The United Nations has condemned the British government’s austerity measures in a damning report, saying the “mean-spirited, and often callous” program has inflicted ‘great misery’ on millions of Britons.

“It is patently unjust and contrary to British values that so many people are living in poverty,” Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said on Saturday.

He issued the report after ending a  two-week fact-finding mission to the United Kingdom to investigate levels of poverty in the country.

Alston said in his 24-page report that the high rate of child poverty in Britain was “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster.”

Alston will be present his report to the UN human rights council in Geneva next year.

Recurrent estimates have suggested that a fifth of UK population, around 14 million people, live under the poverty line. More than a tenth of those poor people,…

More people in the US are dying of alcohol-related causes and the biggest increases in mortality are among women, according to a new analysis.

From 2007 to 2017, the number of deaths attributable to alcohol increased 35 percent, the USA Today newspaper reported Friday, citing the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Deaths among men rose 29 percent, while rising 67 percent among women, the study found, an alarming statistic because females once drank far less than males.

Deaths among people aged 45 to 64 rose by about 25 percent.

“The story is that no one has noticed this,” says Max Griswold, who helped develop the alcohol estimates for the institute. “It hasn’t really been researched before.”

Washington, DC, the capital of the United States, had the highest rate of death from alcohol in the country, according to the institute’s analysis. 

The institute published a study in…

Daily Caller
November 17, 2018

The White House will reinstate CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press credentials Friday in response to a court ruling but said they would make changes to the way they run press conferences, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.

“Today, the court made clear that there is no absolute First Amendment right to access the White House. In response to the court, we will temporarily reinstate the reporter’s hard pass,” Sanders said. “We will also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future. There must be decorum at the White House.”

Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued an injunction Friday morning ordering the White House to reinstate Acosta’s credentials, saying his Fifth Amendment right to due process was violated. The judge made clear, however, that he made no ruling on whether the First Amendment right applies for any reporter to be at the White House.

Read more

This article was posted: Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 6:51 am

The US state of California has the world’s “most polluted cities” due to the massive wildfires raging in the northern part of the state, according to a study.

The cities of San Francisco, Stockton and Sacramento were the world’s three “most polluted cities” on Friday, CNN reported, citing Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit that aggregates data from air-quality monitoring sites.

PurpleAir, which has a network of sensors around the world, also showed that California had worse air than traditional smog hotspots in China and India.

“No region on Earth had as many air quality stations in the highest ranges” of particulate matter, or PM, the toxic mixture of particles and droplets that worsens after wildfires, according to CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.

Those values, he said, “stretched for hundreds of miles over Northern and Central California, from the mountains to the valleys and the coast.”

Colleges, schools and public transit have closed…

US President Donald Trump says the extradition to Turkey of Pennsylvania-based opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the Ankara government accuses of having masterminded the July 2016 coup attempt, is not on Washington’s agenda.

“No, it’s not under consideration,” Trump told reporters on Saturday.

The remarks came only two day after NBC News reported that the White House was exploring legal methods of extraditing Gulen to Turkey in order to soften the Ankara government’s pressure on Saudi Arabia over the killing of prominent dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed after visiting the kingdom’s consulate in Turkey’s largest city of Istanbul last month.

US extradites ex-member of Gueln-linked foundation to Turkey

Meanwhile, a former executive of a foundation affiliated to the Gulen movement has been brought to Turkey.

A security source, who asked not to be named, told Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency that…

Zero Hedge
November 17, 2018

Just days after taking back the House, a Democratic Congressmen has proposed outlawing “military-style semi-automatic assault weapons” and forcing existing owners to sell their weapons or face prosecution.

In a USA Today op-ed entitled “Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued Thursday that prior proposals to ban assault weapons “would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.”

Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons – and “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.”

As NBC News reports, this is a major departure from prior gun control proposals that typically exempt existing firearms; as in the past, Democrats and gun safety groups have carefully resisted proposals that could be interpreted as ‘gun confiscation’, a concept gun rights groups have often invoked as part of a slippery slope argument against more modest proposals like universal background checks.

And sure enough Swalwell’s egotistical over-reach – going full “Australia” – prompted anger across social media. But it was one particular thread that caught our eye…

John Cardillo, ‘America Talks Live’ host on Newsmax, tweeted in response: “Make no mistake, Democrats want to eradicate the Second Amendment, ban and seize all guns, and have all power rest with the state. These people are dangerously obsessed with power.”

Make no mistake, Democrats want to eradicate the Second Amendment, ban and seize all guns, and have all power rest with the state.

These people are dangerously obsessed with power. https://t.co/f1AS6Me0ko

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) November 16, 2018

Which prompted a…

Special for LewRockwell.com

Asked if President Donald Trump’s highly critical tweets about French president Emmanuel Macron were unpleasant and inelegant, Macron elegantly replied, `you summed up everything.’

