This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

The Trump administration has tapped Palantir — the notorious data-mining firm co-founded by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel — to compile information on people in the United States for a “master database,” creating an easy way to cross-reference sensitive data from tax records, immigration records and more. Palantir also has a $30 million contract with ICE to provide almost real-time visibility into immigrants’ movements as the agency seeks to arrest 3,000 people a day. Wired reporter Makena Kelly says the company is “becoming an operation system for the entire government,” and describes how Palantir’s contracts with the Trump administration are an outgrowth of work done by Elon Musk’s DOGE which aims to “centralize data all across government.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The Black Bolts came out of some free writing I was doing. It was a pretty heavy time while I was making it as far as grief and subsequent depression kicked in. Working on art or music is a good way to organize the messier or abstract feelings, it’s a place you can put those so you’re not just a person in the world swimming in all these thoughts.

The Black Bolts is a metaphor viewing that depression or grief as storm clouds, when they coalesce, whatever positive or negative electrons or neutrons that smash together can yield lightning, which can illuminate a path forward that also shows you the beauty in all of that darkness, which to me is the other side of grief. You only feel so bad when you lose something because you loved them so much, or you may lose someone because it’s directly proportional to the amount of love and unspoken love that you had for this person.

Maybe the black bolts are these songs, or the impetus for these songs is just jotting down or documenting those flashes of inspiration that helped me go forward. This record is a way to honor those people that I’ve lost who really helped me along the way. It is strange when it’s the people who directly inspired me to want to make art or music, many of those people are the ones who passed. This was a good way to keep them in the world for myself. And also the songs are multi-purpose, whoever needs to use them, that’s the way I hope it lands in the world.

You’ve said the importance of making art is that when you walk away, you’ve altered, gotten rid of, or imported something. I’m assuming that was the case with this one.

Absolutely. If you live long enough you’re going to lose someone, you’re going to experience, I hope it’s not clinical depression, but you’ll experience extreme periods of sadness or things not going your way. Even just looking at the world and wondering, is this it? All we got is just being fucking hateful, murderous people, that’s it? It’s just life, but I feel as someone who’s making art or has this mechanism to process, and when I say process, it can be therapeutic. The act of someone throwing a bunch of dust at you and you’re just like, “Okay, I’m going to turn this into little mud balls and place them over here so they make some kind of sense and I’m not swimming in this mist.”

How does seeing your ideas through as a solo artist differ from operating with a band?

I have no problem telling people what to do now. I also want to make it as easy for them as possible. I want to help them out by saying, “Here’s the storyboards, here’s the map that we can all collaborate on.” Much in the same way as it goes with a band. You find people who are better than you at what they do and say, “I would love for you to have fun with this because I know that you’re great at what you do, and I want to see what that yields.”

In terms of demo writing and going from 80 to 100 percent, it was good, because it was the way I started making music on a four-track, just beatboxing, a cappella and a little bit of keyboard. Back then I would make demos and burn a CD of them and give it to a friend or make copies. We’d trade stuff, without having the idea they would be more realized. I didn’t have any idea I would be in a band.

It was going back to that, making a strong enough demo for people to get ideas and springboard off of instead of, as I would with the band, knowing that I’m going to get to here, but I know for sure that Jaleel’s going to have a great idea here, Dave’s going to have a great idea, or Kyp will do something awesome here. That part was exciting, the uncertainty, not knowing who I was going to collaborate with and how.

You used a “dry paint/wet paint” framework for deciding which ideas needed elaboration and which to leave as is. How did that play out?

The wet paint, dry paint shorthand developed between Wilder Zoby and I. l have a tendency, if something doesn’t feel exactly right, I can go back to the point of obsessing. Lyrically or with harmony. Since that’s my department on the song, I’ll just be like, “That’s not right. I don’t know what’s not right about it.” It’s almost like a painting, sometimes you get to a point and you think that area over there, something’s not sitting right with me so I’m going to keep working on it. Then you realize you’ve completely fucked it up and it’s a mess. Maybe if you’d just gone for a walk or something, you would’ve come back and not even noticed it. So we had a shorthand with the songs where we’d get them to a certain point and just feel like, okay, that’s done. We’ve taken that to a point where we both looked at each other and gone, “This feels right, this feels good in the moment.” When we were doing a final review of all of the songs there were some things that were obvious, where it was just like, “I’m going to go in and fix that because this sounds weird,” or there was a technical thing wrong with it. There were other things that were more feelings-based or lyrics I was unsure about. You get in your head about lyrics more than anybody who hears the final will, because they have no idea what the 20 versions of this thing were before they hear it.

I forget that every time I’m making a record.

We do forget it. There’s songs in the past with TV on the Radio, where as soon as it’s out in the world, I hear it and I’m just like, “Why didn’t I change that?” No one cares or knows. So the wet paint, dry paint thing showed up. It’s great to have a collaborator or somebody who’s aware of what you’re doing that you can use as a sounding board. Even while we were mastering it, I was like, “I think I want to add that thing that I’ve been thinking of.” And Wilder would go, “I’m going to say it’s dry paint.”

Then we’d take a little survey with whoever else was in the room, and they’re like, “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, I think that’s fine.” Even if I felt uncomfortable about it, on this record more than anything else I shrugged and said, “You know what? I feel weird about that.” But also I love things that are kind of awkward, I like the handmade nature of things. Increasingly I like to see a human hand in something, imperfections.

How long have you had your journaling practice?

I am not as disciplined about it as I would like to be every day. I don’t remember when the first edition came out, but The Artist’s Way, the Julia Cameron book. Someone gave it to me, and the first thing I thought was, come on, this is a workbook. It was like, no, I get up and I’m bummed out. I go to my job at The Angelika and I’m sad, I come home and I do what I’m going to do. You just fuck around wonder where the time is going.

So they gave it to me and I was like, “I’ll try it out for a week.” I ended up going through the whole thing and doing the morning pages where she encourages you to write three notebook pages a day, to free-write and not look back at it. You don’t look at it for maybe a month as a way to clear everything out of your head in the morning and put it in a place, put all your messy and serious thoughts in one place and then don’t look at it.

It’s almost like going for a run in the morning. You’re like, I’m going into the world and getting ready to go and be a person without having all of these little knots tied up. I’ve tried to do that since I got that book, which was probably in the late 90s. I have gone back to some of those journals, I’ve got a box of them over there for ideas. I also draw in the margins of some of those. Some of those little dumb sketches can end up as drawings or a painting. I took that idea and did a lot of free writing and drawing in this book, specifically for this record. This started May 16th, 2021 as a way to reorganize my thoughts and have a master plan to go into this record.

About a week after I signed to Sub Pop, there was another part of this whole, what do I like about making music? I had gone to all these labels and no one cared. Then I thought, what about Sub Pop? Maybe they’d be interested. They’re definitely in that pantheon of labels that put out music that made me realize I could probably make music, and influenced the way I thought about music, scenes ,and who I wanted to be around. I brought the demos to them and they were super on board immediately, which was a big lift for me. A week after that, my sister passed away suddenly.

