You're Paying Big Oil to Pollute

Jim Hightower 

NOV 12, 2019

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/youre-paying-big-oil-to-pollute/

The one thing you never want to hear your dentist say is “oops!” It’s also alarming to hear from a former U.S. senator — 25 years after he passed a temporary oil subsidy for Big Oil.

With world petroleum prices low at the time, Senator J. Bennett Johnston (D-LA) pushed through a special break in 1995, temporarily exempting the giants from paying federal royalty fees for the publicly owned crude they take from the Gulf of Mexico. The idea was to give a brief reprieve on royalties to encourage oil corporations to drill here.

But — oops! — our lawmakers made a costly slip up: They forgot to specify that the exemption was temporary. Once market prices recovered, the corporations were supposed to resume payments to us taxpayers. “It was never the intent that everybody would get a free ride forever,” says one official.

Sure enough, market prices recovered by 2006. Yet the oil barons simply thumbed their nose at the public saying, “Tough luck, suckers!” Since there’s no limit written into the law, they’ve kept sucking up all the public oil they can — without paying a dime in royalties.

This is no petty thievery. Chevron, Shell, Exxon, BP, and even China’s state-run oil corporation are among the giants that have taken at least $18 billion from our nation’s treasury so far. Their haul increases every day that they’re allowed to pump up profits — and continue polluting the planet — through this unintended loophole.

The only thing bigger than Big Oil’s avarice is its arrogance. The industry recently warned Congress not to even try plugging the loophole, claiming such an attempt would be “engaging in a dangerous game of bait and switch.”

What’s the one force bigger than Big Oil? An infuriated public. To help spread the fury and stop this thievery, go to www.SierraClub.org/topics/oil.

11,000 Scientists Warn We're Headed Toward 'Untold Suffering'

Tim Radford / Climate News Network

NOV 12, 2019 NEWS

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/11000-scientists-warn-were-headed-towards-untold-suffering/

In an unprecedented step, more than 11,000 scientists from 153 nations have united to warn the world that, without deep and lasting change, the climate emergency promises humankind unavoidable “untold suffering.”

And as if to underline that message, a US research group has predicted that – on the basis of experiments so far – global heating could reduce rice yields by 40% by the end of the century, and at the same time intensify levels of arsenic in the cereal that provides the staple food for almost half the planet.

And in the same few days a second US group has forecast that changes to the world’s vegetation in an atmosphere increasingly rich in carbon dioxide could mean that – even though rainfall might increase – there could be less fresh water on tap for many of the peoples of Europe, Asia and North America.

Warnings of climate hazard that could threaten political stability and precipitate mass starvation are not new: individuals, research groups, academies and intergovernmental agencies have been making the same point, and with increasing urgency, for more than two decades.

New analysis

The only argument has been about in what form, how badly, and just when the emergency will take its greatest toll.

But the 11,000 signatories to the statement in the journal BioScience report that their conclusions are based on the new analysis of 40 years of data covering energy use, surface temperature, population growth, land clearance, deforestation, polar ice melt, fertility rates, gross domestic product and carbon emissions.

The scientists list six steps that the world’s nations could take to avert the coming catastrophe: abandon fossil fuel use, reduce atmospheric pollution, restore natural ecosystems, shift from animal-based to plant diets, contain economic growth and the pursuit of affluence, and stabilise the human population.

Their warning appeared on the 40th anniversary of the first world climate congress, in Geneva in 1979.

Surprising rice impact

“Despite 40 years of major global negotiations, we have continued to conduct business as usual and have failed to address this crisis,” said William Ripple of Oregon State University, one of the leaders of the coalition. “Climate change has arrived and is accelerating faster than many scientists expected.”

Both the warning of catastrophic climate change and the steps to avoid it are familiar. But researchers at Stanford University in the US say they really did not expect the impact of world temperature rise on the rice crop – the staple for two billion people now, and perhaps 5 bn by 2100 – to be so severe.

Other groups have already warned that changes in seasonal temperature and rainfall could reduce both the yields of wheat, fruit and vegetables, and the nutritional values of rice and other staples.

