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“Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.”

-- Glenn Greenwald

News and Opinion

Report Finds So-Called US War on Terror Has Displaced as Many as 59 Million People

The ongoing U.S. "war on terror" has forcibly displaced as many as 59 million people from just eight countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia since 2001, according to a new report published Tuesday by Brown University's Costs of War Project.

Titled "Creating Refugees: Displacement Caused by the United States' Post-9/11 Wars" (pdf), the new report conservatively estimates that at least 37 million people have "fled their homes in the eight most violent wars the U.S. military has launched or participated in since 2001."

The latest figure represents a dramatic increase from the Costs of War Project's 2019 report, which estimated that 21 million people had been displaced internally or forced to flee their home countries due to violence inflicted or unleashed by U.S.-led wars over the past two decades. That report also put the death toll of the so-called war on terror at 801,000 and the price tag at $6.4 trillion.

The new report argues that "wartime displacement (alongside war deaths and injuries) must be central to any analysis of the post-9/11 wars and their short- and long-term consequences."

"Displacement also must be central to any possible consideration of the future use of military force by the United States or others," the report states. "Ultimately, displacing 37 million—and perhaps as many as 59 million—raises the question of who bears responsibility for repairing the damage inflicted on those displaced."

In addition to the tens of millions displaced by U.S. military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, the report notes that millions more have been displaced by "smaller combat operations, including in: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia."

"To put these figures in perspective, displacing 37 million people is equivalent to removing nearly all the residents of the state of California or all the people in Texas and Virginia combined," the report says. "The figure is almost as large as the population of Canada. In historical terms, 37 million displaced is more than those displaced by any other war or disaster since at least the start of the 20th century with the sole exception of World War II."

"Unforgetting": Roberto Lovato's Memoir Links U.S. Military in Central America to Migration Crisis

DAY TWO OF ASSANGE HEARING: US Tries to Narrow its Espionage Charge to Only Naming Informants; Defense Witness Crumbles Under Cross Examination

The prosecution tried to narrow the Espionage Act charges down to only classified documents that mentioned the names of informants, a gambit shot down by the defense when it quoted directly from the indictment proving otherwise. Before the defense got the chance, Julian Assange shouted from his glass cage at the back of the court that it was “nonsense” to suggest he wasn’t being prosecuted for all the classified material he published. That brought a firm warning from Magistrate Vanessa Baraitser that he would be removed from the court if he did it again.

The informants theme is one we can expect the government to continue harping on for the duration of this hearing, as they have very little else go on. James Lewis QC for the prosecution quoted from a book that alleges Assange said informants deserved to die, an assertion that has been denied by a German editor present. He is to testify next week. The other line of attack from the prosecution is that Assange “conspired” with Chelsea Manning to “hack” government a computer to obtain classified documents. In the afternoon, the continuation of Prof. Mark Feldstein continued from Monday.

Under direct examination Feldstein made a spirited defense of Assange’s activities as being routine for journalists. The government, he said, “paints journalistic activities in a nefarious light.” He said it is “standard to ask sources for evidence and documents to back up what they say and working with them to find documents, making suggestions to what they should look for. It’s all routine.” Feldstein also told defense attorney Mark Summers that no publisher had ever been prosecuted before for publishing, but that former presidents had tried. He told the story of Richard Nixon who wanted to prosecute columnist Jack Anderson but was told by his attorney he could not because it would violate the First Amendment. ...

But on cross examination Feldstein fell apart. He allowed himself to be bullied by Lewis. It this were a prize fight, the referee would have ended it. Instead Lewis took advantage of his prey, asking legal questions he knew Feldstein was not equipped to handle. He badgered him about why the grand jury on Assange continued, even though Feldstein testified that the Obama administration decided not to prosecute because it would run up against the First Amendment. ...

