Chris Hedges's Blog, page 119

California Governor Declares State of Emergency as 200,000 Flee Fires

SAN FRANCISCO—California’s governor declared a statewide emergency with nearly 200,000 people ordered to flee their homes because of wildfires fueled by historic winds, while millions were without electricity after the largest utility cut power in some areas as a precaution to prevent other fires.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that officials are deploying “every resource available” to respond to the wildfires, including a large blaze in Northern California’s wine country driven by powerful winds.

Smoke from a second wildfire in the San Francisco Bay Area briefly halted traffic on a bridge. The flames came dangerously close to homes in Vallejo. In the south, a wildfire in the Santa Clarita area near Los Angeles has destroyed 18 structures, threatened homes and critical infrastructure.

The biggest evacuation was in Sonoma County where 180,000 people were told to pack up and leave.

The fear that the winds could blow embers and spread fire across a major highway prompted authorities to expand evacuation orders that covered parts of Santa Rosa, a city of 175,000 that was devastated by a wildfire two years ago. The latest evacuation orders came after Pacific Gas & Electric shut off power to 2.3 million people across 36 counties starting Saturday evening.

“This is the largest evacuation that any of us … can remember,” the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office tweeted Sunday morning. “Take care of each other.”

Hundreds of people arrived at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa throughout the night and into Sunday morning. Some came from senior care facilities. More than 300 people slept inside an auditorium filled with cots and wheeled beds. Scores of others stayed in a separate building with their pets.

Among them was Maribel Cruz, 19, who packed up her dog, four cats and fish as soon as she was told to flee from her trailer in the town of Windsor, which is about 60 miles (97 kilometers) north of San Francisco. She also grabbed a neighbor’s cat.

“I’m just nervous since I grew up in Windsor,” she said. “I’m hoping the wind cooperates.”

Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick pleaded with residents in the evacuation zone that stretched from the wine country to Bodega Bay on the coast to get out immediately, citing the 24 lives lost when fire swept through the region in October 2017.

“Although I’ve heard people express concerns that we are evacuating too many people, I think those concerns are not valid at this point,” Essick said at a news conference Sunday, noting that the winds pushed fire toward the towns of Healdsburg and Windsor overnight.

Dani Foster, of Santa Rosa, went to the fairgrounds after moving only about a mile every hour in a traffic jam on the freeway headed out of town.

“To think of (the fire) coming over Healdsburg and Windsor and into Santa Rosa, that’s a little overwhelming and scary,” she said. “You don’t want it to be that big.”

The Healdsburg area lost one of its historic attractions to the flames Sunday when embers carried by the winds sparked a blaze that engulfed the Soda Rock Winery whose buildings included a general store and post office founded in 1869. The winery was about 10 miles (16 kilometers) outside the town of Healdsburg.

The Kincade Fire began Wednesday night and is only 10% contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Sunday. It has burned 47 square miles (122 sq. kilometers) and has destroyed 79 structures.

Fire officials said about 30,000 firefighters took an aggressive stance overnight to keep the fire from spreading.

The fire was expected to be especially unwieldly Sunday due to powerful winds gusting at up to 80 mph (129 kph) on hillsides. The wind event was expected to last until Monday, the National Weather Service said.

Fire officials said the winds could potentially spark spot fires up to a mile away. They feared that if it crosses U.S. 101, the fire could spread westward to an area that hasn’t had a fire in 80 years.

“The fuel in that area is extremely dense, they’re extremely old and dry,” said Steve Volmer, a fire behavior analyst with CalFire.

Meanwhile, another blaze erupted Sunday on both sides of a San Francisco Bay Area freeway and quickly spread, coming dangerously close to homes in Vallejo, which is 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) south of Geyserville where the massive Kincade Fire is burning.

A live broadcast on KGO-TV showed the fire on both sides of Interstate 80 near Vallejo and homeowners using hoses on a hillside to try and fight it. Smoke from the wildfire forced a freeway to close and the evacuation of California State University Maritime Academy.

Evacuations also hit inmates at the North County Detention Facility in Santa Rosa and about 100 Sutter Santa Rosa Regional Hospital patients.

To the south, a wildfire dubbed the Tick Fire destroyed 18 structures Thursday in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles. Nearly all the 50,000 residents ordered to evacuate were allowed back home after Santa Ana winds began to ease.