The Stanford group report in the journal Nature Communications that they looked more closely at what climate change could do to rice crops. Most soils contain some arsenic. Rice is grown in flooded paddy fields that tend to loosen the poison from the soil particles. But higher temperatures combined with more intense rainfall show that, in experiments, rice plants absorb more arsenic, which in turn inhibits nutrient absorption and reduces plant development. Not only did the grains contain twice the level of arsenic, the yield fell by two-fifths.

“By the time we get to 2100, we’re estimated to have approximately 10bn people, so that would mean we have 5 billion people dependent on rice, and 2bn who would not have access to the calories they would normally need,” said Scott Fendorf, an earth system scientist at Stanford.

“I didn’t expect the magnitude of impact on rice yield we observed. What I missed was how much the soil biogeochemistry would respond to increased temperature, how that would amplify plant-available arsenic and then – coupled with temperature stress – how that would really impact the plant.”

And while the rice croplands expect heavier rains, great tracts of the northern hemisphere could see vegetation changes that could have paradoxical consequences. In a wetter, warmer world plants could grow more vigorously. The stomata on the leaves through which plants breathe are more likely to close in a world of higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, meaning less water loss through foliage.

And while this should mean more run-off and a moister tropical world, a team at Dartmouth College in the US report in the journal Nature Geoscience that in the mid-latitudes plant response to climate change could actually make the land drier instead of wetter.

Water consumption rises

“Approximately 60% of the global water flux from the land to the atmosphere goes through plants, called transpiration. Plants are like the atmosphere’s straw, dominating how water flows from the land to the atmosphere. So vegetation is a massive determinant of what water is left on land for people,” said Justin Mankin, a geographer at Dartmouth.

“The question we’re asking here is, how do the combined effects of carbon dioxide and warming change the size of that straw?”

The calculations are complex. First, as temperatures soar, so will evaporation: more humidity means more rain – in some places. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels soar, driven by fossil fuel combustion, plants need less water to photosynthesise, so the land gets more water. As the planet warms, growing seasons become extended and warmer, so plants grow for a longer period and consume more water, and will grow more vigorously because of the fertility effect of higher carbon dioxide concentrations.

The calculations suggest that forests, grasslands and other ecosystems will consume more water for longer periods, thus drying the soil and reducing ground water, and the run-off to the rivers, in parts of Europe, Asia and the US.

Avoiding the worst

And that in turn would mean lower levels of water available for human consumption, agriculture, hydropower and industry.

Both studies are indicators of possible hazard, to be confirmed or challenged by other scientific groups. But both exemplify the complexity of the challenge presented by temperature rises of at least the 2°C set by 195 nations in Paris in 2015 as the limit by the century’s end; or the 3°C that seems increasingly likely as those same nations fail to take the drastic action prescribed.

The world has already warmed by almost 1°C above the long-term average for most of human history. So both papers shore up the reasoning of the 11,000 signatories to the latest warning of planetary disaster. But that same warning contains some steps humankind could take to avert the worst.

“While things are bad, all is not hopeless,” said Thomas Newsome, of the University of Sydney, Australia, and one of the signatories. “We can take steps to address the climate emergency.”

Citing Deep Commitment to Medicare for All and Green New Deal, Nation's Largest Nurses Union Endorses Bernie Sanders for President

"We need a president who will unite all workers to fight for social, economic, racial and gender justice, and who will champion bold ideas on workplace democracy, Medicare for All, and climate change."

Jake Johnson, staff writer

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Common Dreams

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/11/12/citing-deep-commitment-medicare-all-and-green-new-deal-nations-largest-nurses-union

Pointing to his tireless advocacy on behalf of Medicare for All, his bold proposals to combat the climate crisis, and his commitment to "putting people above profits," National Nurses United—the largest union of registered nurses in the U.S.—announced Tuesday morning that it is endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

"National Nurses United has endorsed Bernie Sanders because we need a president who will unite all workers to fight for social, economic, racial and gender justice, and who will champion bold ideas on workplace democracy, Medicare for All, and climate change," tweeted NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo, RN.

NNU, which also endorsed Sanders in the 2016 presidential race, boasts over 150,000 members nationwide and has been a driving force in the grassroots push to build support for Medicare for All across the United States.

"We are so proud that together, in 2016, Bernie Sanders and NNU elevated Medicare for All to the national mainstream, where it has advanced to a top 2020 presidential race issue," Castillo said in a statement. "Nurses are beyond tired of watching our patients suffer and die needlessly, simply due to inability to pay, and we know Bernie Sanders is, and has been, leading on Medicare for All through his advocacy and Senate legislation."