Prosecution had tried to establish on cross that Assange is not being charged with publishing classified information, but only publishing names of informants, which happened to be in classified documents. There is no specific U.S. statute against revealing informants names, as there is regarding the names of covert government agents, as readers will recall in the Valerie Plame case. But James Lewis QC for the prosecution argued that informant names are national defense information and thus protected by the Espionage Act. This is a sleight of hand and speaks to the public relations nature of the U.S. case. Lewis on the one hand argues Assange is not being charged with publishing, but only with publishing documents with informants’ names. That is an appeal to First Amendment concerns. But that is still a charge of publishing classified information, even if restricted to those with informant names.

[Much more at the link. -js]

Glenn Greenwald: Why The Media Is SILENT On Julian Assange's Trial

175 Years in a U.S. Prison? Extradition Trial of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Begins in London

Brazil's ex-president Lula condemns Bolsonaro over Covid in comeback bid

Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has accused Jair Bolsonaro of turning the coronavirus pandemic into a “weapon of mass destruction” in a high-profile intervention some have seen as the start of an attempted political comeback.

In a wide-ranging video manifesto – which allies, adversaries and analysts took as a signal Lula would seek to challenge Brazil’s far-right leader in the next presidential election – the leftist condemned Bolsonaro’s handling of a crisis that has killed more than 127,000 Brazilians. “Yes, so many deaths could have been avoided,” claimed the 74-year-old, who governed Brazil from 2003 until 2011.

“We are in the hands of a government that attaches no value to life and trivialises death. An insensitive, irresponsible and incompetent government that flouted World Health Organization guidelines and turned the coronavirus into a weapon of mass destruction.

“The overwhelming majority of those killed by coronavirus are poor, black, vulnerable people who were abandoned by the state,” he added.

Lula is currently barred from running for office after being stripped of his political rights in 2018 when he was imprisoned for corruption and sidelined from a presidential race Bolsonaro went on to win. But some suspect Lula’s conviction could soon be overturned because of questions over the impartiality of his judge Sergio Moro who, after jailing Lula, was made Bolsonaro’s justice minister.

Covid-19 death rate among African Americans and Latinos rising sharply

The death rate in the US from Covid-19 among African Americans and Latinos is rising sharply, exacerbating the already staggering racial divide in the impact of the pandemic which has particularly devastated communities of color.

New figures compiled by the Color of Coronavirus project shared with the Guardian show that both total numbers of deaths and per-capita death rates have increased dramatically in August for black and brown Americans. Though fatalities have also increased for white Americans, the impact on this group has been notably less severe.

The latest figures record that in the two weeks from 4 to 18 August the death rate of African Americans shot up from 80 to 88 per 100,000 population – an increase of eight per 100,000. By contrast the white population suffered half that increase, from 36 to 40 per 100,000, an increase of 4 per 100,000.

For Latino Americans the increase was even more stark, rising from 46 to 54 per 100,000 – an increase of nine per 100,000. ...

On 18 August, the latest date on which the researchers have crunched the numbers, almost 36,000 African Americans had died from Covid-19. The new uptick means that 1 in 1,125 black Americans have died from the disease, compared with 1 in 2,450 white Americans – half the rate.

Report Finds Sturgis Motorcycle Rally a Superspreader Event Infecting Over 260,000

Public health experts this week reiterated warnings against large gatherings following a new report that estimates the 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota last month led to more than 260,000 Covid-19 cases around the country and cost an estimated $12.2 billion in public healthcare spending.

The research suggests that between August 2 and September 2, nearly one in five coronavirus cases was linked to the rally.

"The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the 'worst-case scenarios' for superspreading occurred simultaneously," wrote the report's authors, including Andrew Friedson, an associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver. "The event was prolonged, included individuals packed closely together, involved a large out-of-town population, and had low compliance with recommended infection countermeasures such as the use of masks."