Marcos Briano found destroyed homes on his street.

“I’m thankful that nothing happened to my house, but I feel bad for my neighbors,” Briano, 71, said Saturday.

As of Sunday, the Tick Fire was 65% contained.

What sparked the current fires is unknown, but PG&E said a 230,000-volt transmission line near Geyserville malfunctioned minutes before that blaze erupted Wednesday night.

The utility acknowledged a tower malfunction prompted a strategy change for determining when to kill high-voltage transmission lines, Andrew Vesey, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., said Friday.

The possible link between the wine country fire and a PG&E transmission line contained grim parallels to last year when most of the town of Paradise burned, killing 85 people in the deadliest U.S. blaze in a century.

State officials concluded a PG&E transmission line sparked that fire.

PG&E said this weekend’s shut-off was affecting about 940,000 homes and businesses. The city of San Francisco was not in line for a blackout amid shut-offs for most of the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, the wine country to the north and the Sierra foothills.

Many residents facing blackouts had barely recovered from a previous shut-off that cost some businesses tens of thousands of dollars in losses.

_____

Christopher Weber in Los Angeles and Julie Watson in San Diego contributed to this report. Nguyen reported from San Francisco.

Islamic State Leader Dead After U.S. Raid in Syria, Trump Says

WASHINGTON — Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi , the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group who presided over its global jihad and became arguably the world’s most wanted man, was killed in a U.S. military raid in Syria, President Donald Trump said Sunday. He provided graphic details of al-Baghdadi’s final moments as American forces pursued and cornered him and his children in a tunnel.

“Last night, the United States brought the world’s number one terrorist leader to justice,” Trump announced at the White House. “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead.”

In a national address, Trump described a daring nighttime airborne raid by American special operations forces in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province and said they flew over heavily militarized territory controlled by multiple nations and forces. No U.S. troops were killed in the operation, Trump said.

The death of al-Baghdadi marked a major milestone in the fight against the Islamic State, which brutalized swaths of Syria and Iraq and sought to direct a global terrorism campaign from a self-declared “caliphate.” A yearslong campaign by American and allied forces led to the recapture of the group’s territorial holding, but its violent ideology has continued to inspire attacks.

As U.S. troops bore down on al-Baghdadi, he fled into a “dead-end” tunnel with three of his children, Trump said, and detonated a suicide vest. “He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said. “He died like a dog, he died like a coward.” Al-Baghdadi’s identity was positively confirmed by a DNA test conducted onsite, Trump said.

Related Articles











Islamic State Was Overcome Not by Trump or Obama but by Muslims



by

















Facebook Still Auto-Generates Islamic State, al-Qaida Pages



by

















We're Listening to the Wrong Voices on Syria



by Maj. Danny Sjursen

Trump had teased a major announcement late Saturday, tweeting that “Something very big has just happened!” By the morning, he was thanking Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, as well as Kurdish fighters in Syria for their support.

The operation marks a significant foreign policy success for Trump, coming at one of the lowest points in his presidency as he is mired in impeachment proceedings and facing widespread Republican condemnation for his Syria policy.

The recent pullback of U.S. troops he ordered from northeastern Syria raised a storm of bipartisan criticism in Washington that the militant group could regain strength after it had lost vast stretches of territory it had once controlled. Trump said the troop pullout “had nothing to do with this.”

Planning for the operation began two weeks ago, Trump said, after the U.S. gained unspecified intelligence on al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts. Eight military helicopters flew for more than an hour over territory controlled by Russian and Syrian forces, Trump said, before landing under gunfire at the compound.

Trump vividly described the raid and took extensive questions from reporters for more than 45 minutes Sunday. He said U.S. forces breached the walls of the building because the doors were booby-trapped and chased al-Baghdadi into the tunnel, which partially collapsed after al-Baghdadi detonated the suicide vest. Trump also revealed that U.S. forces spent roughly two hours on the ground collecting intelligence.

Trump said he watched the operation from the White House Situation room as it played out live “as though you were watching a movie.” He suggested he may order the release of the video so that the world knows al-Baghdadi did not die of a hero and spent his final moments “crying, “whimpering” and “screaming.”

Trump said he teased the announcement as soon as American forces landed safely in a third-country. He said he did not inform lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, ahead of the raid, saying he was fearful of leaks.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the mission was to capture or kill the IS leader. While Trump had initially said no Americans were injured, Esper said two service members suffered minor injuries but have already returned to duty. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said a military dog chasing al-Baghdadi was seriously wounded by an explosive blast.