I’m the only immediate family in the country. My mom’s in Nigeria, it was just me. I had to go and deal with all of that, doing a ceremony, everything. I came back and just essentially was like, “I don’t want to do anything ever again. This is the closest person in my life.” It was mid-pandemic, so it was all of that stuff you have to do when somebody passes, in masks, you set up a Zoom funeral. It was a pretty heavy time. That was in March, and this says, May 16th, 2021.

Three months after, I was like, “You know what, not only do I owe someone a record.” Sub Pop was just like, “Take as much time as you want.” And I was like, “I don’t want to hear that because I’d like to get it done, and I feel like it’s the best use of my time in the middle of this grief and everything surrounding it.” It’s good to have a place to land. I had the record title already, and here in my journal it says, “Bolts Master Plan, May 16th.” Then it said, “May 17th to June 4th, demo and organize. June, July, August, work. Turn the record in in September.

I wrote, “cohesion, a strict schedule, unplug everything to work, make a sonic bed. The sonic bed is where you rest now until the years end, all other projects get turned off.” That starts, then I have a page here that essentially says, “Focus on demos first, new batches every week. I want violins, some digital, mostly organic sounds. Look it up, make a mixtape of how you’d like things to go.”

This record has the feeling of a mixtape that a friend would’ve given to me in high school, and of a mixtape that friends did give to me in high school. There are all these inspirations, and this was just on one day. The first tier of inspiration–Fever Ray, Little Dragon, Bjork, Homogenic. Gary Newman, Stooges, Raw Power, Rain Dogs, Odelay, Mellow Gold, Nation of Ulysses, Nick Drake. Second layer, Tinariwen, Howlin’ Wolf, Choirs, bones in a stone room, which is not a band, it’s just a feeling and sound.

Organic, Super Onze, which is a Malian Griot band. Listen to Bahia, Manu Chao, Congotronics. Then the third layer, words, sound, spoken word, glitch. There are sketches for what the album art might look like. Then it says for dance tracks, listen to some house, footwork, techno. Apply that to Conga and Calypso, mix and match. Eight songs, three interludes. That was the first deal of this is what I want to fucking do.

What are some creative throughlines that allow you to stay engaged in your work?

When I started out, I thought I would be a comic artist, specifically an underground cartoonist. Then I wanted to make films, short films and music videos, and acting came out of that. Then making stop motion was also sort of a, “I can do this,” just make the thing that I want to see.

Which by the way, it never turns out exactly the way I want to see it. But also accepting that. It’s going to be something close to the idea or completely different, which is also totally fine. It’s in collaboration, finding people who are in a lot of ways better than you at what they’re doing. Bringing them in and getting to a place of play. Everybody tries to be their best selves creatively when you bring people in who are very good at what they do, and you encourage them to go in a direction that makes the most sense for them. And push it to be like, “If we all get down on this one mural,” whatever, the technical mural, whether it’s a record or a video or something, and we’re all excited to see it, then that’s the best place we can possibly be.

It’s also trusting this mechanism of processing the world. As long as I’m still in the world and as long as I’m moving forward. A friend of min, a sculptor named Jenny Beck, we’re thinking about life in terms of you get born then you’re shoved along by this invisible hand, all of these things come at you and you have to figure out a way to reconfigure them so they get out of your way. Or reconfigure them so that they become a part of you, or so that you can use them to help other people.

Mostly it’s realizing that you’re going to be pushed forward, and that time is here and we’ve got to spend it. We don’t have anything, there’s nothing we can do but spend that time. The throughline is that it all feels like a doable collage. All of these separate elements of your outside life and your inner life and the events of the wordl. It’s all stuff to pull from and turn into something else. Sometimes that’s a job and you get paid for it, and sometimes it’s just what you do.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Jeffrey.

Listen to the series on your favorite podcasting platforms.

Episode one: "The Secret Life of Mr. Wang."

Episode two: "The US, China and spy versus spy"

Episode three: "Inside the world of Chinese dissidents"

Episode four: "United States v. Shujun Wang"

Episode five: "A guilty verdict, but questions remain"

Read more in RFA's exclusive special report, "Historian. Activist. Spy? For years an American academic pushed for democracy in his native China. The FBI claims it was a front."

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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tara McKelvey and Jane Tang for RFA Investigative.

Investigative journalist David Sirota, founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, is the host of a new podcast series exploring how extremist ideologues and wealthy oligarchs have developed a system of legalized corruption in the U.S. Master Plan traces the decadeslong conservative-led plan to increase the role of money in politics. “This was a plan, a specific plan, to deregulate the campaign finance laws,” says Sirota.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Is he an American patriot caught up in a game he doesn’t understand -- or an agent for a foreign government living a double life?

Discover the truth in RFA's thrilling 5-episode podcast series, "Master of Deceit," launching July 20. 

Read more in RFA's exclusive special report, "Historian. Activist. Spy? For years an American academic pushed for democracy in his native China. The FBI claims it was a front."

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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Tara McKelvey and Jane Tang for RFA Investigative.

Kong Nay gained international recognition for his solo performances with a long-necked string instrument – known as a chapei – while singing or reciting traditional stories or semi-improvised and sometimes humorous topical material. He passed away on June 28 at the age of 80.

“This is a real loss because the talented chapei dang veng musician mastered the skill, which has become so rare,” said Chhun Bukthorn, a student of chapei dang veng and a member of the Chapei Amatak Association, which teaches younger Cambodians how to play traditional musical instruments.

Traditional art forms like chapei dang veng have for years struggled to retain an audience, particularly among a younger generation that is more focused on contemporary music, according to Pich Sarath, who studied under Kong Nay and is the president of the Chapei Amatak Association. 

But Kong Nay managed to see a rebirth in interest in his music after joining the popular Cambodian rapper VannDa in a breakaway hit. 

In 2016, Unesco added chapei dang veng to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.

‘Nicknamed the master’

Kong Nay was born in 1945 in Kampot province. He became blind as a 4-year-old after contracting smallpox. He began studying chapei at 13, learning from his great uncle until he began playing professionally as an 18-year-old. 

He survived the civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime, which wiped out the majority of Cambodia’s musicians and artists. 

In 1991 – as the country was rebuilding and was attempting to revive its cultural and artistic traditions – Kong Nay won first prize in a national competition. 

In the following decades, Kong Nay went on to receive honorary certificates from the Royal Academy of Khmer Arts and Culture and the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts. He also taught music at the ministry’s Department of Performing Arts. 

In 2013, he was among 17 artists declared by the Cambodian government to be National Living Human Treasures. 

“For almost eight decades, when talking about the long chapei instrument, one would think of a great artist who was nicknamed the master, Kong Nay,” the nonprofit Cambodian Living Arts said in its profile of Kong Nay.

Prime Minister Hun Manet and Senate President Hun Sen both expressed condolences in Facebook statements. 