Authors of the report, published by Germany-based IZA Institute of Labor Economics, tracked anonymous cell phone data from the rally and estimated the event helped spread Covid-19 to at least 263,708 people and cost billions:

If we conservatively assume that all of these cases were non-fatal, then these cases represent a cost of over $12.2 billion, based on the statistical cost of a Covid-19 case of $46,000 estimated by Kniesner and Sullivan (2020). This is enough to have paid each of the estimated 462,182 rally attendees $26,553.64 not to attend. This is by no means an accurate accounting of the true externality cost of the event, as it counts those who attended and were infected as part of the externality when their costs are likely internalized.

However, this calculation is nonetheless useful as it provides a ballpark estimate as to how large of an externality a single superspreading event can impose, and a sense of how valuable restrictions on mass gatherings can be in this context. Even if half of the new cases were attendees, the implied externality is still quite large. Finally, our descriptive evidence suggests that stricter mitigation policies in other locations may contribute to limiting externality exposure due to the behavior of non-compliant events and those who travel to them.

"This is a recurrent story of large crowds that disdain masks and distancing fueling superspreader events that keep driving the pandemic," Atul Gawande, surgeon and author, tweeted in response to the report.

Transit Worker Union President: Washington ABANDONED Workers

'So Meager It Insults the American People': Democratic Leaders Say GOP Covid-19 Relief Plan Is Dead on Arrival

Upon returning from summer recess on Tuesday, Senate Republicans introduced a 78-page piece of legislation that party leaders have called a "skinny" coronavirus relief plan, which progressive lawmakers and other critics swiftly decried as inadequate, echoing earlier complaints about the proposal from top congressional Democrats.

"How pathetic," tweeted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "While Senate Republicans tell us we can't afford to give $2,000 a month to the working class during the economic crisis, the Covid-19 'relief' bill they just released provides $161 million in corporate welfare to the coal industry during a climate emergency."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), speaking on the chamber's floor Tuesday, said that "if you want to draft a bill that is certain to fail, this is it." He added, "As the pain from this pandemic gets bigger and bigger, Republicans think smaller and smaller."

Health disaster and class conflict on horizon as millions of students return to US schools

Following the Labor Day holiday, the vast majority of K-12 public schools have now begun their fall semester across the United States. Millions of students and educators have been forced back into overcrowded and dilapidated schools, which will induce a massive spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, the US surpassed 6.5 million COVID-19 cases and is on track to soon reach the gruesome death toll of 200,000. The nation’s roughly 13,600 school districts have been left to their own devices, reopening either fully in-person, or fully remote instruction, or under the “hybrid” model combining the two. Given the rapid level of community transmission of COVID-19 and the porousness of district and state boundaries, the latest science makes clear that the only safe method of instruction at present is full remote learning.

A study released in July found that the transition to remote learning in the spring prevented 1.37 million infections over a 26-day period and saved roughly 40,600 lives in the US over a 16-day period. Another study last month found that aerosolized particles containing COVID-19 can travel up to 16 feet through indoor settings, exposing the utter fraud that a “hybrid” model with minimal social distancing can be done safely.

Democratic and Republican politicians nationally are consciously implementing a policy of “herd immunity” that they know will lead to a catastrophic loss of life for the most vulnerable sections of the population. They do so in order to reduce pension and health care obligations, and to force parents back into factories and other workplaces where they face ramped-up exploitation in order to service the unprecedented levels of debt produced by the CARES Act bailout of Wall Street and major corporations.

There are no national or state bodies aggregating reopening plans for all school districts in the country, a damning testament to the contempt of the ruling class for educators and the entire working class. The most comprehensive list of reopening plans has been compiled by Education Week, which reports plans for 888 districts across the country, including the 100 largest districts. Of these districts, 219 are providing fully in-person instruction involving 2.54 million students; 246 are reopening under the “hybrid” model involving 3.84 million students; and 423 are reopening fully online involving 13.2 million students.