Jean Ross, president of NNU, said that "for nurses, our solidarity is a matter of life or death for our patients."

"We need a president who makes it easier for us to stand together and hold our employers accountable," Ross added. "Bernie Sanders is leading all the candidates on labor, with his Workplace Democracy Act and as a cosponsor of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act."

NNU said it will officially endorse Sanders at a press conference on Friday, November 15.

"Nurses are the backbone of American healthcare," Sanders tweeted in response to the endorsement Tuesday. "I want to thank National Nurses United for not only the strong support of our campaign—but for the courage they have shown in helping to lead the effort for a Medicare for All program."

"Together," Sanders added, "we will make healthcare a right."

The Impeachment Pantomime

November 12, 2019 • 0 Comments

The political theatrics that begin Wednesday raise several questions. For starters, will Joe Biden be investigated for mounting evidence of corruption? And why is the  corporate media turning the CIA “whistleblower” into a phantom in plain sight? 

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/12/patrick-lawrence-the-impeachment-pantomime/

Now that “Russiagate” has failed and “Ukrainegate” neatly takes its place, many questions arise. Will the Democratic Party, this time in open collusion with the intelligence apparatus, succeed in its second attempt to depose President Donald Trump in what might fairly be called a bloodless coup? Whatever the outcome of the thus-far-farcical impeachment probe, which is to be conducted publicly as of Wednesday, did the president use his office to pressure Ukraine in behalf of his own personal and political interests? Did Trump, in his fateful telephone conversation last July 25 with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, put U.S. national security at risk, as is alleged?

All good questions. Here is another: Will Joe Biden, at present the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, get away with what is almost certain to prove his gross corruption and gross abuse of office when he carried the Ukraine portfolio while serving as vice president under Barack Obama?

Corollary line of inquiry: Will the corporate media, The New York Times in the lead, get away with self-censoring what is now irrefutable evidence of the impeachment probe’s various frauds and corruptions? Ditto in the Biden case: Can the Times and the media that faithfully follow its lead continue to disregard accumulating circumstantial evidence of Biden’s guilt as he appears to have acted in the interest of his son Hunter while the latter sat on the board of one of Ukraine’s largest privately held natural gas producers?  

Innuendo & Interference 

It is not difficult to imagine that Trump presented Zelensky with his famous quid pro quo when they spoke last summer: Open an investigation into Biden père et fils and I will release $391 million in military aid and invite you to the White House. Trump seems to be no stranger to abuses of power of this sort. But the impeachment probe has swiftly run up against the same problem that sank the good ship Russiagate: It has produced no evidence. Innuendo and inference, yes. Various syllogisms, yes. But no evidence. 

There is none in the transcript of the telephone exchange. Zelensky has flatly stated that there was no quid pro quo. The witnesses so far called to testify have had little to offer other than their personal opinions, even if Capitol Hill Democrats pretend these testimonies are prima facie damning. And the witnesses are to one or another degree of questionable motives: To a one, they appear to be Russophobes who favor military aid to Ukraine; to a one they are turf-conscious careerists who think they set U.S. foreign policy and resent the president for intruding upon them. It is increasingly evident that Trump’s true offense is proposing to renovate a foreign policy framework that has been more or less untouched for 75 years (and is in dire need of renovation). 

Ten days ago Real Clear Investigations suggested that the “whistleblower” whose “complaint” last August set the impeachment probe in motion was in all likelihood a CIA agent named Eric Ciaramella. And who is Eric Ciaramella? It turns out he is a young but seasoned Democratic Party apparatchik conducting his spookery on American soil.

Ciaramella has previously worked with Joe Biden during the latter’s days as veep; with Susan Rice, Obama’s recklessly hawkish national security adviser; with John Brennan, a key architect of the Russiagate edifice; as well as with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-born Democratic National Committee official charged during the 2016 campaign season with digging up dirt on none other than candidate Donald Trump.

For good measure, Paul Sperry’s perspicacious reporting in Real Clear Investigations reveals that Ciaramella conferred with the staff of Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Democrat leading the impeachment process, a month prior to filing his “complaint” to the CIA’s inspector general.