In his freewheeling appearance Sunday, Trump suggested that the killing of al-Baghdadi was more significant than the 2011 operation ordered by his predecessor, President Barack Obama, that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Trump later repeated a false claim that he predicted the threat posed by bin Laden in a book before the 2001 attacks.

Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, said al-Baghdadi’s remains would be dealt with in accordance with Islamic law and buried at sea in the same way that bin Laden’s were.

Praise for the military operation was swift, coming from American allies and even the president’s political opponents. In congratulating the U.S. forces and intelligence officials, but not Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden warned that IS “remains a threat to the American people and our allies.”

Al-Baghdadi’s presence in the village, a few kilometers from the Turkish border, was surprising, even if some IS leaders are believed to have fled to Idlib after losing their last sliver of territory in Syria to U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in March.

Iraqi officials said Sunday they passed information that helped ascertain al-Baghdadi’s whereabouts to the U.S. from the wife of an Iraqi aide to al-Baghdadi, as well as al-Baghdadi’s brother-in-law, who was recently arrested by the Iraqis. The officials weren’t authorized to publicly discuss intelligence operations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump said the death of al-Baghdadi shows the United States will continue pursuing other terrorist leaders and that none should rest easy. “These savage monsters will not escape their fate,” he said and that the “losers” who worked for al-Baghdadi had “no idea what they were getting into.”

But one counterterrorism expert said al-Baghdadi’s death is not the end of IS.

“Counterterrorism operations, including targeting key leaders, will not defeat the Islamic State, al-Qaida, or any of the Salafi-jihadi groups that threaten U.S. interests today,” said Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute. “Counterterrorism must be part of the strategy, but reducing the strategy to just special operations raids and drone targeting, as this administration seems to want to, guarantees a forever war.”

Al-Baghdadi had led IS for the last five years, presiding over its ascendancy as it cultivated a reputation for beheadings and attracted tens of thousands of followers to a sprawling and self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria. He remained among the few IS commanders still at large despite multiple claims in recent years about his death and even as his so-called caliphate dramatically shrank, with many supporters who joined the cause either imprisoned or jailed.

His exhortations were instrumental in inspiring terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe and in the United States. Shifting away from the airline hijackings and other mass-casualty attacks that came to define al-Qaida, al-Baghdadi and other IS leaders supported smaller-scale acts of violence that would be harder for law enforcement to prepare for and prevent.

They encouraged jihadists who could not travel to the caliphate to kill where they were, with whatever weapon they had at their disposal. In the U.S., multiple extremists have pledged their allegiance to al-Baghdadi on social media, including a woman who along with her husband committed a 2015 massacre at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California.

With a $25 million U.S. bounty on his head, al-Baghdadi was far less visible in recent years, releasing only sporadic audio recordings, including one just last month in which he called on members of the extremist group to do all they could to free IS detainees and women held in jails and camps.

The purported audio was his first public statement since last April, when he appeared in a video for the first time in five years. In that video, which included images of the extremist leader sitting in a white room with three others, al-Baghdadi praised Easter Day bombings that killed more than 250 people and called on militants to be a “thorn” against their enemies.

In 2014, he was a black-robed figure delivering a sermon from the pulpit of Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri, his only known public appearance. He urged Muslims around the world to swear allegiance to the caliphate and obey him as its leader.

“It is a burden to accept this responsibility to be in charge of you,” he said in the video. “I am not better than you or more virtuous than you. If you see me on the right path, help me. If you see me on the wrong path, advise me and halt me. And obey me as far as I obey God.”

Al-Baghdadi was born Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq, and adopted his nom de guerre early on. Because of anti-U.S. militant activity, he was detained by U.S. forces in Iraq and sent to Bucca prison in February 2004, according to IS-affiliated websites.

He was released 10 months later, after which he joined the al-Qaida branch in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He later assumed control of the group, known at the time as the Islamic State of Iraq.

After Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, al-Baghdadi set about pursuing a plan for a medieval-style Islamic State, or caliphate. He merged a group known as the Nusra Front, which initially welcomed moderate Sunni rebels who were part of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, with a new one known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Al-Qaida’s central leadership refused to accept the takeover and broke with al-Baghdadi.