Pich Sarath said he hoped the government would consider adding chapei lessons to the school curriculum and providing a monthly stipend to young chapei dang veng artists.

“We see that chapei always sends and shares an educational message and knowledge to audiences,” he said. “The sound gives peace, a sound that is reminiscent of the memory of Cambodian children.”

Translated by Yun Samean. Edited by Matt Reed.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Khmer.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.

Users have also shared this video on Facebook with the same claim.

The video is also viral on Twitter with the same claim. (Archive)

Fact Check

The first thing to notice in this video is that a man can be heard counting down the beatings in the background. He can be heard saying “…cinco, cuatro, tres..” which is Spanish for “….five, four, three…”. This indicates that the video was not shot in India.

Upon a reverse image search of a key-frame the video, we found several instances of the viral video on Reddit, under the r/NarcoFootage subreddit. One of those instances shows that the video was uploaded two years ago, and another shows that it was uploaded one year ago. The titles of both videos suggest that the man in the video was a thief who was being beaten up by a cartel.

We found a longer version of the video which contains a conversation between the handcuffed man and others present in the room, in Spanish. We will refrain from hyperlinking the video, owing to the nature of the website. The man was asked, “Why did we hit you with the board?” to which he replied, “Because I took something”. They further ask, “What did you take” the response to which is unclear.

So, it is clear that the incident is not related to the Odisha train tragedy.

It is pertinent to note that in the past, there were viral claims that the station master of Bhanaga Bazar rail station, Mohammed Sharif, was absconding after the accident. However, Alt News found that no one named Sharif was a part of the railway station staff at Bahanaga Bazar.

The assistant station master, SB Mohanty, who was on duty, had reportedly fled from the spot after the accident. Subsequently, Mohanty had joined the probe into the accident.

Alt News also discovered that the image imposed at the bottom of the video, allegedly of Mohammed Sharif, was used by digital creator Vikas Chander, in a blog post dated March 2004. The title said: “Kottavalasa Kirandul KK Line”. The man whose photo has been used in the viral posts is identified as the station master of Borra Guhalu railway station in the blog.

Addressing the misleading social media posts claiming that some of the Bahanaga railway staff were absconding, chief public relations officer of South Eastern Railways Aditya Chaudhary clarified that all the staff members were present and cooperating with the inquiry.

#WATCH | Balasore train accident | “A few media reports are coming in that a Bahanaga staff is absconding and missing. This is factually incorrect. The entire staff is present & a part of inquiry. They are appearing before agency,” says Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, CPRO South Eastern… pic.twitter.com/Htc538cIFp

— ANI (@ANI) June 20, 2023

ence, the claims that absconding station master named Mohammed Sharif was found in a Madrasa in Kolkata and beaten up by the CBI, are false. There is no one by that name at the Bahanaga Bazar railway station. An old video of a thief being beaten up by a cartel is being falsely circulated with viral claims.

The post Odisha tragedy: Absconding station master ‘Sharif’ found in madrasa? False claim based on unrelated video appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

The post Daniel Ellsberg: Master of War, Champion of Peace appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John Kendall Hawkins.

Instead, it focuses on strengthening the military and the country’s missile and nuclear capabilities, and authorities are forcing citizens to study the highly-touted proposal in educational sessions this month.

“This year’s party policy … is a repeat of the same old themes that have been repeatedly emphasized for decades,” an official from the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

Authorities published the booklet as a nojak, meaning it is among the county’s masterpieces of published materials, and therefore an “immortal classic work.” The only other authors of nojak are Kim Jong Un’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il, and grandfather, national founder Kim Il Sung.

The master plan did in fact discuss some current concerns, according to the source, but none dealt directly with providing a steady food supply for the impoverished country that has been isolated by sanctions over its nuclear program.

“They covered forestry projects, developments in science and technology, and projects to eradicate non-socialist behavior,” he said. “But unless we change our current policy of emphasizing national defense and increasing the military’s capabilities, how will we ever come up with a policy that addresses the problems directly related to how the people are struggling to live?”

Part of the educational materials discussion of Kim Jong Un’s “heroic accomplishments,” but the people scoff at these, a source in the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

“The general secretary boasts about the nuclear force policy as a great achievement completed under extremely adverse conditions,” the second source said. “But this policy has been a fatal blow to the lives of the residents.”

“They say, ‘Why do we need to do these kinds of ideological studies when nothing has changed after decades of studying?’” he said. “This is presented as a 100-year plan to create a rich and strong country, but nobody actually believes that.” 

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee and Leejin J. Chung

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jieun Kim for RFA Korean.

Amid public concerns about the gloomy job market in China, a 2021 claim that more than 70,000 master’s degree holders in China worked in food delivery began circulating on the internet. China's official media outlets dismissed the figure as misinformation and “typical rumor.” 

However, Asia Fact Check Lab’s research found that the widely circulated estimate is credible. The Chinese Cyberspace Administration in contrast used misinformation in its effort to debunk the claim and calm anxiety aroused by domestic job shortages.

Context 

Unemployment is a hot topic in China. The National Bureau of Statistics’ reported nominal unemployment rates had reached a 20-year high in 2020 with 10.6 million people out of work. In 2021, the number fell slightly to 10.4 million unemployed. 

Given the challenge of finding stable work, a large number of advanced degree holders have flocked to jobs previously considered undesirable for people with higher education  – driving taxis, waiting tables and delivering food. 

Video bloggers worried about China’s stagnant job market soon began creating content based on data from industry reports published by the country’s two largest takeout companies, Ele.me and Meituan. Their videos estimate that there are “70,000 delivery drivers with master’s degrees” in China.  

An article published by the website Shanghai Piyao (Shanghai Debunking Rumor) soon called the claim a “typical rumor.” Piyao is a website co-created by the Shanghai branch of China’s Cyberspace Administration and by Jiefang Daily, the mouthpiece of the Shanghai Communinst Party Committee. 

Analysis

Meituan and Ele.me are China's two largest food delivery platforms, covering 90% of the market share. They each surveyed a portion of their part-time delivery drivers on a range of questions, including field of study, job satisfaction and education. The Ele.me report surveyed 9,896 drivers, while the Meituan report sampled more than 118,000. Each report claimed that 1% of the survey’s sample population held a master's degree or higher. 

The vloggers also cited the overall population of food delivery workers in China as 7 million, according to a separate report by CCTV, China’s official state media, and estimated that 1% – or 70,000 – of these drivers held a master's degree.

Can findings from 118,000 drivers be applied to 7 million drivers?

Attempting to debunk the vloggers’ claim, the Shanghai Piyao article said that the inclusion of part-time drivers in the survey samples skews their results, due to the high rates of college students working in those positions. The article further claims that because the Meituan report “only sampled 118,000 people” its findings cannot be extrapolated and applied to all delivery drivers in the country. 

AFCL found both Piyao claims to be false. The criticism that large numbers of part-time college students skewed the results is irrelevant, given that both industry surveys specified that 1% of their delivery drivers had obtained a master's degree or higher. 

