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Supreme Court Junket King Scalia Dies While Vacationing with Wealthy Patrons at Private West Texas Getaway
By Dave Lindorff
It’s appropriate that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died at a luxury resort while freeloading as the guest of thus far unidentified wealthy sponsors as one of 40 guests at a private quail-hunting vacation party.
Conversation with activist Alfredo Lopez: The Left Needs to ‘Own’ Bernie Sanders to Ensure He Delivers on Campaign Promises
By Dave Lindorff
"Liquid Freedom": First Company to Export US Crude Oil Now Exporting Iran's Oil
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Army of Lobbyists Push LNG Exports, Methane Hydrates, Coal in Senate Energy Bill
Cros-Posted from DeSmogBlog
He’s the best, but is he all we need?: The ‘Bern’ and the Internet
By Alfredo Lopez
Bernie Sanders' stunning success in the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, highlighted by what is effectively a victory in the Iowa caucuses this past Monday, provokes serious thinking about what a Sanders presidency would look like.
Banana Republic: U.S. Fracking Pioneer Aubrey McClendon Bringing Practice to Argentina
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Aubrey McClendon, the embattled former CEO and co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, has announced his entrance into Argentina to begin hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in the country's Vaca Muerta Shale basin.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
A candidate of by and for the 0.01%: Former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Fearing a Trump/Sanders Race, Eyes Running for President
By Dave Lindorff
Lunacy trumps logic: Brash Trump Bashed for Bigotry in UK’s Parliament
By Linn Washington, Jr.
London -- In a rational world where the rules of arithmetic apply it just doesn’t add up to declare that 40,000 is mathematically more significant than 500,000.
Clinton now red-baiting Sanders: Desperation in Hillary Camp as Bernie Gains in Iowa and New Hampshire
By Dave Lindorff
Someone should have warned Hillary Clinton and the goon squad at the Democratic National Committee that old-fashioned red-baiting isn't going to cut it in today's United States. It's not the 1950s anymore and the Soviet Union and Comintern are ancient history.
Leaked EPA Document Showing Water Contamination Could Be Smoking Gun in Federal Lawsuit
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
A PowerPoint presentation obtained from a source and published by DeSmog in August 2013 has made its way into a major hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") related legal case, which is set to go to trial soon in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
New Book Reveals Koch Brothers Paid Firm Run by Former NYPD Chief to Smear Journalist
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The just-published book "Dark Money," penned by New Yorker staff reporter Jane Mayer, reveals that the Koch Brothers hired the former commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD) — and his daughter, a former FBI agent — to smear her as a "plagiarist" in the months after the release of her August 2010 bombshell article on the Kochs.
Sanders campaign offers a historic opportunity: We Need a Mass Movement Demanding Real Social Security and Medicare for All
By Dave Lindorff
The rising fortunes of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist US senator from Vermont, in the Democratic presidential primaries, provides a unique opportunity for organizing a new radical movement around key political goals including a national health care program for all Americans, not just the elderly and disabled, and a national retirement program that people can actually live on.
A Homeland Is a Country That Allows Domestic Use of Military
Have you seen Dahr Jamail's report on U.S. military plans for war games in Washington state? I'm sure some observers imagine that the military is simply looking for a place to engage in safe and responsible and needed practice in hand-to-hand combat against incoming North Korean nuclear missiles, or perhaps to rehearse a humanitarian invasion of Russia to uphold the fundamental international law against Vladimir Putin's existence.
But if you look over the history of domestic use of the U.S. military -- such as by reading the new book Soldiers on the Home Front: The Domestic Role of the American Military -- it's hard not to wonder whether, from the U.S. military's point of view, at least a side benefit of the coming war game isn't rehearsing for the next time citizens in kayaks interfere with a corporation intent on poisoning the earth's climate with fossil fuels.
Soldiers on the Home Front is almost rah-rah enthusiastic in its support for the U.S. military: "Our task here is to celebrate the U.S. military's profound historical and continuing contribution to domestic tranquility, while at the same time ... ." Yet it tells a story of two centuries of the U.S. military and state militias and the National Guard being used to suppress dissent, eliminate labor rights, deny civil liberties, attack Native Americans, and abuse African Americans. Even the well-known restrictions on military use put into law and often ignored -- such as the Posse Comitatus Act -- were aimed at allowing, not preventing, the abuse of African Americans. The story is one of gradually expanding presidential power, both in written law and in practice, with the latter far outpacing the former.