Yes, they were unpleasant and inelegant, to put it mildly.  Worse, Trump’s tweet barrage came on the same day France was commemorating the murder of 130 Parisians by gunmen in 2015.  A senior French press official claimed Trump ‘lacked common decency.’ Making matters worse, Trump refused to show up at a graveside memorial for American GI’s killed in the bloody, 1918 Belleau Wood battle.  He went the following day to another memorial closer to Paris.

A major faux pas, Monsieur le President Trump.  You need some foreign policy pros instead of the amateur ideologues who have made a huge mess of the nation’s affairs and image.

This row arose after Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg and called for a common European army to ‘complement’ NATO.

Earlier, Chancellor Merkel stated that Europe could no longer depend on the US for its protection.

American Raj: Liberati…
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Merkel’s frank talk was clearly a slap in the face to the prickly Trump, whose aggressive policies have put the US in confrontation with Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela,  Cuba and much of the Muslim world.

In effect, Germany and France, Europe’s two big powers, were declaring independence from US hegemony seven decades after the end of World War II.  Many Europeans – and certainly Germans – consider their nations still militarily and politically occupied by the American Imperium.  How else could the US…

Photo Source International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons | CC BY 2.0

What transforms American elections from participatory politics into farce is the exclusion of crucial issues. Environmental crisis, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the wildly skewed distribution of political and economic power will affect how people live in coming years, regardless of how effectively they are excluded from electoral consideration.

Each of these are historical accumulations— they exist in different time-space than the binary oppositions of political marketing. Environmental crisis has been accumulating since the dawn of the industrial revolution. The threat of nuclear annihilation emerged from WWII as the lunatic id of technological innovation. Class relations have determined the realm of official power since the birth of capitalism.

This history grants presence to each, regardless of how hidden they are in any given political moment. If a bomb is dropped on a city in the forest, it destroys the lives of those it is dropped on regardless of whether you and I hear it. The subtexts of modernity are automatically written to preclude reflection.

Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would unilaterally end the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty with Russia. The calculated irrelevance of American electoral politics to the side, this didn’t happen in an historical vacuum. It ties back to Bill Clinton’s unilateral placement of NATO troops on…

Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is escalating his war on the Palestinian people, although for reasons almost entirely related to Israeli politics. He has just given the greenlight to a legislation that would make it easier for Israeli courts to issue death sentences against Palestinians accused of carrying out ‘terrorist’ acts.

Netanyahu’s decision was made on November 4, but the wrangling over the issue has been taking place for some time.

The ‘Death Penalty’ bill has been the rally cry for the Israel Beiteinu party, led by ultra-nationalist Israeli politician and current Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, during its 2015 election campaign.

But when Lieberman attempted to push the bill in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) soon after the forming of the current coalition government in July 2015, the draft was resoundingly defeated by 94 to 6 with Netanyahu himself opposing it.

It has been defeated several times since then. However, the political mood in Israel has shifted in ways that has obliged Netanyahu into conceding to the demands of the even more hawkish politicians within his own government.

As Netanyahu’s coalition grew bolder and more unhinged, the Israeli Prime Minister joined the chorus. It is time “to wipe the smile off the terrorist’s face,” he said in July 2017, while visiting the illegal Jewish settlement of Halamish, following the killing of three settlers. At the time, he called for the death penalty in…

Trump manoeuvres ahead of US-China trade talks

By
Nick Beams

17 November 2018

President Trump has stated he has received a response from China over US trade demands in the lead-up to talks with President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit to be held at the end of the month, amid moves and counter-moves by both sides and within the White House.

Trump told reporters yesterday the Chinese response was largely complete but was missing four or five big issues. He said: “They sent a list of things they are willing to do, which is a large list and it is just not acceptable to me yet.”

Trump’s remarks that China “wants to make a deal” initially sent the stock market up, only to lose most of those gains after administration officials said not too much should be read into Trump’s remarks because it was unlikely an agreement would be struck soon.

No details of the proposed Chinese concessions have been released. They are likely to include an agreement to purchase more US products in the areas of agriculture and energy and possibly to open up some parts of the Chinese economy and financial system to US investment.

But the “big issues” cited by Trump remain. These involve action by China over the alleged theft of intellectual property rights and forced technology transfers and the use of state-subsidies to back key industries, which the US insists is “market distorting.”

The Trump administration has not moved from its central demands set out in a document drawn up last May in which it essentially demanded that Beijing scrap its “Made in China” program for industrial and technological development and assume a subservient economic position in relation to the US.

According to a Bloomberg report, the Chinese list was “structured as a written response to the US…

Breitbart
November 17, 2018

The latest push by the globalist apparatus includes amnesty for all 12 to 22 million illegal aliens living across the United States and allowing India and China to monopolize the U.S. legal immigration system.

The Brookings Institute’s William Galston — who has called populism the enemy of democracy — and neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol have released a joint policy brief for their The New Center think tank which advocates giving amnesty to illegal aliens and ending the country-caps in the U.S. legal immigration system. the policy brief states:

It is unacceptable to have over 11 million people living illegally in America. But mass deportation is unacceptable too — both morally and logistically. Unauthorized immigrants living the U.S. should be brought out of the shadows and offered a long and rigorous road toward citizenship that depends on maintaining clean criminal records, paying taxes, and meeting several other requirements.