Secondly, the sample sizes in both reports are statistically acceptable. According to the law of large numbers, once a random sample from a group reaches a certain “critical size,” the sample’s results should accurately reflect the entire group. For the estimated 7 million delivery drivers in China, a researcher would need 9,475 respondents to achieve a 95% confidence level with a 1% margin of error and 26,000 respondents to boast a 99.9% confidence level. Therefore both Ele.me’s sample of 9,896 and Meituan’s sample of 118,000 are more than large enough to glean an accurate picture of the academic credentials for all takeout delivery drivers in China. 

Such methods are also used in China’s official statistical survey. In June 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics of China randomly surveyed just 160,000 families across China, a nation of over 1.4 billion people, to report on the nation’s status on household income and spending.

Are 7 million and 70,000 credible estimates? 

The Shanghai Piyao article further concluded that the estimates of 7 million and 70,000 drivers are a “hodgepodge of numbers culled together on social media, lacking any related official statistics whatsoever.” 

AFCL found this accusation to be false. The 2020 figure of “a total of 7 million takeout drivers'' comes from China’s National Postal Service, the government agency responsible for overseeing delivery drivers in the country. This figure is even quoted in a report on CCTV’s own economic channel, which would seem to deflate the claim of it “lacking any related official statistics.”

It may sound surprising that as many as 70,000 advanced degree holders would choose to work in food delivery, what in the U.S. might traditionally be considered a low earning “blue-collar” job. In China, however, the field is relatively high-paying. Drivers can make up to 10,000 yuan per month (around $1,450). For comparison, many migrant workers in large cities earn as little as 3,000 yuan while working as security guards and cleaners. Furthermore, COVID actually increased demand for workers in food delivery, due to many restaurants switching their business model to delivery only. 

Such a job would appeal to the many people in China who faced temporary bouts of employment in the wake of COVID. While exact unemployment numbers vary from region to region, a 2022 report from China’s Bureau of National Education Statistics pegged the rate of unemployed urban youth between ages 16 through 24 at 19.9%. Youth are not the only ones affected. A nationwide study conducted from 2015 to 2020 showed that the number of unemployed doctorate degree holders rose to a high of nearly 8.7% during that time period. 

Conclusion

The claim that 70,000 delivery drivers hold a master’s degree in China is an estimate derived from statistically credible numbers released in 2019.  The number of delivery drivers has likely risen since the beginning of the pandemic. Contrary to official claims, it seems that the people “refuting” the “rumors” are the ones trying to sweep a glaring problem under the rug. 

References

1) Ele.me’s 2019 Report

2) Yale Insights - Study Suggests That Local Chinese Officials Manipulate GDP

3) Statistics of Unemployed Urban Workforce 

4) “Are seventy thousand graduate students delivering takeout? Don’t be fooled by all the tabloid hype.”

5) A representative from the team who wrote the above article gives an award speech.

6) China’s youth unemployment rate is at 20%. The real numbers are possibly even higher. 

7) 2015 - 2020: Data analysis of Chinese doctorate degree holder’s careers.

8) When our nation’s youth are delivering takeout, what’re we to do?

9) Handbook for Structuring and Coding the Annual Academic Grant Report (2020)

10) July data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Released on August,15 2022

11) Sample Size Calculator 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Emma Lee.

This content originally appeared on Gaslit Nation with Andrea Chalupa and Sarah Kendzior and was authored by Andrea Chalupa & Sarah Kendzior.

The "special master" assigned to review materials seized from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate pushed back against attempts by the former president's legal team to avoid officially addressing his declassification claims in court on Tuesday.

The exchange came during Judge Raymond Dearie's first meeting with Trump's lawyers and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

The ex-president's attorneys had sought a special master and Trump-appointed, Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted that request—tasking Dearie with vetting the materials that federal agents took from the Florida estate last month while executing a search warrant.

While about 100 of the 11,000 records are marked as classified, Trump has publicly claimed—without providing any evidence—that he declassified all of those documents.

Summarizing the key takeaway from the hearing, the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) tweeted that the special master "just said if Trump's lawyers don't officially counter whether the documents Trump took are classified, then Dearie will side with the DOJ."

Citing separate court filings by his attorneys Monday night and Tuesday, The New York Times explained that Trump "wants it both ways: He is arguing that he and his legal team should not have to state in a legal proceeding, where they could become subject to perjury charges or other penalties, that he declassified the documents, while also telling the courts that they should not accept the Justice Department's word that they remain classified."

Trump's attorneys wrote Monday that they didn't want Dearie to force their client to "fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the district court's order."

The Washington Post noted that line from the Monday filing was "a remarkable statement that acknowledges at least the possibility that the former president or his aides could be criminally charged."

During Tuesday's hearing, Dearie pressed "Trump's lawyers on what he's supposed to do," noting that "the government provided 'prima facie evidence' of classification, i.e., the markings," reported Law & Crime managing editor Adam Klasfeld.

Dearie told Trusty, "As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it."

Trusty argued to the judge that his team should not have to disclose declassification defenses at this time.

According to Klasfeld and Politico senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein, Dearie responded that "you can't have your cake and eat it."

The hearing occurred despite the DOJ's ongoing appeal of Cannon's ruling—specifically, her decision about what materials Dearie should examine and her determination that the department can't use classified materials for its criminal investigation of Trump until the review is complete.

The Daily Beast highlighted that "whether any of the records seized from Trump's home are classified may ultimately be a side issue. The Justice Department has emphasized that the three potential crimes it is investigating don't hinge on whether the material held at Mar-a-Lago was classified."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The "special master" assigned to review materials seized from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate pushed back against attempts by the former president's legal team to avoid officially addressing his declassification claims in court on Tuesday.

The exchange came during Judge Raymond Dearie's first meeting with Trump's lawyers and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn.

The ex-president's attorneys had sought a special master and Trump-appointed, Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted that request—tasking Dearie with vetting the materials that federal agents took from the Florida estate last month while executing a search warrant.

While about 100 of the 11,000 records are marked as classified, Trump has publicly claimed—without providing any evidence—that he declassified all of those documents.

Summarizing the key takeaway from the hearing, the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) tweeted that the special master "just said if Trump's lawyers don't officially counter whether the documents Trump took are classified, then Dearie will side with the DOJ."

Citing separate court filings by his attorneys Monday night and Tuesday, The New York Times explained that Trump "wants it both ways: He is arguing that he and his legal team should not have to state in a legal proceeding, where they could become subject to perjury charges or other penalties, that he declassified the documents, while also telling the courts that they should not accept the Justice Department's word that they remain classified."

Trump's attorneys wrote Monday that they didn't want Dearie to force their client to "fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the district court's order."

The Washington Post noted that line from the Monday filing was "a remarkable statement that acknowledges at least the possibility that the former president or his aides could be criminally charged."

During Tuesday's hearing, Dearie pressed "Trump's lawyers on what he's supposed to do," noting that "the government provided 'prima facie evidence' of classification, i.e., the markings," reported Law & Crime managing editor Adam Klasfeld.