Some of us are grateful to see restraint in the approach to the men occupying a federal facility in Oregon. But we are horrified by the lack of similar restraint in using the military or militarized police against peaceful protesters in U.S. cities. Police departments as we know them simply did not exist when the U.S. Constitution -- virtually unaltered since -- was cobbled together in an age of muskets, slavery, and genocide. Among the developments that concern me far more than the authors of Soldiers on the Home Front:
Numerous drills and practices, and the locking down of Boston, desensitizing people to the presence of the U.S. military on our streets.
Congress members threatened with martial law if they vote against their oligarchs.
The legalization of lawless military imprisonment without charge or trial for U.S. citizens or anyone else.
The legalization of murder by drone or any other technology of U.S. citizens or anyone else, with arguments that apply within the Homeland just as anywhere else, though we've been told all the murders have been abroad.
Nuclear weapons illegally flown across the country and left unguarded.
Mercenaries on the streets of New Orleans after a hurricane.
Northcom given legal power to illegally act within the United States against the people of the United States.
Fusion centers blurring all lines between military and domestic government violence.
Secret and not-so-secret continuity of government plans that could put martial law in place at the decision of a president or in the absence of a president.
The militarization of the Mexican border.
The gruesome history and future of the attack on the Bonus Army, the bombing of West Virginia, Operation Northwoods, tin soldiers and Nixon coming, and Franklin Roosevelt's actual and Donald Trump's possible internment camps.
The authors of Soldiers on the Home Front claim that we must balance all such dangers with the supposed need for a military to address "storms, earthquakes, cyber attacks ..., bioterrorism." Why must we? None of these threats can be best addressed by people trained and armed to kill and destroy. When only such people have funding and numbers and equipment, they can look preferable to nothing. But what if we had an unarmed, nonviolent green energy brigade taking on the protection of the climate, and non-military police ready to enforce laws in crises, a major new Civilian Conservation Corps trained and equipped and funded to provide emergency services, a computer whiz team dedicated to fending off cyber attacks and preventing their ongoing provocation by U.S. government cyber attackers, a publicly funded healthcare system prepared for health emergencies, and a State Department redirected away from weapons marketing and into a new project of building respectful and cooperative relations with the world?
If the United States were to move from militarism to all of the above, the main problem would be what to do with all of the remaining money.
Yellen has to raise rates: What’s Behind the Fed’s Decision to Raise Interest Rates in a Struggling Economy?
By Dave Lindorff
Much has been written over the past few weeks in the financial press and the business pages of general interest newspapers debating the wisdom of the decision in December by Janet Yellen and the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates for the first time in almost a decade.
Dying and well-behaved and you might get medicine: Pennsylvania’s Barbaric Protocol for Non-Treatment of Prisoners with Hep-C
By Dave Lindorff
Emails: US Government Facilitated LNG Business Deals Before Terminals Got Required Federal Permits
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Emails and documents obtained by DeSmog reveal that the U.S. Department of Trade has actively promoted and facilitated business deals for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry and export terminal owners, even before some of the terminals have the federal regulatory agency permits needed to open for business.
Obama's Oily Christmas Gift: Faster Pipeline Approvals
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Just over a week before the U.S. signed the Paris climate agreement at the conclusion of the COP21 United Nations summit, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law with a provision that expedites permitting of oil and gas pipelines in the United States.
My 2016 New Years Day: The Good, the Sad and the Ugly
By John Grant
Philadelphia -- A number of things converged to make my New Years special this year. Three of them were good, one was not so good -- in fact, it had the sense of a nasty omen for the future.