Aside from ending deportations and providing amnesty to the entire illegal population, the Galston and Kristol agenda also includes allowing countries like India and China to monopolize the U.S. legal immigration system, a plan that would drive down white-collar U.S. wages and further displace Americans in professional jobs.

Read more

This article was posted: Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 7:02 am

China’s President Xi Jinping has rejected US criticism of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, saying it is not “a trap”.

“It is not designed to serve any hidden geopolitical agenda,” Xi emphasized on Saturday in an address before a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

He was referring a massive infrastructure and development project spanning Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Africa.

“It is not targeted against anyone, and it does not exclude anyone. Nor is it a trap, as some people have labelled it,” Xi said.

He further lashed out at “America First” trade protectionism and in an open criticism of Washington underlined that global trade rules should not be applied “with double standards or selfish agendas.”

The project is also known as Silk Road Economic Belt.

Xi made the remarks at the APEC summit in Papua New Guinea, where US Vice President Mike Pence touched on the US-China trade dispute,…

As it presently stands, it is not sound medical science, but primarily economic and political motivations which generate the immense pressure behind mass participation in the annual ritual of flu vaccination.

It is a heavily guarded secret within the medical establishment (especially within the corridors of the CDC) that the Cochrane Database Review (CDR), considered by many within the evidence-based medical model to be the gold standard for assessing the therapeutic value of common medical interventions, does not lend unequivocal scientific support to the belief and/or outright propaganda that flu vaccines are ‘safe and effective.’ao-opts a natural process, generating a broad range of adverse unintended consequences, many of which have been documented here. Vaccine proponents would have us believe that natural immunity is inferior to synthetic immunity, and should be replaced by the latter (see our article on the vaccine agenda: Transhumanism/Dehumanism).  In some cases they even suggest breastfeeding should be delayed during immunizations because it “interferes” with the vaccine efficacy.

Vaccine Epidemic: How …
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This warped perspective follows from the disingenuous standard vaccine researchers use to “prove” the “efficacy” of their vaccines. The chemical kitchen sink is thrown at the immune system in order to conserve the expensive-to-produce antigen and to generate a more intense immune response – a process, not unlike what happens when you kick a beehive. These chemicals include detergents, anti-freeze, heavy metals, xenotrophic retroviruses, DNA from aborted human fetuses (diploid cells) and other species, etc. Amazingly,…

The United States is beginning to view Saudi Arabia as a “liability” that could complicate international relations, says a political analyst in Virginia.

“The policymakers in the United States have apparently decided that the Saudis have become too much of a liability and are trying to rein in some of the excessive behavior of the Saudis,” said Keith Preston, chief editor and director of Attackthesystem.com.

“The level of state repression that exists in Saudi Arabia is very extreme and always has been. That’s well known,” he said.

The CIA has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the gruesome murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul last month, The Washington Post reported.

Sources close to the spy agency said it had assessed the evidence in detail.

The Washington Post, which Khashoggi worked for, said the CIA assessment was based partly on a phone call…

Sputnik
November 16, 2018

Theresa May’s controversial draft Brexit deal has sown discord in the Conservative Party and rocked the cabinet. Although the government has agreed to the deal this week, several ministers resigned in a show of protest, describing the plan as a “capitulation” to Brussels.

Fourty-eight conservative lawmakers have sent letters saying that they no longer support Theresa May, the editor of BrexitCentral reported on Friday, citing a source familiar with the matter.

This poses a threat of challenge to Theresa May’s party leadership as 48 letters make up 15 percent of the parliamentary party — a threshold required to trigger a motion of no confidence in the besieged Prime Minister.

May’s draft Brexit deal with the European Union won support of senior ministers this week and is to be finalised and submitted to Parliament. However, six government ministers, including Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab, resigned from their posts. Dominic Raab argued that the proposed regulatory regime for Northern Ireland would “pose a very real threat” to the UK’s integrity.

This directly contradicts May’s standpoint: the Prime Minister noted on Friday that her proposal “maintains the integrity” of the UK. London and Brussels have agreed to a “backstop” solution, which would see Northern Ireland leave the EU single market and customs union together with the rest of the UK, but stay aligned to some EU trade rules if another solution cannot be found by the end of the transition period in December 2020.

This article was posted: Friday, November 16, 2018 at 7:07 am

Daily Mail
November 16, 2018

Facial recognition has been widely adopted at airports, stadiums, traffic intersections and even some schools.

Now, experts say retail is the next industry to become a target of the technology, pointing to a growing number of suppliers and companies willing to put it in their stores.

U.S. retailers are expected to begin using facial recognition to stop shoplifters or spot criminals, but many are eyeing it for much broader uses – including customer tracking or loyalty programs, according to Biometric Update.