Dearie told Trusty, "As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of it."

Trusty argued to the judge that his team should not have to disclose declassification defenses at this time.

According to Klasfeld and Politico senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein, Dearie responded that "you can't have your cake and eat it."

The hearing occurred despite the DOJ's ongoing appeal of Cannon's ruling—specifically, her decision about what materials Dearie should examine and her determination that the department can't use classified materials for its criminal investigation of Trump until the review is complete.

The Daily Beast highlighted that "whether any of the records seized from Trump's home are classified may ultimately be a side issue. The Justice Department has emphasized that the three potential crimes it is investigating don't hinge on whether the material held at Mar-a-Lago was classified."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

In 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts said, "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges."

This proved to be true following the 2020 presidential election, when judges appointed by Democratic and Republican Presidents, including Trump appointees, acted at a historic moment to reject the dozens of meritless lawsuits brought by former President Trump and his allies to overturn the election of Joe Biden as President.

A decision by federal District Court Judge Aileen Cannon may be a harbinger of things to come that could prove Chief Justice Roberts' claim wrong.

Judge Cannon's decision on Monday ordered the appointment of a special master to review the more than 11,000 documents that were removed last month from Mar-a-Lago under a court-approved search warrant in order to retrieve classified, secret, and top secret documents improperly taken by Trump to his country club and home in Florida.

Until the special master completes their work, Cannon also halted the Justice Department's review of the documents in its criminal investigation. This could slow down the investigation for months.

(This afternoon, the Justice Department announced they would move for Judge Cannon to stay the portion of her ruling enjoining the government from further review of the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago, while they appeal the decision.)

Last week, Cannon issued a preliminary order that she was inclined to grant Trump's special master request. This was highly unusual in that she seemingly decided the merits of the case before the Justice Department even had a chance to respond to Trump's lawsuit.

Cannon's decision on Monday authorized the special master to review the documents not only for Trump's claims of attorney-client privilege but also for his claims of executive privilege. The latter was also highly unusual, if not unprecedented. (Yesterday, a Washington Post investigation revealed that one of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago included top secret information about a foreign government's nuclear capabilities.)

The Cannon decision has been widely criticized. According to The Washington Post, "The sheer volume of criticism on the opinion is remarkable, as is the ideological range of voices expressing it, from Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe to former attorney general William P. Barr."

Barr, a staunch Trump defender during his tenure as Attorney General in the Trump Administration, labeled Cannon's decision "deeply flawed" and "wrong."

In a particularly criticized passage of her decision, Judge Cannon found that as a former President "the stigma associated with the subject seizure is in a league of its own." In doing so, she appeared to be giving private citizen Trump preferential treatment, violating the fundamental principle of our country that all citizens should be treated equally under the law.

In a final unusual action, Judge Cannon denied a motion to allow the filing of an amicus brief that had been submitted by a distinguished group that included former Assistant, Deputy, and Acting Attorneys General and top Justice Department officials who served in previous Republican Administrations. (The brief was prepared by co-counsels Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP; Amb. Norman Eisen (ret.); and myself.)

The brief strongly disagreed with the decision Judge Cannon ultimately reached. She gave no reason why she would not allow it to be filed.

The federal judiciary is the last line of defense in our constitutional system and did a historic job in protecting our democracy from former President Trump's coup attempt in 2020.

There are millions of election deniers in our country, including a substantial number of candidates running for office, who hope to set the stage for a Trump victory in 2024, regardless of the actual outcome of the election.

How many judges like Cannon are out there? That could determine whether the judiciary continues to serve as the last line of defense for our democracy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Fred Wertheimer.

September sunrise, Mt. Hood, 2022. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

“I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that “hard work” was the secret of success: “Work hard and you’ll get ahead” or “It’s hard work that got us where we are.” No one ever said that you could work hard – harder even than you ever thought possible – and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.”

– Barbara Ehrenreich

+ Although it’s allegedly a cherished constitutional right, few people brought to trial on criminal charges in the US ever truly face a “jury of their peers.” Usually, they’re confronting a jury of the prosecution’s peers. For example, even though 45% of Americans oppose the death penalty under any circumstances, those people are automatically excluded from hearing death penalty cases. So the system is rigged to favor a pre-determined result. It is, of course, almost unheard of that a defendant (or the subject of an investigation) would face a judge of his peers– never mind a judge he has put on the bench and hand-picked to hear his case. But that is exactly the situation playing out in the Trump document theft case. There are multiple levels of impunity encoded into our justice system, where the master criminals, the ones who kill, rob and steal the most, those who exploit their positions in government or business for their  own enrichment, are forever shielded from popular justice, while the poor and the powerless remain at the mercy of a system that is designed to keep them in a state of perpetual obedience.

+ The real American exceptionalism, the systemic rot at the core of the Republic, has long been that the people who write, enforce and judge of the laws of the country are the least likely to be held accountable to them, especially when they achieve ranks of power where they’re required to take an oath to uphold them.

+ I’m all for strictly limiting the power of the state to search your house and seize your property, as long as it’s a right enjoyed by all of us. But when has a special master ever been convened in a drug asset seizure case, where police departments have sold off houses, jewelry, boats, and cars–even before people have been convicted of crimes? There is no right to an attorney in these proceedings, which often target low-income people who exist in a cash economy. The legal standard for confiscating your entire bank account is not “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but merely a “preponderance of the evidence.” This kind of “policing for profit” happens all the time up and down the criminal justice system, from local town cops to the federal Dept. of Justice itself, which prepared a memo in 1990 saying, “We must significantly increase forfeiture production to reach our budget target. Every effort must be made to increase forfeiture income.”

+ What did Marsha (aka, Sen. Mopsy) Blackburn say when the Louisville Police Department lied in a warrant application to raid Breonna Taylor’s apartment and shot her, no questions asked?

+ Few, if any, of us would be able to stop a federal espionage investigation in its tracks because of the potential “reputational harm” a search of our property might pose.

+ According to the Washington Post, among the more than 300 classified files seized from Mar-a-Lago this year was a document describing a “foreign government’s military defenses”, including its “nuclear capabilities.” Israel is the only country whose “nuclear capabilities” are at all in question…do they have 90 or 400 nuclear weapons? As for the buyer, it could be the Saudis or, I guess, even the Israelis, seeking to buy back their own secrets. Jared Kushner did extract $2.5 billion from MBS’s sovereign wealth fund after sharing (according to MBS) US intel on his domestic opponents, many of whom were rounded up. Perhaps Trump thought he could shake them down for even more money…

+ Olbermann sounds like he would have personally flipped the switch on the Rosenbergs…(There shouldn’t be any “nuclear secrets,” whether they’re in the hands of the US governor or offered up as collateral on overdue loans at Mar-a-Lago.)

