regions likely to be hardest hit. Previous research has shown that many food crops become less nutritious when grown under the CO₂ levels expected by 2050, with reductions of protein, iron and zinc estimated at 3–17%.

Now experts say such changes could mean that by the middle of the century about 175 million more people develop a zinc deficiency, while 122 million people who are not currently protein deficient could become so. In addition, about 1.4 billion women of childbearing age and infants under five years old will be living in regions where there will be the highest risk of iron deficiency. ...

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, Smith and co-author Samuel Myers, also from Harvard, describe how they drew on data from a host of sources, including figures from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, to explore food supply in different countries. In total Smith and Myers looked at 225 different foods including wheat, rice, maize and specific vegetables, roots and fruits.

The results, which cover 151 countries, reveal that it is countries in north Africa, south and south-east Asia and the Middle East that are likely to be among the hardest hit – together with some nations in sub-Saharan Africa. In India, it is estimated that by 2050 about 50 million more people will be zinc deficient, and 38 million more protein deficient. With quality of diet linked to income, the researchers say the poorest in such countries are most likely to be at risk. By contrast, countries including the US, France and Australia and parts of south America are expected to experience little impact.

Fall of the 'Frack Master': apostle who briefed parliament lands in Texas jail

The self-appointed evangelist of the Texas fracking boom launched into a jargon-laced monologue, prompting the chairman of the UK parliament’s Welsh affairs committee to request he speak in plain English. ... Chris Faulkner, an intense, balding, bearded figure in a charcoal suit and blue tie, leaned forward and continued. He spent 40 minutes educating MPs about his state’s embrace of hydraulic fracturing, including the marvel of horizontal drilling in urban areas. “We’ve drilled … underneath downtown Fort Worth, underneath hospitals, schools,” he said.

In the autumn and winter of 2013, the so-called “Frack Master” was one of 16 witnesses who appeared before the committee, which was considering the economic and environmental impact of drilling potentially thousands of shale gas wells. ... Hosting websites for oil and gas companies was Faulkner’s only experience with the energy sector before 2009, federal authorities claim. In the mid-2000s, he was an internet entrepreneur listed as the president of a website that sold adult movies and a company called Porn Toys Corp.

In June this year, Faulkner was arrested by federal agents as he attempted to board a flight from Los Angeles to London. Charged with securities fraud, mail fraud and illegal monetary transactions, he could face decades behind bars. Deemed a flight risk, he is currently detained in a Texas prison. ... At the time he addressed the parliamentary committee, Faulkner had for a year been under civil investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In 2015, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the FBI initiated a criminal inquiry and seized documents and data from the offices of Faulkner’s company, Breitling, in Dallas.

Prosecutors contend that the 41-year-old started and ran oil and gas companies through which he acquired interests in prospective wells in several US states. They say he cited spurious geology reports and vastly inflated potential production and cost estimates: a $2.6m well was pitched as a $25m project. It is claimed he pocketed the difference between amounts raised from investors and the true costs of exploiting the wells.

Asked how Faulkner came to address MPs, Davies said in an email to the Guardian: “The committee generally seeks to get people who have different views to come forward. ... It is not surprising that politicians noticed Faulkner, given that he featured as an industry commentator in many media outlets – including the Guardian, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN and the BBC, which interviewed him dismissing the environmental concerns of anti-fracking protesters in Sussex. He also had a radio show, Powering America, and wrote a book, The Fracking Truth.

Tom Carper Touts His Environmental Record, but a Closer Look Suggests It’s Not So Clean

Tom Carper is known as one of the most conservative blue-state Democrats in the Senate — a reliable hawk with close ties to the finance, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries and a voting record to match. His list of legislative accomplishments includes approving the Iraq War, a scale-back of Dodd-Frank’s post-2008 era regulations on the financial sector, and a consistent, 40-year bank-friendly record. Now facing a challenge from his left in a Democratic primary — Air Force veteran and community organizer Kerri Evelyn Harris — he’s eager to tout his progressive credentials. Carper’s weapon of choice? His environmental record.

As Carper rose through the ranks of the Senate, his decision to prioritize his climb up the ladder of the Environment and Public Works Committee over his position on the Banking Committee has left him with the institutional support of national environmental groups like the League of Conservation Voters, or LCV, and the National Resources Defense Council, or NRDC. In narration over dramatic music, a recent ad from the Carper campaign, titled “Fierce,” highlights the Trump administration’s push to expand offshore drilling. “Sen. Tom Carper has a simple message for Trump,” a female narrator intones, adding Carper’s response: “Over my dead body.”

That message may not be so simple after all. While Carper has opposed offshore drilling in Delaware, he’s voted four separate times in support of drilling off the coast of Virginia (2007), on the Outer Continental Shelf (2003), and in the Gulf of Mexico (2001, 2006). Donald Trump’s support for offshore drilling, meanwhile, didn’t stop Carper from voting to confirm Rick Perry to be head of the Department of Energy. (Carper did oppose Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.) He also voted repeatedly in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. (He later stated that he only backed the project because Republicans had promised to in turn deliver their support for geothermal and offshore wind capacity in exchange, and said that he pulled his backing once they failed to deliver.)

This Senate term alone, Carper has accepted $163,468 from energy and natural resources companies, along with $73,510 from agribusiness corporations. That’s more than his opponent, Harris, has raised in total. A spokesperson for the Carper campaign declined to comment as to whether he had spoken with these donors about his votes on issues that impact their industries, or whether he had changed his position on offshore drilling since his earlier votes in favor of the practice.

Also of Interest

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

Children Separated Under Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” Policy Say Their Trauma Continues

Hold the Plaudits, John McCain’s 2008 Campaign Paved the Way for Donald Trump

The Other Side of John McCain

How a DuPont Spinoff Lobbied the EPA to Stave Off the Use of Environmentally Friendly Coolants

INTRODUCING: Consortium News on Flash Points, Our Second Radio Show

A Little Night Music

J T Brown - Boogie Baby

Bep's Brown and His Orchestra - Round House Boogie

J T Brown - Windy City Boogie

Memphis Jimmy with J.T Brown's Boogie Band - Jimmy's Jump

Elmore James w/J.T. Brown - Cry For Me Baby

Booker T Washington W/J.T.Brown's Blu-Blowers - St. Louis Boogie

Little Johnny Jones (w/J.T.Brown) - Dirty By The Dozen (Sweet Little Woman)

Elmore James (w/J.T.Brown) - I Believe