The move has already attracted scrutiny from privacy advocates who fear shoppers may be unaware that retailers are keeping track of their faces.

The makers of this facial recognition technology view it differently, however, believing that it would lead to a better consumer experience.

‘There is another step though that exists which has more to do with consumer loyalty, and consumer experience, that is not quite as expensive an endeavor,’ Peter Trepp, CEO of facial recognition software maker FaceFirst, told Biometric Update.

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, November 16, 2018 at 8:06 am

Photo Source U.S. Embassy Jerusalem | CC BY 2.0

Whenever bombings and shootings escalate in the Middle East, Israeli propagandists say that Israel is exercising its right of military self-defense against indiscriminate attacks coming from the Gaza Strip. But as this article documents, the right to use force in self-defense is contingent on Israel ending its military occupation and blockade of Gaza.

DON’T MISQUOTE ME ON THAT!

Doubtless some unscrupulous person or persons will quote or interpret this article out of context and claim that I’m saying that Israel has no right to self-defense at all. So, let me be clear: Israel is a nation-state like any other, like it or not. It therefore has the same legal rights as any nation-state, like it or not; including the right to use self-defense when under attack.

However, that right within the context of occupation is contingent on Israel’s adherence to international law; again, just like any state. For example: The US and British forces had no legal right to hurt or kill Iraqis resisting the illegal US-British invasion and occupation, which began in 2003. The only rights that the US and British had there was to leave.

Since 1967, Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip (and the West Bank of the Jordan, which it has now de facto annexed) in violation of international law. Yes, Israel withdrew its illegal colonies from Gaza in 2005, but it maintained the military blockade, which is an act of war and a violation of the IV Geneva…

China’s economic philosophy is a far cry from that of the west.

The west consistently seeks to undermine the interests of their partners, be it for trade or political agreements; be it partners from the west, their smaller and weaker brothers; or from the east; or from the south, there is always an element of exploitation, of “one-upmanship”, of outdoing a partner, of domination. Equality and fairness are unknown by the west. Or, when the concept was once known, at least by some countries and some people, it has been erased by indoctrinated neoliberal thinking – egocentricity, “me first”, and the sheer, all-permeating doctrine of “maximizing profits”; short-term thinking, instant gratification or more extreme, making a killing today for a gamble or deal that takes place tomorrow. Futures trading – the epitome of manipulating economic values. Only in the capitalist world.

This has become a key feature of western commerce and trading. It’s manipulation and exploitation over ethics; it’s Profits Über Alles! Doesn’t it sound like fascism? Well it is. And if the partner doesn’t fall for the ruse, coercion becomes the name of the game, and if that doesn’t work the western military move in with bombs and tanks, seeking regime change, destroying the very country the west wants to dominate. That’s western brutal economics – full hegemony. No sharing.

China’s approach is quite different. It’s one of sharing, of participating, of mutual…

Forensic recovery teams pressed their search for more victims in the flame-ravaged northern California town of Paradise on Friday (Nov 16) as authorities sought clues to the fate of about 1,000 people reported missing in the state’s deadliest wildfire on record.

Remains of at least 71 people have been recovered so far in and around a Sierra foothills hamlet that was home to nearly 27,000 residents before the town, 280km north of San Francisco, was largely incinerated by the deadly Camp Fire on the night of Nov 8.

More than a week later, firefighters have managed to carve containment lines around 45 percent of the blaze’s perimeter, up from 35 percent a day earlier, even as the burned landscape grew slightly to 57,000 hectares.

Besides the toll on human life, property losses from the blaze make it the most destructive in California history, posing the additional challenge of providing long-term shelter for many thousands of displaced…

New studies published this year revealed neurological damage as well as skeletal and tooth issues among those who consume fluoridated water. They’re added to several previous studies that have made those same connections.

The studies reveal even expectant mothers who drink fluoridated water adversely affect their newborns’ nervous systems. Fluorides go through the placenta with ease. Feeding newborns with formulas containing fluoride or mixed in fluoridated water exacerbate the damage.

Yet there are many who support water fluoridation despite the evidence, especially within the dental profession.

While focusing on extremely minor decreases in tooth decay, they ignore the significant increase in fluorosis, both dental and skeletal, both worse than tooth decay, occurring in regions that fluoridate their water. 

H2 Water 4 Life: The S…
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The Study Review Refutes Much of the Pro-Fluoridated “Science” that Prevails

The critical review Blood is thicker than water: Flaws in National Toxicology Program Study was published online in August, 2018, by the journal Medical Hypothesis. 

This review demonstrates that organizational bias has compromised the integrity of fluoride research from the beginning and persists today by citing 10 major flaws in a recent National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) effort at justifying water fluoridation by refuting all evidence of neurotoxic events discovered by studies independently conceived and carried out.  

The NTP study’s conclusion that the overall body of evidence does not prove a link of lower IQ and neurological damage from fluoridated water was fully endorsed by the CDC, making its study the…

Sgt. Logan Melgar deployed to the west African nation of Mali in 2017, where he was part of a team tasked with assisting ongoing French counterterrorism operations. Melgar shared housing with the two SEALs and two Raiders, whose unprofessionalism quickly rankled the Green Beret.