Ruling soon on Mumia non-treatment policy challenge: PA Admits Secret ‘Protocol’ Denies Hep-C Treatment to All But Dying Inmates
By Dave Lindorff
Following three days of contentious testimony in a courtroom in Scranton, PA late last month, a federal district judge is considering a legal petition by Pennsylvania's most well-known prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal for a finding that the state's long-running refusal to treat his active case of Hepatitis-C, a potentially fatal disease, violates his Eighth Amendment right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
Court could rule not treating inmates with Hep C violates 8th Amendment: Dr. Jess Guh on Hep-C Epidemic in Nation’s Prisons
Dr. Jess Guh on Hep-C Epidimec in Nation’s Prison and PA’s Refusal to Treat Mumia Abu-Jamal
A Progressive Radio Network podcast
Dave Lindorff and his guest on PRN.fm's “This Can't Be Happening!" program, Dr. Jess Guh, talk about Mumia Abu-Jamal’s court battle in federal court in Scranton to force the state’s prison system to provide him with treatment for his active and potentially fatal case of Hepatitis-C.
Dr. Guh, a primary car physician from Seattle who has been investigating the shoddy standard of health care in the nation’s prisons, and who has reviewed some 100 pages of Mumia’s medical record, says that what Pennsylvania and many other states are doing to prisoners in their control by denying Hep-C treatment is nothing short of malpractice and neglegence on a massive scale.
To hear this podcast, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/2972
Big Oil Argued for U.S. Crude Exports to Fend Off Iran, But First Exporter Vitol Group Also Exported Iran's Oil
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The American Petroleum Institute (API) successfully lobbied for an end to the 40-year ban on exporting U.S.-produced crude oil in part by making a geopolitical argument: Iran and Russia have the ability to export their oil, so why not unleash America?
"Miracle of American Oil": Continental Resources Courted Corporate Media to Sell Oil Exports
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
A document published by the Public Relations Society of America, discovered by DeSmog, reveals that from the onset of its public relations campaign, the oil industry courted mainstream media reporters to help it sell the idea of lifting the ban on crude oil exports to the American public and policymakers.
Abu-Jamal case shows widespread neglect of inmate health: Mumia Faces Possible Second Death Sentence
By Jess Guh
This is the third in a three-part series on Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight to force the Pennsylvania prison system to treat his active Hep-C infection, and that of thousands of other infected state inmates, and on the raging Hepatitis-C epidemic in the nation's prisons. (Click here for Part I or here for Part II)
Seattle, WA – Physicians are held to professional expectations dictating that the failure to provide standard healthcare is malpractice. There is no difference between failing to provide a service and performing a liable medical mistake.
ExxonMobil, Peabody Coal Lobbying for Bill Preventing Climate Change Accounting in US Trade Deals
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The day before global leaders and diplomats passed a climate change deal in Paris at the United Nations climate summit, the U.S. House of Representatives — in a 256-158 vote — authorized the final text of a bill that has a provision preventing climate change to be accounted for in all U.S. trade deals going forward.
Federal Court Gives Blessing to Covertly Approved Enbridge Cross-Border Tar Sands Pipeline Expansion
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
A federal court has ruled that the Enbridge Alberta Clipper (Line 67) cross-border tar sands pipeline expansion project, permitted covertly and behind closed doors by the Obama Administration, got its greenlight in a legal manner.
Groups Ask Columbia University To Reveal Funding Behind Exxon-Tied Center on Global Energy Policy
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Final exams and winter break loom large for students at Columbia University, but at the upper echelons of the university's administration, new calls for transparency about the funding of a university affiliated center are likely to create plenty of homework as well.
Judge rejects state’s arguments to reject case: Abu-Jamal Gets Federal Court Hearing Seeking Order to Treat His Hepatitis-C Inf
By Dave Lindorff
The second in a three-part series on Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight to force the Pennsylvania prison system to treat his active Hep-C infection, and that of thousands of other infected state inmates, and on the raging Hepatitis C epidemic in the nation's prisons
Mumia Abu-Jamal Battles for His Life...Again
By Linn Washington, Jr.
The big courthouse news in Pennsylvania this week does not involve yet another sordid revelation in the sleazy racist-pornographic email scandal now soiling top justice system officials in the Keystone State that include a state supreme court justice and ranking prosecutors.
Meet the Lobbyists and Big Money Interests Pushing to End the Oil Exports Ban
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The ongoing push to lift the ban on exports of U.S.-produced crude oil appears to be coming to a close, with Congress agreeing to a budget deal with a provision to end the decades-old embargo.