Based on this list, roughly a third of all public school students have returned to classrooms at least part-time. If these figures are extrapolated for all 50.8 million students in the US, then roughly 6.6 million have now resumed fully in-person learning and another 10 million have resumed partial in-person learning under the hybrid model. The results of these policies have already been catastrophic, with thousands of COVID-19 infections tied to K-12 school reopenings and tens of thousands on college campuses. Following reports of major outbreaks at schools that first reopened in late July, a regime of censorship has been erected across the country, with districts and states falsely claiming that HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) laws prevent them from sharing information on outbreaks in schools.

In the coming weeks there will be a flood of news reports that teachers, education workers, students and parents have died as a result of school reopenings, which will provoke a groundswell of opposition. There will be revolts by educators, attempted retaliation by administrators and the state apparatus, and the eruption of broader struggles by the working class against the homicidal back-to-school and back-to-work policies.

Worth a full read:

Colleges and Universities Lobby for Liability Protection As They Reopen

Back in April, with the COVID-19 pandemic peaking in New York, Purdue University President Mitch Daniels made headlines with a letter suggesting that his school should reopen in the fall. “It is a huge and daunting problem, but the Purdue way has always been to tackle problems, not hide from them,” Daniels wrote.

Daniels followed up with an op-ed in the Washington Post the next month, outlining steps the school planned to take. Purdue would social distance and “forgo the concerts, convocations, and social occasions that ordinarily enliven campus life,” he promised, and “a panel of scientists and clinicians” would guide its actions. Daniels even testified before the Senate that he was confident in his school’s ability to reopen safely.

But while Daniels was publicly expressing confidence in Purdue’s safety plans, the university was busy lobbying Congress on “institutional liability during pandemic response,” records show. Purdue was among many schools working in Washington to inoculate themselves from COVID-related lawsuits as they geared up to reopen their campuses in the face of the historic threat posed by the highly contagious virus.

A TMI review of lobbying records found at least a dozen schools -- some of which are taxpayer-funded -- and four higher education industry trade groups have lobbied for coronavirus liability protections in Washington this year. A new national front group led by veteran Republican operatives is campaigning for liability protections as well, warning of “frivolous lawsuits.”

The moves to reopen schools and the concurrent push for protection from lawsuits are happening as college towns have experienced significant COVID outbreaks.

Billionaires Collect TRILLIONS As Bottom Half Wages Plunge

Nasdaq drops over 4% as tech sector sell-off continues

The US tech sell-off on Wall Street extended to a third day on Tuesday, with electric carmaker Tesla among the biggest fallers suffering its worst day in nearly six months. The tech-heavy Nasdaq stock market dropped over 4%, following similar falls on Thursday and Friday. Wall Street was closed on Monday for the Labor Day holiday.

Shares in Tesla fell 21% on Tuesday, while Apple was down 6.7% and Amazon down 4.3%.

Tesla, with Elon Musk as chief executive, has been one of the biggest winners of recent stock market rallies as investors have piled into tech firms during the pandemic. The company’s share price surged 74.1% in August alone and is up about 400% this year. The rise has made Tesla more valuable than some of the world’s largest automakers, including Toyota and Volkswagen. ...

All the major US stock markets were in the red on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 and the Dow down over 2%. While many traders see the sell-off in tech as a move by investors to take some profits after a historic boom, broader concerns about the US economy also appear to be worrying the markets.

US justice department seeks to defend Trump in lawsuit tied to rape allegation

The US justice department is seeking to take over Donald Trump’s defense in a defamation lawsuit from a writer who accused him of rape, and federal lawyers asked a court on Tuesday to allow a move that could put the American people on the hook for any money she might be awarded.

After New York state courts turned down Trump’s request to delay E Jean Carroll’s suit, justice department lawyers filed court papers on Tuesday aiming to shift the case into federal court and to substitute the US for Trump as the defendant. That means the federal government, rather than Trump himself, might have to pay damages if any are awarded.