Al-Baghdadi’s fighters captured a contiguous stretch of territory across Iraq and Syria, including key cities, and in June 2014, it announced its own state — or caliphate. Al-Baghdadi became the declared caliph of the newly renamed Islamic State group. Under his leadership, the group became known for macabre massacres and beheadings —often posted online on militant websites — and a strict adherence to an extreme interpretation of Islamic law.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Jill Colvin in Washington, Zeina Karam in Beirut, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad and Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul contributed to this report.

‘This Is Who I Am’: Sanders Calls Age a Strength for 2020

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday pushed back against attacks on his age and invited voters in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary to see his consistent record of promoting progressive causes and advocating for the working class as an asset.

“Having a long record gives people the understanding that these ideas that I am talking about—they are in my guts,” Sanders said. “They are in my heart.”

“This is who I am as a human being,” the senator added, “and it ain’t gonna change.”

“Having a long record gives people the understanding that these ideas that I am talking about — they are in my guts. They are in my heart,” Sanders said Friday. “This is who I am as a human being, and it ain’t gonna change.” https://t.co/zWoSmm897O

— Faiz (@fshakir) October 26, 2019

Related Articles











Bernie Sanders Is America's Beating Heart



by Norman Solomon

















Bernie Sanders Issues Unprecedented Pledge to Whistleblowers



by

















Corporate Media Is Misleading Us About Sanders’ Climate Plan



by

The Vermont senator, 78, is one of three frontrunners in the primary race. The other two top tier candidates are former Vice President Joe Biden, 76, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), 70.

While age has long been a simmering issue on the trail, Sanders became the target of focused attacks this month when a minor heart attack resulted in surgery to place two stents into a blocked artery on October 4. But despite a flurry of media handwringing over his durability, the senator appeared in good health less than two weeks later onstage for a CNN/New York Times debate on October 15, where his performance was favorably received.

Days later, on October 19, Sanders held a rally in Queens where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other New York politicians announced their endorsement of his run for president in front of a crowd of over 26,000 people.

Sanders’ comments Friday came in response to a reporter asking about the viability of the campaign in light of the health scare after the senator reportedly brought his age up unprompted in a town hall Thursday and used his long record of fighting for progressive causes to draw a distinction between his campaign and those of his rivals.

“What distinguishes my candidacy from the others is I have been fighting for the working families of this country for many, many decades,” said Sanders.

One group that appears unconcerned with Sanders’ age is younger voters, who back the senator by large margins. As Common Dreams reported Tuesday, the senator draws support from 45 percent of voters aged 18-29. The next highest level of support is for Warren, at 17 percent.

“No other candidate running has been so resilient,” tweeted journalist Walker Bragman Tuesday in response to the polling numbers. “Bernie holds the largest rallies, has by far the largest donor network, excites young people, and has been shown to perform best against Trump in states like Texas and Wisconsin.”

That consistency, Sanders said Friday, is central to his candidacy.

“The ideas that I am fighting for now didn’t come to me yesterday,” said Sanders.

California Wildfires: New Evacuations Ordered, 2.3 Million Face Days-Long Blackout

SAN FRANCISCO—About 90,000 residents were ordered to evacuate towns near a massive Northern California wildfire Saturday, and the state’s largest utility began power shut-offs for an estimated 2.35 million people due to forecasts of severe winds and extreme fire danger.

Two previous blackouts in recent weeks were carried out amid concern that gusty winds could disrupt or knock down power lines and spark devastating wildfires.

The new evacuation order encompasses a huge swath of wine country stretching from the inland community of Healdsburg west through the Russian River Valley and to Bodega Bay on the coast, Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said. An even broader area is under a warning for residents to get ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Some gusts this weekend might reach 75 mph (120 kph) or higher as part of a “historic” wind event, the National Weather Service said. The winds could lead to “erratic fire behavior” and send embers miles ahead of the main blaze, warned the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Pacific Gas & Electric said a new wave of blackouts started Saturday evening, affecting about 940,000 homes and businesses in 36 counties for 48 hours or longer. The city of San Francisco was not in line for a blackout; shut-offs were ordered for most of the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area, the wine country to the north and the Sierra foothills.

At an evening briefing, the sheriff pleaded with residents in the evacuation zone to get out immediately, citing the 24 lives lost when a wildfire swept through the region two years ago.