+ The right has no qualms about using the court they’ve put in place, forum-shopping their test cases in front of the judges they’ve appointed. And they shouldn’t. Laws are political artifacts, the judges who interpret them political actors. The notion that justice is blind, that laws are impartial, judges apolitical and sagacious arbiters of fairness are fairytales only the most naive can still cling to at their own peril, as if they’d been seduced by Thomas More’s airy speech to Roper (“I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”) in A Man for All Seasons without recalling how that turned out for him.

+ Whenever Trump goes apeshit over some politically-motivated intrusive action by the State, you can be assured that it’s something he tried–and invariably–failed to do himself. Consider the revelations from Geoffrey Berman’s new memoir, Holding the Line. Berman’s was Trump’s pick to head the US Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, replacing Preet Bharara, who Trump had unceremoniously fired. Berman had volunteered for Trump’s campaign, but was unprepared for the demands that would be placed on him once he became the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. Throughout my tenure as U.S. attorney,” Berman writes. “Trump’s Justice Department kept demanding that I use my office to aid them politically, and I kept declining — in ways just tactful enough to keep me from being fired.” Among those political enemies Trump pressured Berman to indict was John Kerry, for supposedly violating the Logan Act regarding his interactions with Iran.

+ That would indeed be a very Biden thing to do and the “fucknuts” liberals would probably support it, even though many of those “secrets” are classified in order to hide illegal conduct by the US government, often against US citizens….

+ In the past, I suspect most of Trump’s special masters have dressed in black leather and wielded a riding crop.

+++

+ The reason the West keeps burning with bigger and more intense fires, year after year, isn’t because pinko commie tree-huggers have been locking up the forests, but this…

+ 64% of the European continent is either facing drought or in imminent danger of it, according to a recent report by EU scientists.  The report predicts at least another three more months of “warmer and drier” days.

+ Researchers at Harvard and the University of Washington forecast that by 2100 heat exposure would increase by three to ten times in America, among other mid-latitude regions. Few cities are prepared for the health consequences of these temperature surges.

+ The catastrophic flooding in Pakistan last month was at least in part driven by extreme temperatures in April and May, which hovered above 104F for prolonged periods in many places.On one day in May, Jacobabad topped 124F, making Pakistan the hottest place on Earth.

+ At no stage of its production cycle–from the mining of uranium to the operation of the reactors to the long-term storage of radioactive waste–is nuclear energy green. Now the uranium companies are setting their sights on the Black Hills, again.

+ Large swaths of the Amazon are being converted from forest to savannah and much of it may never recover.

+ In Zimbabwe, the drought is so severe park rangers have begun moving more than 2,500 wild animals from a southern reserve to one in the country’s northern reserves. Climate change has now supplanted poaching as the nation’s biggest threat to wildlife.

+ In a single day this week, the Double Creek Fire in the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon exploded from 3,500 acres to more than 38,000 acres.

+ In the Permian Basin of West Texas Oil and gas operations will generate 588 million gallons of toxic wastewater per day for the next 38 years, according to findings of a state-commissioned study group—three times as much wasted much as the oil it produces.

+ The town of Las Vegas, New Mexico (Pop.: 13,100) will run out of fresh water sometime in the next 20 days. Las Vegas is a 76% Hispanic community.

+ $185: the social cost per ton of Carbon emissions.

+ The Thwaites “Doomsday” Glacier in Antarctica is melting much faster than previously believed, largely driven warm and dense deep water heating up the present-day ice-shelf cavity and melting the ice shelves from below. Its collapse could raise sea levels by 10 feet.

+ A big study in IOP Science on how the fossil fuel industry tried to downplay the threat of climate change for 30 years reached the shocking conclusion that: “electric utility industry organizations have promoted messaging designed to avoid taking action on reducing pollution over multiple decades. Notably, many of the utilities most engaged in communicating climate doubt and denial in the past currently have the slowest plans to decarbonize their electricity mix.”

+ Since 2007, federal law has required the blending of biofuels, mostly corn-based ethanol into gasoline. Now, fifteen years later, the country’s ethanol plants are generating more than twice the carbon emissions, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation’s oil refineries.

+ Voting for the lesser-of-two evils on climate change is like switching to the Celsius scale believing it will yield lower temperatures than Fahrenheit.

+ 75% to 85% of plastic floating in the planet’s oceans comes from industrial fishing operations.

+++

+ Here’s Obama’s official White House portrait painted by Robert McCurdy. McCurdy was striving for a hyper-realistic image of the Peace Laureate Prez, which fails because it’s missing Obama’s customary Drone Joy Stick–unless that’s what he’s “gots in his pocketses,” as Gollum might say…

+ The White House is preparing another $13.7 billion in “emergency funding” for Ukraine. Emergency? What about Jackson, Mississippi?

+ Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top weapons-buyer, said this week that the US trained the Ukrainian missileers on how to use the Harpoon missiles that sank two Russian warships. This is how it always goes: first sell a besieged ally weapons, then train the foreign troops how to use them, then send military advisors for how to deploy the weapons, then send the CIA to pick targets, then send US troops when all of the above fails, kill tens of thousands of people (mostly civilians), then cut and run before you’re chased out of the country by the very people you claimed you wanted to protect…

+ Zugzwang [tzoog-tzwung]: a situation in chess (and life) in which a move must be made, but each possible one will make the situation worse.

+ September 3, 2022 in America: 127 shooting incidents, 134 injuries, 46 fatalities…

+ Despite the fact that drug use of any kind is rarely  the cause of miscarriage or still birth, prosecution of women who test positive for drugs still happens and it’s likely get even more common in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

+ Voting is the basement in the abandoned house people keep running into thinking they’ve found the way you, only to find someone in a hockey mask (Pelosi or McCarthy, on any given year) holding a chainsaw to cut off the rest of the Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and Food Stamps…

+ Goldman Sachs analysts spell out the likely consequences this winter from the NATO/US/EU sanctions on Russian oil and gas: “In our view, the market continues to underestimate the depth, the breadth & the structural repercussions of the crisis… We believe these will be even deeper than the 1970s oil crisis.”

+ Europe’s response, however, has been to double down on dirty fuels. European governments are expected to shell out at least €50 billion this winter on new and expanded fossil fuel infrastructure and supplies, including gas shipped in from overseas and coal to fuel previously idled power plants.

+ In Germany, coal-fired power stations generated roughly 30% of the electricity produced in the first half of 2022, outpacing every other energy source.

+ The Israeli Army exonerated itself for the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh, concluding that while an IDF sniper may have fired the shot that killed her, it certainly wasn’t intentional but was purely accident, a mistake. The report concludes there’s a “high probability” that an IDF sniper “accidentally” shot Shireen Abu Akleh. Cynically, the report leaves open the “possibility” that Akleh “was hit by bullets fired by armed Palestinian gunmen,” despite the lack of evidence of Palestinian gunfire near Shireen. This is where it ends, as far as the Israelis are concerned. The report, one can’t really call it an “investigation,” failed to identify the gunman and summarily concluded that there was “no suspicion of a criminal offense that justifies the opening of a Military Police investigation.” Israeli officials said all of the IDF soldiers involved in the raid had been “briefed and acted according to procedure.” It’s the “procedure” which is the problem, which IDF leaders essentially confirmed when they said they were  “very proud of the conduct of our soldiers,” even he sniper who likely killed Shireen. “If he did it,” one senior Israeli official said, “he did it by mistake”. If “he did it by mistake,” he’s a pretty incompetent sniper, given that Shireen was nowhere near any Palestinian gunmen (if there were, any) was wearing gear clearly marked “PRESS.” Even the whitewash needs a whitewash.