The filing complicates, at least for the moment, Carroll’s efforts to get a DNA sample from the president as potential evidence and to have him answer questions under oath.

Justice department lawyers argue that Trump was “acting within the scope of his office” when he denied Carroll’s allegations, made last year, that he raped her in a New York luxury department store in the mid-1990s. She says his comments – including that she was “totally lying” to sell a memoir – besmirched her character and harmed her career.

“Numerous courts have recognized that elected officials act within the scope of their office or employment when speaking with the press, including with respect to personal matters,” the DoJ attorneys wrote.

Rochester police chief and deputy to step down after Daniel Prude death

The chief and deputy police chiefs of Rochester, New York, are to step down, it was announced on Tuesday less than a week after footage emerged of a fatal incident from March in which officers in the city put a hood on Daniel Prude, who was potentially having a mental health episode, and then holding him down on the street.

The police chief, La’Ron Singletary, and the deputy chief, Joseph Morabito, had both served in the department for a number of decades. There were conflicting reports on Tuesday afternoon over whether the officers were going to retire or had resigned.

The news came on the same day that Prude’s family sued the chief, the city and others, arguing that the officers who arrested their loved one used physical, deadly force when Prude was not a threat.

Local Black Lives Matter activists had been demanding that Singletary resign since last week because of the department’s handling of the investigation into Prude’s death, and there have been protests in the city.

Police shoot 13-year-old boy with autism several times after mother calls for help

A 13-year-old boy with autism was shot several times by police officers who responded to his home in Salt Lake City after his mother called for help. Linden Cameron was recovering in a Utah hospital, his mother said, after suffering injuries to his shoulder, both ankles, his intestines and his bladder.

Golda Barton told KUTV she called 911 to request a crisis intervention team because her son, who has Asperger’s syndrome, was having an episode caused by “bad separation anxiety” as his mother went to work for the first time in more than a year. “I said, ‘He’s unarmed, he doesn’t have anything, he just gets mad and he starts yelling and screaming,’” she said. “He’s a kid, he’s trying to get attention, he doesn’t know how to regulate.”

She added: “They’re supposed to come out and be able to de-escalate a situation using the most minimal force possible.”

Instead, she said, two officers went through the front door of the home and in less than five minutes were yelling “get down on the ground” before firing several shots.

Debating the Senate Intel Russia report

Saagar Enjeti: Biden Team CAUGHT Lying, Assures Wall Street They Will Be Stooges

Why A Biden Presidency Will Disappoint Progressive Democrats

A Biden presidency will be another disappointment for the progressives who support the Democrats campaign.

The Washington Post is lauding Joe Biden's 'flexibility' on policy issues:

When Joe Biden released economic recommendations two months ago, they included a few ideas that worried some powerful bankers: allowing banking at the post office, for example, and having the Federal Reserve guarantee all Americans a bank account.

But in private calls with Wall Street leaders, the Biden campaign made it clear those proposals would not be central to Biden’s agenda.

“They basically said, ‘Listen, this is just an exercise to keep the Warren people happy, and don’t read too much into it,’ ” said one investment banker, referring to liberal supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The banker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks, said that message was conveyed on multiple calls.

By making promises to the more progressive parts of the Democrats while secretly pledging different policies to the rich Joe Biden is following the 'flexibility' of Barack Obama. ... Biden is showing such 'flexibility' on multiple issues:

This reluctance to be pinned down on policy details is central to Biden’s campaign, which has focused on a pledge to “restore the soul of the nation” rather than any particular legislative holy grail. While Biden has issued a raft of proposals, he’s often taken an all-things-to-all-people approach, sometimes making strong public declarations while relying on aides to soothe critics behind the scenes.

The ones who would be most disappointed with a center-right Biden regime will be those 'progressives' who currently support his campaign. Whatever they get promised now does not mean anything:

The Biden campaign said the economic recommendations were produced jointly by supporters of Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and were never intended as official policy.
...