“I’m seeing people reporting that they’re going to stay and fight this fire,” Essick said at an evening briefing. “You cannot fight this. Please evacuate.”

The wind event will peak early Sunday and is likely to be the strongest in several years, said PG&E meteorologist Scott Strenfel.

“It’s likely that many trees will fall, branches will break,” raising the risk of damage to utility infrastructure, Strenfesl said at a Saturday evening briefing. Relative humidity will dip into single digits, he said.

PG&E’s shut-off order came as firefighters battled fires in Northern and Southern California.

A wildfire Thursday destroyed 18 structures in the Santa Clarita area north of Los Angeles and led to evacuation orders for up to 50,000 residents, although nearly all were allowed back home after Santa Ana winds began to ease.

Marcos Briano returned to find his property intact, while homes down the street were destroyed.

“I’m thankful that nothing happened to my house, but I feel bad for my neighbors,” Briano, 71, said Saturday.

Sheriff’s officials said human remains were found within the wide burn area, but it’s too soon to know if the death is connected to the blaze. The Tick fire was 55% contained.

To the north, firefighters raced to make progress against a blaze near Geyserville in Sonoma County before ferocious “diablo winds” returned. The Kincade fire had burned 77 buildings, including 31 homes, and swept through more than 40 square miles (104 square kilometers) of the wine-growing region. It was just 10% contained by Saturday evening.

A firefighter and two civilians were injured when they were overwhelmed by flames as they tried to evacuate from approaching flames, authorities said.

“The firefighter was forced to deploy his fire shelter, where he shielded them from fire,” Cal Fire said in a statement. After the flames passed, all three were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, the statement said.

Several thousand people living in small communities in neighboring Lake County were warned to be ready to evacuate if an order is given. The area was the scene of a 2015 wildfire that killed four people and burned nearly 2,000 homes and other buildings.

No cause has been determined for any of the current fires, but PG&E said a 230,000-volt transmission line near Geyserville had malfunctioned minutes before that fire erupted Wednesday night.

The utility acknowledged that the discovery of the tower malfunction had prompted a change in its strategy.

“We have revisited and adjusted some of our standards and protocols in determining when we will de-energize high-voltage transmission lines,” Andrew Vesey, CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., said at a briefing Friday.

The weekend forecasts detail what could be the strongest winds of the year coupled with bone-dry humidity. Many homes and business facing power shut-offs were far from current fires. PG&E cast the blackouts as a matter of public safety, aimed at preventing the kind of blazes that have killed scores of people over the past couple of years, destroyed thousands of homes, and ran up tens of billions of dollars in claims that drove the company into bankruptcy.

“Any spark, from any source, can lead to catastrophic results,” Vesey said. “We do not want to become one of those sources.”

The possible link between the wine country fire and a PG&E transmission line contained grim parallels to a catastrophic fire last year that tore through the town of Paradise, killing 85 people and destroying thousands of homes in the deadliest U.S. fire in a century.

State officials concluded that fire was sparked by a PG&E transmission line.

Many residents in the blackout-targeted region had barely recovered from a previous shut-off.

Jon Robinson, 52, of Rough and Ready, said the earlier shut-off put him in the hospital for several days for the stomach flu. He’d been tending to his sick grandson and got worn down between that and taking care of animals on his ranch.

Robinson was unsure if his family, who moved to California seven years ago, will remain in the state much longer.

“Before this, we planned on staying,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what, it’s just too nerve-racking.”

For many people affected by the shut-offs, there have been painful business-related losses.

In Newcastle, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento, 65-year-old Sukhwinder Singh works the cash register at Quality Market, a local convenience store. During the previous outage, Singh said he worked in the dark, but customers did not want to buy his warm soda and melted ice cream. He estimates he lost about $1,100 in sales and products. Singh has a generator now but said he can’t keep it running all night when the store is closed.

“I don’t know how we can pay the bills at the end of the month,” he said.

In Loomis, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from of Newcastle, Scott Paris estimates that he lost about $20,000 in business proceeds when he had to shut down his High-Hand Nursery and Cafe when PG&E turned off the power earlier this month. And that was just for about 24 hours during a weekday.

This time he expects to lose power on a weekend, when he might typically do $50,000 to $60,000 worth of business on a beautiful fall Sunday.