The SEALS, Anthony DeDolph and Adam Matthews were both members of Seal Team 6, the elite unit responsible for taking down Osama bin Laden in 2011. The Marines are still unnamed but are members of the Raiders, one of the Corps’ most elite units.

According to a source quoted by the Daily Beast, Melgar instantly clashed with the SEALS, who lived a high life in the impoverished city of Bamako, Mali’s capital. The operators were allegedly bringing prostitutes back to the house regularly, and pocketing cash from a fund used to recruit Islamist informants.

“The place ran like a frat house,” the source said.

Melgar, who had a squeaky-clean service record, made an official complaint. His snitching angered the two SEALS and two Raiders, and insult turned to injury when Melgar was invited to a party in the American embassy on June 4 without them.

Enraged, the four operators “planned for hours” to haze Melgar when he returned that night, the source recalled.

They drove to Marine quarters nearby to pick up duct tape, then returned to the shared Army and Navy quarters and lay in wait. When Melgar locked his door and turned in for the night, they struck.

According to charge sheets, the four troops kicked down Melgar’s door “with intent to assault” and bound the Green Beret with duct tape. DeDolph, a trained mixed-martial-arts fighter, placed Melgar in a chokehold as the others piled on top of the struggling soldier.

Melgar didn’t wake up from the chokehold. Once the attackers realized he was dead, the charge sheet alleges that they instantly disposed of the alcohol they kept in their quarters, while one SEAL tried to resuscitate Melgar by making an incision in his throat and performing CPR.

They then brought Melgar to a French medical facility, where he was pronounced dead. When they returned to the safe house, they allegedly engaged in a cover-up, providing a false timeline to investigators, omitting mention of the duct tape, and – according to one report – claiming that Melgar was drunk at the time of the incident.

The death immediately triggered an Army investigation, which was transferred to the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) last September. The four suspects were charged with felony murder, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, burglary, hazing, and involuntary manslaughter on Wednesday.

“Besides being a loving husband, father, son, and brother Logan was a man of integrity and honor. His morals stood larger than most,” read a statement from Melgar’s family. “We as the Melgar family can only hope that true justice is upheld under these unthinkable circumstances.”

“We will not allow allegations or substantiated incidents of misconduct to erode decades of honorable accomplishments by the members of U.S. Special Operations Command,” Navy Captain Jason Salata of the US Special Operations Command told the Daily Beast. “Ours is a culture of professionalism and accountability.”

The four suspects will now face a preliminary hearing in December, to determine whether they will then face a general court-martial. The four could be punished with a maximum sentence of life without parole.

While mostly absent from newspaper headlines, US special forces have been operating in Mali since 9/11, mostly assisting French troops with counterterrorism operations against a number of Islamist groups. US involvement in neighboring Niger made the news late last year, when three Green Berets were killed in an ambush by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists.

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A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate the press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta, giving the network a victory in the ongoing case.

US District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, an appointee of President Donald Trump, issued his ruling at a hearing on Friday.

The judge ordered the administration to reactivate Acosta’s credentials so that the reporter could have access to the White House complex for press briefings and other events.

Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, was back to his post at the White House following the court ruling.

“I want to thank all of my colleagues in the press who supported us this week, and I want to thank the judge for the decision he made today,” Acosta said outside the court. “Let’s go back to work.”

CNN said in a statement that it “looked forward to a full resolution in the coming days.”

Scotland: Michelin plans closure of Dundee plant with loss of 845 jobs

Rank-and file organisations needed to organise fight-back

By
Steve James

17 November 2018

French-based transnational Michelin’s decision to close its tyre manufacturing plant in Dundee, Scotland by 2020 threatens to pitch the plant’s 845 workers, their families and thousands more in the area into unemployment and poverty.

The conglomerate is acting aggressively to defend its profit margins, dividends to wealthy shareholders, and the immense salaries paid to its top management by dispensing with its Dundee workforce. Michelin’s statement on the closure made clear the attack on its Dundee workers arose from world conditions.

Michelin blamed the decision on reduced demand for 16-inch and smaller car tyres in the face of “low cost, entry-level products from Asia.” Despite recent investment, the company claimed the plant was “unsuitable and its conversion is not financially viable.” A “consultation process with employees, employee representatives and the trade union” is to start within two weeks.

Michelin, which operates 70 plants in 17 countries and employs around 114,000 workers worldwide, holds around 14 percent of the entire world market in car and truck tyres. In 2017, the company’s net sales globally amounted to €21.9 billion, of which around €4.01 billion was profit before tax and one-off costs.