[T]he Biden team views the task forces’ ideas as merely recommendations, while many Sanders supporters consider them binding.

Bernie Sanders’ Former Press Secretary About Why She’s Not Supporting Joe Biden

'Gross Mismanagement' of Public Lands: Trump Administration Urged to Cancel Planned Sales for Oil and Gas Drilling

Environmental and taxpayer groups on Tuesday urged the Trump administration to cancel plans to sell oil and natural gas leases on over 300,000 acres of public lands this month.

Reuters reports the pleas came on the same day that a Nevada auction drew little interest from a weakening drilling industry, with participants making mostly minimum bids. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) offered 11 parcels totaling 15,445 acres (6,880 hectares) in Eureka, Nye, and Landers counties at Tuesday's auction. Only seven of the parcels sold, for the minimum bid of $2 per acre. The auction raised a paltry $63,000.

The relatively small Nevada auction was the first of six that BLM plans to hold this month following a five-month pause in sales due to the coronavirus pandemic. The online auction site EnergyNet lists upcoming BLM drilling sales in Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.

Critics argue that such auction leases probably won't generate fair returns for taxpayers, since the oil and natural gas industry is reeling from dramatically lower prices and demand.

"Continuing this leasing binge is nothing short of fiscal lunacy and it represents a gross mismanagement of our nation's public lands," David Jenkins, president of the conservation group Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship (CRS), told reporters during a conference call.

CRS, the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the National Wildlife Federation are urging Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to cancel the upcoming sales, which follow a similar auction in New Mexico last month that drew tepid bidding. 

On Tuesday, oil prices plummeted to their lowest levels in more than a month amid concerns about demand and the coronavirus pandemic.

California fires burn record 2m acres as new blazes prompt rescue missions

Wildfires have burned a record 2m acres of California, with fresh conflagrations prompting dramatic rescue missions and shrouding much of the US west in smoke that has caused some of the worst air quality in the world.

The area burned this year is now larger than the state of Delaware, surpassing the annual state record of 1.96m acres that went up in flames throughout 2018, according to the California department of forestry and fire protection, or Cal Fire. ...

The scale and intensity of the fires, which have arrived before seasonal winds that typically spread flames throughout forests, have stunned firefighters hardened to huge blazes in the state. “It’s a little unnerving because September and October are historically our worst months for fires,” said Lynne Tolmachoff, a spokeswoman for Cal Fire.

More than 100 people trapped in remote locations were rescued by helicopter on Tuesday as one of the largest wildfires, the Creek fire, spread rapidly across more than 140,000 acres in the Sierras. Tweets from the California national guard showed dozens of people and several dogs disembarking in an airport in Fresno, with the national guard saying it was still attempting to rescue others.

Also of Interest

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

Chris Hedges: American Bloodlands

Tens Of Millions Of People Displaced By The ‘War On Terror’, The Greatest Scam Ever Invented

In Extradition Hearing, Julian Assange’s Legal Team Focuses On US Torture And War Crimes Exposed By WikiLeaks

Citing 'Criminal Exposure' in Straw-Donor Scheme and Possible Perjury, House Announces Investigation Into DeJoy

Trouble in store as Covid canning craze leads to empty shelves and price gouging

Antifa Navy Strikes Again

Krystal Ball: Latinos Flee Biden, Handing Trump Lifeline To Presidency

Krystal and Saagar: McConnell's PATHETIC Stimulus Offer As DC Lets Workers Burn Before Election

A Little Night Music

Larry Williams - She Said, Yeah

Larry Williams - Peaches And Cream

Larry Williams - Bad Boy

Larry Williams - Short Fat Fannie

Larry Williams - Just Because

Larry Williams - Baby, Baby

Larry Williams - Hootchy Koo

Larry Williams - Ting a ling

Larry Williams - Dizzy Miss Lizzy