+++

+ How did James Madison become the THIRD President of the US, according to Fox? Was Jefferson elided from our Great Patriotic History by the Right for enthusiastically supporting the French Revolution, one of the first eruptions of Wokism? I’ll say again, the people who most fetishize American history know the least about it, even basic undisputed facts about those they idolize.

+ I’ll say again, the people who most fetishize American history know the absolute least about it, ignorant of even basic undisputed facts about those they idolize.

+ W.H. Auden: “The Victorian father who said that he would rather see his daughter dead than on the stage was less foolish that the modern parent who cheerfully allows his children to go into advertising or journalism.”

+ Your government’s contract killers from Wildlife (Funeral) Services had quite a bloody year, killing more than  400,000 native species, including 64,131 coyotes, 24,687 beavers, 3,014 foxes, 605 bobcats, 433 black bears, 324 gray wolves, 200 cougars and 6 grizzly bears.

+ Last year, Mar-a-Lago got permission to hire 87 foreign waiters, cooks and housekeepers. Trump’s company has asked to hire 92 more foreign workers to start work in October.

+ It takes 38 days of full-time work in the Indiana State Women’s prison to afford a bra…

+ Eric Adams called 25-year-old Rameek Smith a “dangerous criminal” and praised the cops who shot and killed him in May, saying they were defending their own lives. But new body cam footage shows that Smith never fired a gun and that he was shot in the back by the cops while he was running away.

+ After prison staff strip-searched him twice and then sent him to be examined by a doctor, a transgender man says he refused still another illegal genital examination. In response, prison guards threw him into solitary confinement.

+ Last July, a cop in Joliet, Illinois handcuffed Eric Lurry, a black man who was suffering from a drug overdose. The cop shoved a baton in his mouth, restricting his airway and called him called him a “bitch.” Lurry later died. When the cop’s brutal actions were exposed, the cop was suspended 6 days. But Javier Esqueda, the police Sergeant who revealed this abusive behavior, was expelled from the cop union. Now Esqueda faces 20 years prison for whistleblowing.

+ 5 million: the number of formerly incarcerated people living in the US. Their unemployment rate is 27 percent.

+ This man is a sitting senator in a country whose incarceration rate rivals Stalin’s during the height of the purge…

+ A high proportion of recent cocaine samples in Australia contained no trace of the drug. In the samples that did contain cocaine, purity levels were at an average of just 27%. Is it a crime to think you’re snorting coke, even if it proves to be powdered laxatives?

+ The few poor people being prosecuted for largely incidental acts of voter fraud (by people like Ron DeSantis) are those who tended to vote against those elected by the institutionalized fraud of our electoral system.

+ US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas ruled this week that requiring employers to provide coverage for PrEP drugs (preventing the transmission of HIV) violates the religious rights of employers under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). If the ruling is affirmed, it will basically unravel the few worthwhile remnants the ACA (ObamaCare).

+ This is medically ignorant, grotesquely bigoted and factually specious. But even if it were true, so fucking what? Aren’t we allowed to have consensual sex with whoever we want–at least until the next shadow docket ruling comes down from the Alito Court?

+ Life expectancy is a pretty good standard for how well your society is functioning. China has now passed the US, theirs increasing, ours falling. Wonder why?

+ A boy born in Rwanda in 2021 now has a higher life expectancy (72.6 years) than a Black boy born in the United States (66.7).

+ 10.5 million children worldwide lost at least one parent to Covid. At least 7.5 million were left as orphans because of the virus.

+ A new study published in Nature of 346 previously healthy COVID-19 survivors found that 73% had cardiac issues and symptoms more than 3 months after infection, and 57% still had them nearly 1 year later.

+ Stephen Thrasher in his new book The Viral Underclass: “Viruses show us where the cracks in our society are.”

+ Speaking of “Shithole Countries,” here’s the line to get bottled water in Jackson, Mississippi…

The line at one of the water distribution centers this morning in Jackson, MS… pic.twitter.com/HjNyXxqZEx

— Louis D (@louisd217) September 6, 2022

+ Out of the 38,000 people on the Oath Keepers’ membership rolls, at least 370 are currently working in law enforcement agencies, more than 100 are serving in this US military, and no fewer than 80 hold a public office or running for a political office.

+ When the Patriot Front, like the Arthurian Knights of legend, came to Indy on their quest to locate the Sacred Object…

Fixed it again.#CherryBoyUnitedFront pic.twitter.com/rlTbD06t3m

— Paul Lahticks (@PaulLahticks) September 4, 2022

+ NBC News ran a segment on what it’s like for teens who are sent out West to a “Christian Therapy” camp, where grueling labor and public shaming rituals are meant to straighten them out. The teens tell of girls being forced to run up and down a mountainside, dodging rattlesnakes in the broiling heat. Others were restricted to a diet a canned olives and beans. Three the girls who were accused of being “stubborn” were tied by staffers to a goat with a leash. One teenage boy was “branded” with a cross.

+++

+ The Queen is dead. Long live Henry Kissinger!

+ Having died at Balmoral, the Scots should seize the Queen’s corpse until they’re granted independence.

+ The weird American nostalgia for the British monarchy is a kind of “lost limb syndrome,” the longing for a vestigal, even cancerous, appendage that was removed so the rest of the body could function.

+ Of course, the US replaced the monarchy with the electoral college, an even less democratic institution.

+ My beloved grandmother–who was born in Sheffield (father unknown)–always claimed that she was the “illegitimate” daughter of Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales. Where do I go to file my claim to the throne? Can it be done online or do I have to raise an army in France?

+ Cockburn, a self-professed Carlist, would be celebrating today. Not–like many of his old friends in Ireland–at the death of “the Queen” but over at long last the ascent of Charles, the organic gardener prince now King…

+ Unlike Shakespeare, John Milton–the greater poet, IMHO–never served as a hired gun for the monarchy. Instead, he put his life on the line to tear it to shreds…

For of all governments a Commonwealth aims most to make the people flourishing, vertuous, noble and high spirited. Monarchs will never permitt: whose aim is to make the people, wealthy indeed perhaps and wel-fleec’t for thir own shearing , and [for] the supply of regal prodigalitie; but otherwise softest, basest, vitiousest, servilest, easiest to be kept under; and not only in fleece, but in minde also sheepishest….

+ Is there any question that the American right would embrace a constitutional (and probably extra-constitutional) monarchy in a heartbeat…?