This information comes after Schiff stated on the record that the staff of the House Intelligence Committee, which he heads, had no contact with the whistleblower. Schiff has since acknowledged the Ciaramella connection.   

Phantom in Plain Sight

No wonder no one in Washington will name this phantom in plain sight. The impeachment probe starts to take on a certain reek. It starts to look as if contempt for Trump takes precedence over democratic process — a dangerous priority. Sperry quotes Fred Fleitz, a former National Security Council official, thus: “Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White house knows…. They’re hiding him because of his political bias.”

Here we come to another question. If everyone knows the whistleblower’s identity, why have the corporate media declined to name him? There can be but one answer to this question: If Ciaramella’s identity were publicized and his professional record exposed, the Ukrainegate narrative would instantly collapse into a second-rate vaudeville act — farce by any other name, although “hoax” might do, even if Trump has made the term his own. 

There is another half to this burlesque. While Schiff and his House colleagues chicken-scratch for something, anything that may justify a formal impeachment, a clear, documented record emerges of Joe Biden’s official interventions in Ukraine in behalf of Burisma Holdings, the gas company that named Hunter Biden to its board in March 2014 — a month, it is worth noting, after the U.S.–cultivated coup in Kiev.

There is no thought of scrutinizing Biden’s activities by way of an official inquiry. In its way, this, too, reflects upon the pantomime of the impeachment probe. Are there sufficient grounds to open an investigation? Emphatically there are. Two reports published last week make this plain by any reasonable measure. 

‘Bursimagate’

John Solomon, a singularly competent follower of Russiagate and Ukrainegate, published a report last Monday exposing Hunter Biden’s extensive contacts with the Obama State Department in the early months of 2016. Two developments were pending at the time. They lie at the heart of what we may well call “Burismagate.”

One, the Obama administration had committed to providing Ukraine with $1 billion in loan guarantees. In a December 2015 address to the Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, V–P Biden withheld an apparently planned announcement of the credit facility.

Two, coincident with Hunter Biden’s numerous conferences at the State Department, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was swiftly advancing a corruption investigation into Burisma’s oligarchic owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was by early 2016 living in exile. Just prior to Biden’s spate of visits to Foggy Bottom, Shokin had confiscated several of Zlochevsky’s properties—a clear sign that he was closing in. Joe Biden wanted Shokin fired. He is, of course, famously on the record  boasting of his threat [starts at 52.00 in video below]to withhold the loan guarantee as a means to getting this done. Shokin was in short order dismissed, and the loan guarantee went through.  

Solomon documents his report with memos he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year. These add significantly to the picture. “Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian gas firm colleagues had multiple contacts with the Obama State Department during the 2016 election cycle,” he writes, “including one just a month before Vice President Joe Biden forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating his son’s company for corruption.”

Last Tuesday, a day after Solomon published his report, Moon of Alabama, the much-followed web publication, posted a granularly researched and well-sourced  timeline of the events surrounding Shokin’s dismissal at Vice President Biden’s request. This is the most complete chronology of the Burismagate story yet available.

In an ethical judicial system, it or something like it would now sit on a prosecutor’s desk. There is no suggestion in the Moon of Alabama’s timeline that Shokin had shelved his investigation into Burisma by the time Biden exerted pressure to get him sacked, as Biden’s defenders assert. Just the opposite appears to be the true case: The timeline indicates Shokin was about to pounce. Indeed Shokin said so under oath in an Austrian court case, testifying that he was fired because of Biden’s pressure not to conduct the probe.

It is important to note that there is no conclusive evidence that Joe Biden misused his office in behalf of his son’s business interests simply because there has been no investigation. Given what is beginning to emerge, however, the need for one can no longer be in doubt. Can Democrats and the media obscure indefinitely what now amounts to very strong circumstantial evidence against Biden?

We live in a time when the corporate media make as much effort to hide information as they do to report it. But as in the case of Ciaramella’s identity, it is unlikely these myriad omissions can be sustained indefinitely — especially if Biden wins the Democratic nomination next year. Forecast: If only because of Burismagate, Joe Biden will never be president.

As everyone in Washington seems to understand, it is highly unlikely Trump will be ousted via an impeachment trial: The Republican-controlled Senate can be counted on to keep him in office. Whatever Trump got up to with Zelensky, there is little chance it will prove sufficient to drive him from office. As to the charge that Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainian president threatened national security, let us allow this old chestnut to speak for itself.