“We’re scrambling to get enough generators,” he said. “If this is the new normal, it’s going to drive up a lot of costs. It drives up stress.”

In Marin County, just north of San Francisco, the sheriff’s office warned that a power shut-off would likely knock out some traffic lights. Intersections with inoperable lights should be treated as a four-way stop, the office said.

Even before the new blackout order, the University of California, Berkeley announced it was canceling all Saturday afternoon classes, as well as other indoor events and activities scheduled through Sunday.

A Florida utility, Florida Power & Light, announced it was sending 100 line workers and support staff to help PG&E restore power to areas with outages caused by the wildfires.

___

Weber reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Juliet Williams in San Francisco contributed.

350,000 Rally in Barcelona for Release of Separatist Leaders

BARCELONA, Spain—Hundreds of thousands in Spain’s restive region of Catalonia protested Saturday in Barcelona against the imprisonment of nine separatist leaders for their roles in an illegal 2017 secession bid.

Barcelona’s police say 350,000 people rallied in downtown Barcelona, many waving pro-independence flags for Catalonia. The rally was organized by the main pro-secession grassroots groups who want to create a new state in wealthy northeastern Spain.

“We cannot accept that (the prisoners) have been condemned to terms of nine to 13 years for defending the self-determination of Catalans,” the president of the pro-secession grassroots group ANC, Elisenda Paluzie, said.

Nine Catalan officials were given sentences of nine to 13 years for sedition by the Supreme Court. Four of those were also convicted of misuse of public funds. The other three were fined for disobedience. They were all acquitted of the more serious crime of rebellion, which carries sentences of up to 25 years.

The Oct. 14 sentence sparked peaceful protests in Barcelona and other nearby cities that later spiraled into violent clashes with police during six straight days.

Spain’s government has told Catalonia’s separatists that the national Parliament would need to amend the Constitution, which considers the nation indivisible, to make secession by a region legal.

The largest pro-Spanish union grassroots group Catalan Civil Society has called for a rally in Barcelona on Sunday. About roughly one half of Catalonia’s 7.5 residents oppose severing century-old ties with the rest of the country.

The Catalan crisis is set to be a key issue in Spain’s Nov. 10 national election, where Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will try to stay in power.

Earlier Saturday, Spain’s far-right party Vox drew several thousand people to a political rally in central Madrid. Vox is trying to profile itself as the best option to stop the rupture of Spain.

Pentagon Snubs Amazon, Hands Microsoft $10B ‘War Cloud’ Deal

SAN FRANCISCO—The Pentagon awarded Microsoft a $10 billion cloud computing contract , snubbing early front-runner Amazon, whose competitive bid drew criticism from President Donald Trump and its business rivals.

Bidding for the huge project, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, pitted leading tech titans Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and IBM against one another.

Related Articles











Microsoft and the Pentagon Are Quietly Hijacking U.S. Elections



by Lee Camp

















Microsoft Workers Demand End to Army Contract in Powerful Letter



by

The giant contract has attracted more attention than most, sparked by speculation early in the process that Amazon would be the sole winner of the deal. Tech giants Oracle and IBM pushed back with their own bids and also formally protested the bidding process last year.

Oracle later challenged the process in federal court, but lost .

Trump waded into the fray in July, saying that the administration would “take a very long look” at the process, saying he had heard complaints. Trump has frequently expressed his ire for Amazon and founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. At the time, he said other companies told him that the contract “wasn’t competitively bid.”

Defense Secretary Mark Esper recused himself from the controversial bidding process earlier this week, citing a conflict of interest because his son works for one of the companies that originally bid.

The JEDI system will store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the U.S. military to use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities.

A cloud strategy document unveiled by the Defense Department last year called for replacing the military’s “disjointed and stove-piped information systems” with a commercial cloud service “that will empower the warfighter with data and is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage.”

The Pentagon emphasized in an announcement that the process was fair and followed procurement guidelines. It noted that over the past two years, it has awarded more than $11 billion in ten separate cloud-computing contracts, and said the JEDI award “continues our strategy of a multi-vendor, multi-cloud environment.”

The latter statement appeared designed to address previous criticism about awarding such a large deal to one company.

The deal is a major win for Microsoft’s cloud business Azure, which has long been playing catch-up to Amazon’s market leading Amazon Web Services. Microsoft said it was preparing a statement.

Amazon said Friday it was surprised by the decision.