Days before the announcement, Michelin suffered a 9 percent fall in its share price in Paris, warning of collapsing demand and price increases due to currency fluctuations. The Financial Times reported car industry analyst Arndt Ellinghorst of Evercore ISI warning of the “ugliest reporting season” for car industry suppliers since 2015. Ellinghorst said that 80 percent of…

American Mirror
November 16, 2018

House Minority Nancy Pelosi is fighting to become the next Speaker of the House, and she’s not thrilled about the “sexist” men who don’t support her.

During her news conference on Thursday, Pelosi pointed out that 14 of the 17 Democrat members who signed a letter in opposition to her bid for Speaker are men.

After rambling for roughly 14 minutes about how she’s the “best person” for the job and that she’s excited about all of the women that were elected into Congress, the California Democrat then tore into the men who are opposing her quest for the speakership.

Pelosi was asked about playing the “gender card” and if she believes she’s being maligned for being a woman.

“Most people don’t even know who I am. I’m an Italian American grandmother with lots of energy,” she said, donning a creepy smirk while making the bizarre claim.

“I’m here to do what’s right for the country, not my family,” Pelosi rambled, looking visibly uncomfortable. “They’re fine.”

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Pelosi then referenced a letter signed by 17 Democrats who are opposing her quest for speakership, and implied the men opposing her are only doing so because she’s a woman.

“I think of the 17, it’s something like, uh..” she paused, fumbling with papers on the podium while she regained her thought. “Fourteen are men.”

“If in fact there is any misogyny involved in it, it’s their problem, not mine,” Pelosi said.

Earlier in the news conference, Pelosi angrily skipped over two reporters who asked her questions about her bid for the speakership being in jeopardy.

After telling CNN’s Manu Raju to “spit it out,” referring to his question, and moving on from another reporter who asked about the letter, Pelosi said she didn’t expect to get a single vote from Republicans.

“Oh, please, no, never,” Pelosi said, making a…

Weasel Zippers
November 16, 2018

Monster!

This article was posted: Friday, November 16, 2018 at 8:08 am

Marie Huillet
Coin Telegraph
November 16, 2018

Executive Board member of the European Central Bank (ECB) Benoit Coeure considers Bitcoin (BTC) to be the “evil spawn of the [2008] financial crisis,” Bloomberg reports Nov. 15.

Coeure reportedly made his acid remarks at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. The BIS’ general manager Augustín Carstens has likewise previously made a spate of crypto-skeptical remarks, notably characterizing Bitcoin as a “combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster.”

Explicitly recalling Carstens’ characterization, Coeure framed his criticisms of the ten year oldinnovation with a reference to the aftermath of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in fall 2008 – the tipping point for economic turmoil, global recession, and, subsequently, the controversial “too big to fail” rationale for state intervention:

“Few remember that Satoshi [Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin] embedded the genesis block with a Times headline from January 2009 about U.K. banks’ bailout. In more ways than one, Bitcoin is the evil spawn of the financial crisis.”

After this historical overture, Coeure continued to address international monetary authorities’ present-day pursuit of cryptocurrency tokens and distributed ledger technology (DLT) initiatives. While acknowledging the widespread interest, he claimed that “there is broad agreement that a central bank digital currency, in whatever form, is unlikely to be issued within the next decade.”

The ECB official’s stance is at odds with remarks from International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde just yesterday. Speaking at the the Singapore Fintech Festival Nov. 14, Lagarde urged the international community to “consider” endorsing central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDC), arguing they “could satisfy public policy goals,”…

A specter is haunting the United States — the specter of “bipartisan prison reform.” Although the last effort at bipartisan prison reform stalled out in 2014-15, the US now seems poised to pass the “First Step Act,” after Donald Trump signaled his support for the measure in a statement at the White House on Wednesday.

Passage of the bill would be a major victory for Trump. A number of liberal and progressive commentators have gone all in on the legislation, which has been heavily shaped by Jared Kushner and Koch Industries attorney Mark Holden. CNN commentator and Cut50 cofounder Van Jones praised Trump. “Give the man his due,” Jones tweeted, saying the president is “on his way to becoming the uniter-in-Chief on an issue that has divided America for generations.”

Yet, regardless of who is “uniting” around its passage, the bill itself is both weak and dangerous. While it offers a few token reforms — some of them, like the end of shackling for pregnant and post-partum women in federal custody, necessary and long overdue — it leaves many of the most pressing issues off the table. It barely makes a dent in terms of reducing the length of prison sentences or reducing the number of people in prison. Meanwhile, it heightens the use of racist and classist assessment mechanisms and expands the net of surveillance.