+ In contrast to Sullivan and his pious ilk, one of Trump’s finest moments–and there were precious few of them–was when he (unwittingly) trampled on every ridiculous standard of royal protocol during his encounter with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

+ The only time I’ve ever bowed to a Queen was after a midnight showing of Female Trouble on Charles Street in Baltimore, when Divine in her magnificent raiment graced us with her imperial presence..

Still from Female Trouble.

+++

+ Devastated to hear of the death of Barbara Ehrenreich, a good friend, a fearless writer and a longtime supporter of CounterPunch.

+ Ehrenreich: “The ‘working poor,’ as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.”

+ I’ll say this about Barbara Ehrenreich. I imposed on her many more times than she imposed on me and she never once made my requests sound like an imposition. She was a kind person, she worked for a better world for others and she loved (most of) the people she wrote about.

+ As the sniveling scion of a South African mining magnate, Elon Musk knows that the dwarves need an albino elvin master of pure genetic stock to whip their dusky bodies into shape & increase productivity down in the pits, where things have gone lax because of the woke presence of black female dwarves…

+ JRR Tolkien: “I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all, I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White.”

+ Probably has a starring role as an Elf lord in Elon Musk’s upcoming film of the Silmarillion…

#FBIWFO released a new photo of this man who allegedly assaulted law enforcement personnel during riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. If you recognize him, call 1-800-225-5324 or visit https://t.co/t8G7LO4hxu to submit a tip. Refer to photo 369 in your tip. pic.twitter.com/onJrsKg5rn

— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) September 5, 2022

+ In the Penguin Random House/Simon & Schuster antitrust trial it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books. (Pleased to say that all of our books have at least hit the lower 3 digits.)

+Mike Davis on Raymond Chandler: “I hate Raymond Chandler, yet I’ve read him and reread him so many times. He’s a fascist, and I mean this in a precise sense. He represents the small businessman being trampled by outside forces. Each of his novels has an openly racist section. But of course, you care about the writing, and you end up forgiving things that really aren’t forgivable. Chandler was a strange guy. He’s buried a mile from here.”

Interview: Have you been to Chandler’s grave?

Davis: Yeah. It’s right next to our Home Depot.

Salvador Dali’s sketch of Sigmund Freud. Source: Freud Museum.

+ Salvador Dali on Sigmund Freud, following their 1938 encounter in London, a meeting arranged by their mutual friend Stefan Zweig, shortly after Freud fled Vienna: “I had just that instant discovered the morphological secret of Freud! Freud’s cranium is a snail! His brain is in the form of a spiral – to be extracted with a needle!”

Afterwards, Freud wrote to Zweig about his own impressions of Dali (presumably unaware of Dali’s dalliances with Spanish fascists): “I really have reason to thank you for the introduction which brought me yesterday’s visitors. For until then I was inclined to look upon the surrealists – who have apparently chosen me as their patron saint – as absolute (let us say 95 percent, like alcohol), cranks. That young Spaniard, however, with his candid and fanatical eyes, and his undeniable technical mastery, has made me reconsider my opinion.”

+ Here’s the original artist’s statement from Sonny Rollins on his 1958 LP “Freedom Suite.” The declaration provoked such an uproar that Riverside pulled the record off the market and reissued the album under another title (“Shadow Waltz”) and deleted Rollins’ comment from the back cover.

(See: The Cutting Edge: the Music of Sonny Rollins by Richard Palmer.)

+ Cockburn and I were always fairly deprecating toward journalism awards–to the point where Alex even ribbed his own brother Patrick for winning (deservedly) the Martha Gellhorn Award. So it comes as something of an existential predicament (though a very happy one) to learn today that I’ll be the recipient of the “Anti-Censorship Award” at this year’s American Book Awards. I’m humbled to be in the stellar company of the other award winners: Emma Brody, Francisco Goldman, Daphne Brooks, Edwin Torres, Gayl Jones, Fatima Shaik, et al. Many thanks to the good people at the Beyond Columbus Foundation. The zoom ceremony will be on October 9 at the San Francisco Public Library. I’m pretty awful at these things. Does anyone have Sacheen Littlefeather’s phone number?

Everyone’s Feeling Pretty, It’s Hotter Than July…

Booked Up
What I’m reading this week…

An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity
Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen
(Notre Dame Press)

The People Immortal
Vasily Grossman
(NYRB)

The Oldest Cure in the World: the Secrets of Fasting
Steve Hendricks
(Abrams)

Sound Grammar
What I’m listening to this week…

King Scratch
Lee “Scratch” Perry
(Trojan)

Jerry Jeff
Steve Earle & the Dukes
(New West)

I Ran Down Every Dream
Tommy McLain
(Yep Roc)

The Indignities Imposed on Low-Wage Worker

“My guess is that the indignities imposed on so many low-wage workers—the drug tests, the constant surveillance, being “reamed out” by managers—are part of what keeps wages low. If you’re made to feel unworthy enough, you may come to think that what you’re paid is what you are actually worth. It is hard to imagine any other function for workplace authoritarianism. Managers may truly believe that, without their unremitting efforts, all work would quickly grind to a halt. That is not my impression. While I encountered some cynics and plenty of people who had learned to budget their energy, I never met an actual slacker or, for that matter, a drug addict or thief. On the contrary, I was amazed and sometimes saddened by the pride people took in jobs that rewarded them so meagerly, either in wages or in recognition. Often, in fact, these people experienced management as an obstacle to getting the job done as it should be done.” (Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickeled and Dimed)

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Jeffrey St. Clair.

The post Singapore’s Death Penalty Mimics That of Its Former Colonial Master appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

"Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra 'socialize losses, privatize gains.'"

The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: "First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors' hands."

"Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares," the report continues. "Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors', have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group."

"Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive," the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.

During the first two months of 2022, "seven companies' boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021," the report states. "Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion."

The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—"often extravagantly"—and notes that "nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%."

"Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses," the document points out.

"So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends," the report adds. "Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise."

Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that "Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra 'socialize losses, privatize gains.'"

"Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don't care how it affects regular Americans," Kuveke added.

As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: "Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill."

Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.

"The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration's acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry," he said. "But the industry's actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers."

According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: "This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street."

"Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction," he warned. "Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil's cash grab."

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The new analysis follows the introduction of multiple bills targeting Big Oil's windfall profits, including a proposal spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to crack down on such behavior in all sectors, not just the fossil fuel industry.

Sanders on Tuesday morning held a hearing to call out how corporate greed and profiteering are fueling inflation. During his opening remarks, the chair took aim at Big Oil specifically while listing some examples.

"Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near-record high at $4.17 a gallon, guess what?" Sanders said. "ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a record high of $9.3 billion."

"Meanwhile," he added, "Big Oil CEOs are on track to spend $88 billion this year not to decrease supply constraints, not to address the climate crisis, but to buy back their own stock and hand out dividends to enrich their wealthy shareholders."

The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing Wednesday titled "Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America's Pain at the Pump." Top executives from BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA are set to appear before the panel.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.