“AWS is the clear leader in cloud computing, and a detailed assessment purely on the comparative offerings clearly lead to a different conclusion,” Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement. “We remain deeply committed to continuing to innovate for the new digital battlefield where security, efficiency, resiliency, and scalability of resources can be the difference between success and failure.”

According to a July report from the research firm Gartner, Amazon holds almost 48% of the market for public cloud computing, followed by Microsoft in second place with close to 16%.

Over the last year, Microsoft has positioned itself as a friend to the U.S. military. President Brad Smith wrote last fall that Microsoft has long supplied technology to the military and would continue to do so, despite pushback from employees.

Oracle and IBM were eliminated earlier in the process, leaving Microsoft and Amazon to battle it out at the end.

Google decided last year not to compete for the contract, saying it would conflict with its AI ethics principles. Google employees have been especially vocal in protesting the company’s involvement with government contracts.

“It’s a paradigm changer for Microsoft to win JEDI,” said Dan Ives, managing director of Wedbush Securities. “And it’s a huge black eye for Amazon and Bezos.”

Microsoft, Amazon, Google and other tech giants have faced criticism from their own employees about doing business with the government, especially on military and immigration related projects.

Trump’s Antiwar Speech Deserved a Better Reception

There were parts of President Trump’s latest speech on Syria, which, if read without the sound of The Donald’s gruff, bombastic voice, sounded a whole lot like Bernie Sanders might’ve delivered it.

That’s right, sandwiched between Trump’s standard braggadocio about how he single-handedly secured “a better future for Syria and for the Middle East,” and his cynical pivot to decry his opponents’ supposed desire to accept “unlimited migration from war-torn regions” across the U.S. border, was one of the strongest blasts of antiwar rhetoric delivered by a sitting U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower.

If any other president—think Obama—or major liberal political figure had spoken so clearly against endless war and so poignantly diagnosed the current American disease of military hyper-interventionism, CNN and MSNBC would’ve gushed about Nobel Peace Prizes. It must be said, of course, that Trump has hardly governed according to these peacenik proclamations—he has, after all added more troops in the region, especially in Saudi Arabia, and merely reshuffled the soldiers from Syria across the border to Iraq. Nevertheless, even if the president’s actions don’t match his words, the words themselves remain important, especially from a 21st century, post-9/11 commander in chief.

No doubt, Trump’s partial withdrawal from Syria was initially clumsy, and it’s extremely difficult to parse out any sort of coherent doctrine in his muddled Mideast policy. Reducing troop levels in Syria isn’t much of an accomplishment if it’s followed, as it might be, by a shift toward drumming up or executing a Saudi/Israeli-pressured war with Iran. Still, the speech, though problematic in several areas, deserved a fairer reception from the corporate media establishment.

Beyond the intellectual dishonesty of some press outlets’ displays of reflexive anti-Trumpism, there’s the salient fact that none of the president’s critics have proposed a practical, long-term alternative strategy for the U.S. military in Northeast Syria. Crocodile tears for the Kurds are naught but a cynical cudgel with which to attack the president; there was never any established plan to permanently carve out a viable Kurdish statelet in Syria, or serious weighing of the military, diplomatic and economic costs of such an endeavor.

So, since none of the mainstream networks were willing to do it, let’s review some of the sensible things Trump said in the meat of his speech, nuggets of earthy wisdom that this forever war veteran, for one, wishes Trump would follow through on:

The same people that I watched and read — giving me and the United States advice — were the people that I have been watching and reading for many years. They are the ones that got us into the Middle East mess but never had the vision or the courage to get us out. They just talk.

This is demonstrably true. The politicians (Democrat and Republican), failed retired generals, and Bush/Obama era intelligence community retreads are the very people who crafted the failed, counterproductive interventionist policies that Trump inherited. They never had answers to the tough questions regarding why their countless military missions never stabilized the region, what the endgame of these endless wars would be, or how, exactly, the U.S. would or could extricate its troops from the Greater Middle East. Why does anyone still listen to these establishment clowns?

How many Americans must die in the Middle East in the midst of these ancient sectarian and tribal conflicts?

That’s a hell of a good question, Mr. President. If the term is, indeed, “must,” then the logical and ethical answer should be zero. And that should preclude any absurd, future war with Iran—if only Trump would follow through with his still-unfulfilled campaign promises.