The proposed bill includes a few minor reductions in sentence length for federal prisoners, by expanding potential access to good time credits and lowering the age of consideration for compassionate release However, it will not make any sentence reductions retroactive (except for the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which minimized — but did not erase — the disparity between crack and cocaine sentences). This means that people who are currently serving, for example, life sentences for drug offenses will not get any relief from this bill. A press release from the National Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed the First Step Act, indicates that the…

Image by Nathaniel St. Clair

The revolution’s here
No one can lead you off your path
You’ll try to change the world
So please excuse me while I laugh
Yo, I heard it’s said the revolution won’t be televised
But in the land of milk and honey there’s a date you gotta sell it by

— Talib Kweli, Beautiful Struggle

There was, at least in theory, a lot of stories to be had during the 2018 midterms. These days the news is on 24/7, but it says less in a whole week than a serious person could in five minutes. Drifting through the cracks was any notion of that “left flank” of the Democratic Party, given momentum by the imperialist Blue (sheep) Dog Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Where on earth were Sanders and the issues he brought to light during his campaign? Could the “socialist” Bernie Sanders really have been satisfied with Nancy Pelosi’s victory lap: “Let’s hear it for pre-existing conditions.” Where was single payer? 15 bucks an hour? Free college tuition? Was Wall St. even mentioned this year? We should check Bernie’s pulse to make sure this isn’t a Weekend At Bernie’s situation.

The issues that Sanders made popular were left for dead as he and everyone else scrambled to stop Trumpism in its tracks. A worthy opponent, at least. But just a week in, and we are hearing about compromise. Sanders, to his credit, is willing to stand up to Trump, but he has never mustered the courage to stand up to Trump’s co-conspirators in the Democratic Party. Sanders now…

They say they can’t believe it, it’s a sacrilegious shame
Now, who would want to hurt such a hero of the game?
But you know I predicted it; I knew he had to fall
How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small.
Tell me every detail, I’ve got to know it all,
And do you have a picture of the pain?

— Phil Ochs, The Crucifixion

You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.

— Goethe, Faust

President John Kennedy was assassinated by the U.S. national-security state, led by the C.I.A., on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.  That is a fact beyond dispute, except for those who wish to engage in pseudo-debates to deny the obvious.  I prefer not to, since there is nothing to debate.

But there is everything to mourn, even after fifty-five years, first, of course, for the man himself, then for those who have suffered and died for bearing witness to the truth about his assassination, and finally for the consequences of his murder, because it cut savagely into any pretense of American innocence and set the stage for the nihilistic tragedies that have followed, including the murders of Malcolm X, MLK, RFK, the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the ongoing “war on terror.”

Today, JFK’s killers have tightened their choke-hold on the country and on the throats of those wishing to tell the truth.  Their penetration of the corporate mass media is wide and…

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the gruesome murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Arab kingdom’s consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul last month, a report says.

In a report published on Friday, The Washington Post, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, said that the American spy agency had reached the conclusion that the Saudi de facto ruler had ordered the assassination, contradicting Riyadh’s claims that he was not involved in the killing.

According to the American daily newspaper, to which Khashoggi was a contributing columnist, in conducting its assessment, the CIA examined multiple sources of intelligence, including a phone call that the prince’s brother Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the US, had with the ill-fated journo, telling him to go to the Saudi diplomatic mission and giving him assurances that it…

Team Trump missed the summit on Syria. In that, Patrick Lawrence sees another sign of Washington’s failure to accept its loss of diplomatic primacy.

Lost in the Memory Palace:
US Leads, But No One Follows

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

You would hardly know it from reading the U.S. press, but a summit of considerable significance took place late last month. German, French, Russian, and Turkish leaders convened in Istanbul Oct. 27 to create a comprehensive plan to end the seven-year war in Syria. On the agenda: increase humanitarian aid, rebuild ruined towns and cities, assist returning refugees, draft a new constitution and arrange internationally supervised elections. All this will take time, but the Syria story is evolving from one of conflict to one of reconciliation and reconstruction.

Two features of the summit deserve special note.

The four nations are not all fast friends, to put it mildly. But they drew together to find common interests in resolving what may count as the worst crisis since the Cold War’s end. Second, there was a conspicuous absence at the Istanbul gathering: the United States. Despite its prominent role in the Syrian conflict for at least the past six years, if not longer, the United States wanted no part of a many-sided summit dedicated to resolving it via negotiation.

A matter of days later came the Trump administration’s sweeping new sanctions against Iran, planned for many months and put into force at midnight on Nov. 4.

Never mind Washington’s adversaries: Even its traditional allies in Europe are resisting the United States.  This new round of sanctions rank among the stupidest foreign policy moves of Trump’s two years in office. Two others were withdrawing from the climate pact in June 2017 and  unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital six months later.

Trump: No one follows. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

Three Things Now Clear 

At this point, three things are clear about the Trump administration’s approach to global affairs.

No. 1: Team Trump’s foreign policies are easily the most incoherent of any administration in recent memory. The United States does or does not…

Newsbusters
November 16, 2018

It’s not just President Donald Trump, White House press secretaries Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders who think Jim Acosta is out of control. Even some of his journalist colleagues think his antics are bad for journalism.

Some of his peers, including liberal ones, have been complaining about Acosta long before his November 7 press conference theatrics that got him suspended by the White House.