Price of Irresponsible Theatrics

This leaves us to reckon the price our troubled republic will pay for months of irresponsible theatrics that are more or less preordained to lead nowhere.

More questions. What damage will the Democrats have done when Ukrainegate draws to a close (assuming it does at some point)? What harm has come to U.S. political institutions, governing bodies, judiciary and media? The corporate press has been profligately careless of its already questionable credibility during the years of Russiagate and now Ukrainegate. Can anyone argue there is no lasting price to pay for this?

More urgently, what do the past three years of incessant efforts to unseat a president tell us about the power of unelected constituencies? The CIA is now openly operating on American soil in clear breach of its charter and U.S. law. There is absolutely no way this can be questioned. We must now contemplate the frightening similarities Russiagate and Ukrainegate share with the agency’s classic coup operations abroad: Commandeering the media, stirring discontent with the leadership, pumping up the opposition, waving false flags, incessant disinformation campaigns: Maybe it was fated that what America has been doing abroad the whole of the postwar era would eventually come home. 

What, at last, must we conclude about the ability of any president (of any stripe) to effect authentic change when our administrative state — “deep,” if you like — opposes it?

Mapping the anti-migrant protests in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Seminar with Dragana Kovačević Bielicki



Mapping the anti-migrant protests in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina through their online media coverage
(2015-present)

"The “migrant crisis” in Europe in 2015 and beyond has resulted in an abundance of pro- and anti-migration discourses and practices. 

The continuous arrival and transit of migrants has been accompanied by rising anti-migration sentiments and reactions. 

This presentation will focus on the organized anti-migrant protests in three transit countries along the Western Balkan migration route: Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter BH), in the period between 2015 and present. 

The aim is to first map and consequently explain the anti-migrant protests that have been organized across the territory of these three countries starting from the so-called migrant crisis and into the present, through the lens of their online coverage. 

Protests are one of the most visible practices used to express rejection of any social phenomenon, also a practice that tends to attract media attention. 

Online news media are among the most prominent environments relevant to the reproduction of cultures of rejection and cultures of acceptance alike. 

This is why, in addition to mapping the protests so far organized, this research will seek to explain how these protests are framed in the online news media, and what experiences and discourses fuel the negative reactions to migrants and migration. 

Serbia and Croatia are two of the Western Balkan countries that have been prominently featured as transit countries along the Balkan route during the “crisis” in 2015 and 2016. 

In addition, it is important to include BH in the proposed case study, a currently highly relevant transit country. 

In the first years of the “crisis” BH was not widely seen as one of the desirable stops along the route for most migrants. However, in 2018, due to the constant redirection of migrants arriving to the Balkans, BH experienced the unprecedented scale of migrant movement through its territory, people attempting to cross to Croatia and further. 

This resulted in recent widespread media coverage of the migrants' movement and treatment in this country as well. This presentation will theoretically be framed through the notion of interdiscursivity, seen as the key to understanding how discursive change is related to social change. 

The interdiscursive context of a text refers to recontextualization of other texts and discourses (Fairclough 1992; Wodak & Fairclough 2010). 

Digital ethnography is the method I will employ to collect material, while the analyzes of the material will be informed by Multimodal Critical Discourse Analyses or MCDA, most specifically as outlined by Kress and Leuven (2001)."

The seminar will be held at the University campus - University departments building (Ul. Radmile Matejčić 2, 51000 Rijeka) at the 8th Floor, Room 804, starting at 01.15 pm on December 5, 2019.





Dragana Kovačević Bielicki is a migration researcher with background in social anthropology and philosophy. 

She received a PhD in Migration, Nationalism and Culture Studies in 2016 from the University of Oslo. 

In addition, she holds degrees from Central European University (MA, Nationalism Studies) and the University of Belgrade (BA, Philosophy). 

A monograph based on her doctoral research was published in 2017 with the title Born in Yugoslavia - Raised in Norway: Former Child Refugees and Belonging (Oslo, Novus Press, 2017). 

She is a returning lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at the International Summer School, University of Oslo.

Urgent update on the coup in Bolivia from Anya Parampil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5ZPL0MCxUQ&feature

Venice flooded by the second-highest tide recorded in the city's history

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrPn3cE9nUQ&feature=em-uploademail