Wednesday, October 24th, 2018
Darryl Fears, Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: Let's talk about reality, as this report lays it out, "Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. With no fix in sight..."
It is a measure of the power of the carbon energy industry that this pollution catastrophe has been going on for 14 years, and is projected to go on for decades yet to come. Once again we see that profit is more important than the health and wellbeing of humans, or any species on the planet. In America nothing matters but greed. One always has to remember that.
An aerial image of an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, taken on April 28, 2018.
Credit: Oscar Garcia-Pineda
NEW ORLEANS — An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in U.S. history.
Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles off the Louisiana coast since 2004, when an oil-production platform owned by Taylor Energy sank in a mudslide triggered by Hurricane Ivan. Many of the wells have not been capped, and federal officials estimate that the spill could continue through this century. With no fix in sight, the Taylor offshore spill is threatening to overtake BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster as the largest ever.
As oil continues to spoil the Gulf, the Trump administration is proposing the largest expansionof leases […]
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Wednesday, October 24th, 2018
Aram Roston, - Buzz Feed News
Stephan: Did you know that your tax dollars were being used to pay for mercenary assassins who murder leaders in other countries the administration doesn't like? You didn't? Well, read this.
Cradling an AK-47 and sucking a lollipop, the former American Green Beret bumped along in the back of an armored SUV as it wound through the darkened streets of Aden. Two other commandos on the mission were former Navy SEALs. As elite US special operations fighters, they had years of specialized training by the US military to protect America. But now they were working for a different master: a private US company that had been hired by the United Arab Emirates, a tiny desert monarchy on the Persian Gulf.
On that night, December 29, 2015, their job was to carry out an assassination.
Their armed attack, described to BuzzFeed News by two of its participants and corroborated by drone surveillance footage, was the first operation in a startling for-profit venture. For months in war-torn Yemen, some of America’s most highly trained soldiers worked on a mercenary mission of murky legality to kill prominent clerics and Islamist political figures.
Their target that night: Anssaf Ali Mayo, the local leader of the Islamist political party Al-Islah. The UAE considers Al-Islah to be the Yemeni branch of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE calls a terrorist organization. Many experts insist that Al-Islah, one of whose members […]
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
Jessica Corbett, Staff Writer - Common Dreams
Stephan: For most of the 1970s, I was in government in the DoD world, where war is a profession. And my own view, and that of many others in that geopolitical world was that we were one mistake away from nuclear war. And, indeed, although it is little known, nuclear war was in fact avoided thanks to the decision by one Soviet colonel not to push the button. Even the popular media talked about it, and there were films like The Day after tomorrow, on earlier On the Beach. It got to a point during the Reagan administration where Reagan and Gorbachev got serious about arms control. It's hard to explain today how that felt to those of us who understood how great was the risk.
Now those hard-won treaties are being discarded by Trump and Bolton like an old T-shirt. I can hardly believe I am writing this.
President Donald Trump on Saturday confirmed to reporters that he plans to ditch a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty with Russia.
Credit: Michael Tercha/Getty
Concerns are mounting after President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that he will withdraw from a Cold War-era nuclear arms control treaty with Russia following reports that National Security Adviser John Bolton had been pushing the plan behind closed doors despite warnings from experts that ditching the agreement “would be reckless and stupid.”
The Guardian had reported Friday that Bolton and an ally in the White House have been working to convince members of the administration to support the United States withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (INF) on the grounds that Russia is violating it. Nuclear arms control experts and others rapidly responded with alarm. Many agreed that Russia’s alleged violation “merits a strong response” but noted a withdrawal could alienate European allies and raise the chances of armed conflict.
The president’s comments on Saturday spurred more alarm, with Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association calling the looming withdrawal “an […]
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
Harriet Sherwood, - Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: When I was a young man recently out of the army, I was reporter in Virginia Beach, and I watched as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and other leaders in the emerging christofascist movement gathered at the recently founded Liberty University, and devised a plan. They committed to creating a cadre of clerics, to take over the military chaplain corps and install christofascist chaplains, and to get their followers to fund creating universities that would turn out lawyers, judges, media graduates, and politicians. The purpose of all this: To breach the church-state wall the Founders had put in place and to take over the infrastructure of the American government from the inside. They were quite clear about this, and have pursued these efforts ever since. Here is a realtime analysis of where they are today.
Donald Trump poses with the Liberty University president, Jerry Falwell Jr.
Credit: Steve Helber/AP
Three times a week, 15,000 students stream into the Vines Center, a huge silver-domed building on the campus of Liberty University for “convocation”, an intoxicating mix of prayer, political rally and entertainment. Thousands more watch a live stream of the event.
The star attraction has twice been Donald Trump, in 2012 and 2016. His first appearance was as a successful businessman and reality TV star, the second as the man campaigning to be the Republican party’s candidate for president. Last year, he made a third appearance at Liberty, to address the university’s graduation ceremony. By then, he was one of the most divisive leaders in the country’s history.
But not at Liberty. The Christian university which dominates the town of Lynchburg, Virginia, has become almost synonymous with Trump. It sits at the heart of the alliance between the president and conservative evangelical Christians – an alliance forged in part by Jerry Falwell Jr, […]
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
Calvin F. Exoo, - truthout
Stephan: Here is another effort on the part of the christofascist movement to take control of the government from the inside. It parallels in the American Judiciary and complements what the religious right was doing through schools and churches.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh speaks at his ceremonial swearing-in in the East Room of the White House on October 8, 2018, in Washington, DC.
Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
In the 1970s, a revolution began. It was a deliberately hidden revolution, concealed so well that it is unknown to most Americans, even though it has profoundly and forever changed the nation. This ongoing revolution has brought us a Grand Canyon of inequality, Donald Trump — and now, Brett Kavanaugh. To understand what happened, we must go to the beginning.
It was 1971, and US corporations had a problem. The economies of Europe and Asia, previously devastated by WWII, had recovered and were knocking on our door with their cars, consumer electronics, appliances and other goods. US corporate profits fell like wet laundry.
Not only were US companies under pressure from abroad — they were also under pressure domestically. According to corporate attorney Lewis Powell, the politics of the ’60s had emboldened “Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries,” who were now joined […]
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