Way back in January of 2017, The Hill’s Joe Concha, appearing on FNC’s MediaBuzz, ripped into Acosta as “entitled” and “obnoxious” when he tussled with then-President-elect Trump. Concha accused the CNN White House correspondent of “grandstanding”: “I wonder why Jim Acosta felt that he was entitled – more privileged than the other 250 reporters that were in that room by repeatedly yelling no more than 14 times at a President-elect, demanding that he be afforded the right to ask a question. I found that to be grandstanding.”

Concha also took a shot at Acosta’s bosses (who sued the White House over the suspension): “CNN, that morning, around 5:45, reserved eight seats for themselves in the front row by putting reserved signs down there, effectively boxing out other news organizations that wanted that kind of access….CNN’s behavior here, I have to say has been – in Jim Acosta’s case, making about himself, making himself the story, and CNN – eight reservations…that’s just obnoxious.”

Read more

This article was posted: Friday, November 16, 2018 at 8:13 am

The political crisis in Sri Lanka: Its lessons for the international working class

16 November 2018

The political crisis that has raged in Sri Lanka for the past three weeks merits the careful attention of workers around the world.

Events on this island of 22 million people, lying off India’s southern tip, are being propelled by the same processes, rooted in world capitalist breakdown, that are shaping political and socio-economic life around the globe.

Principal among these are:

•  A US-led revival of militarism and great-power strategic rivalry that threatens, absent the revolutionary intervention of the working class, to plunge humanity into a third world war;
•  A resurgence of class struggle as working people strive to put an end to decades of austerity and rampant social inequality;
• The breakdown of democratic, legal-constitutional forms of rule as all sections of the capitalist elite turn to reaction and authoritarianism.

Three weeks ago today, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena illegally sacked Ranil Wickremesinghe, the head of the United National Party (UNP), as the country’s prime minister and installed in his stead the former president, Mahinda Rajapakse.

This was an abrupt reversal. One, moreover, that immediately set alarms bells ringing in Washington, since it cut across the longstanding US drive to harness Sri Lanka—which bestrides the world’s most important shipping lanes—to its military-strategic offensive against China.

At the end of 2014, US imperialism, aided by its close regional ally India, had concocted an alliance between Sirisena, hitherto a loyal Rajapakse ally, and Wickremesinghe and his UNP. Just weeks before the January 2015 presidential election and only days after quitting Rajapakse’s government, Sirisena was proclaimed the…

Damascus and its allies have repeatedly accused Washington of waging a phony war on the jihadists, and of providing various forms of covert support for terrorists operating on Syrian territory.

The Syrian government is directly responsible for creating Daesh (ISIS)*, US special representative for Syria engagement James Jeffrey has alleged.

“The Syrian regime produced ISIS,” the diplomat said, speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday. “The elements of ISIS in the hundreds, probably, saw an opportunity in the total breakdown of civil society and of the upsurge of violence as the population rose up against the Assad regime, and the Assad regime, rather than try to negotiate or try to find any kind of solution, unleashed massive violence against its own population.”

“That created a space for ISIS to recruit people; to protect people to some degree, ironic as it sounds, from the depredations of the Assad regime; and very soon, ISIS had an army of 35,000 troops and had seized big chunks of both Iraq and Syria,” Jeffrey said.

Later in the press conference, Jeffrey appeared to contradict himself, recalling that al-Qaeda in Iraq, the direct precursor to Daesh, was actually started in Iraq.

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“ISIS’s predecessor under the same leader, [Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi, al-Qaeda in Iraq, was almost completely defeated when I was in Iraq…But it was able to regenerate itself because there was no long-term strategy in either Syria or Iraq, but particularly in Iraq at the time, because that’s where we were focused on, to ensure the enduring defeat of these elements,” the diplomat said.

Daesh’s…

President Donald Trump says the United States may not impose more tariffs on Chinese goods, raising hopes of easing tensions between the two countries.

The announcement by Trump came on Friday after China had sent the US a list of steps it was willing to take to resolve trade disputes.

“We have another $267bn [in tariffs ready] to go, if we want to,” he told reporters at the White House, saying, however, “We may not have to do that.”

“I think a deal will be made,” Trump said. “We’ll find out very soon.”

China proposed a new list of issues to be negotiated ahead of the G20 summit, which Trump described as a “pretty complete list.”

However, the president said that “four or five big things left off” the list of 142 items sent by China, noting the list was still “not acceptable to me yet.”

Meanwhile, White House officials told CNBC immediately after Trump’s remarks that there was still no sign of a deal coming soon, according to Eamon…

Breitbart
November 16, 2018

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Wednesday that America should be building roads and bridges in America, not Afghanistan.

“I’m tired of spending $50 billion a year in Afghanistan building roads and bridges over there where I would rather build roads and bridges here,” Paul told Breitbart News Deputy Political Editor Amanda House during a wide-ranging interview that included President Donald Trump’s push to advance an America First foreign policy,

A study from Brown University released on Wednesday found that American taxpayers spent $5.9 trillion in military action in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan since 2001, which is $2 trillion more than all federal government spending during the 2017-18 fiscal year.

Video here

This article was posted: Friday, November 16, 2018 at 8:15 am