Across the Middle East, we have seen anguish on a colossal scale. We have spent $8 trillion on wars in the Middle East, never really wanting to win those wars. But after all that money was spent and all of those lives lost, the young men and women gravely wounded — so many — the Middle East is less safe, less stable, and less secure than before these conflicts began.

That’s the rub, now, isn’t it? Though the $8 trillion figure might be a tad high, Trump isn’t far off. The Cost of War Project at Brown University came to the same general conclusions after an exhausting and ongoing study of the outlays and outcomes of America’s post-9/11 wars. In fact, the reality is even worse than Trump claimed in the speech. By a lowball estimate, researchers at Brown demonstrate that these region-shattering wars have killed 244,000 civilians and 6,950 U.S. soldiers, and they have created 21 million refugees. For all that, Trump is correct to note that, even by State Department global terrorism statistics, the region is less safe, less stable and infused with more Islamist “terrorists,” who’ve multiplied faster than America’s beloved troopers could ever hope to kill them.

The job of our military is not to police the world. Other nations must step up and do their fair share. That hasn’t taken place.

Also true, or at least it ought to be. Unfortunately, “policing” the world is precisely what Bush II and Obama (and Trump himself) has had me and my fellow soldiers doing since at least October 2001. And it hasn’t worked, hasn’t made America safer, hasn’t made the world a better place. Quite the opposite.

As for Syria, at least now—much to the chagrin of the bipartisan establishment elite—Russia, Turkey, the Assad regime and the Kurds are negotiating an admittedly messy settlement in their near abroad. And if it is truly a mess, as it’s all but certain to be, then what’s so bad about having Putin mired in it? All this talk of “surrendering” Syria to Putin is so much exaggerated malarkey. Syria has always been a Soviet, and then Russian, client state, home to a longstanding naval base at Tartus, and clearly in Moscow’s orbit. In that sense nothing has changed, and as before, Syria—even if ruled by an Assad and backed by a Putin——presents no tangible, let alone existential, threat to the United States, unless, that is, Islamic State does reconstitute. However, Russia and Assad, at least, have a distinct interest in avoiding that outcome.

Taken as a whole, Trump’s remarks included some profound and piercing antiwar material, along with the usual nonsense one expects from this president. As such, accompanying the quite appropriate criticism of the speech, an honest media doing its job ought to have cheered the parts of value and generated a national conversation about Trump’s appraisal of the woes of American forever war. Then, a functioning press should’ve held the president’s feet to the proverbial fire and asked him why his practical actions so rarely cohere with his, in this case, sensible words. That the media has not, and will not, take antiwar rhetoric seriously and grapple with real questions of militarist policy is further proof that it, along with Congress and the generals, was bought and sold long ago by the military-industrial complex.

————

Danny Sjursen is a retired U.S. Army Major and regular contributor to Truthdig. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The L.A. Times, The Nation, Tom Dispatch, The Huffington Post and The Hill. He served combat tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan and later taught history at his alma mater, West Point. He is the author of a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, “Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.” He co-hosts the progressive veterans’ podcast “Fortress on a Hill.” Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

Hillary Clinton Spoils the Party

In the middle of October, Hillary Clinton managed to perform a minor political miracle. By baselessly speculating that Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, was a “favorite of the Russians” and preparing to run as an independent, she revived one of the more quixotic, eccentric and increasingly moribund campaigns of this election cycle while spoiling a primary that has proved shockingly substantive for a major party in the United States.

Gabbard “clapped back,” tweeting that Hillary was “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party.” The congresswoman then proceeded to parlay Clinton’s political anti-genius for hauling feckless enemies out of political obscurity and crowning them with a notoriety they’d never be able to achieve on her own, into a brief turn in the media spotlight. Gabbard even went on the eponymous Fox News show “Hannity,” which makes Tucker Carlson’s white power hour look like the School of Athens, to complain about her treatment by a woman she blames for the last two decades of American wars, and to echo Republican procedural complaints about the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump.

Clinton’s record as secretary of state speaks for itself. Her avid cheerleading for the disastrous “intervention” in Libya alone should be tattooed on her forehead and carved onto her eventual monument as a warning to the next hundred generations. But Gabbard’s own anti-war bona fides are themselves questionable, appealing to suckers and desperate contrarians alike. Scratch the surface and her foreign policy reveals itself as little more than pre-Bush realpolitik, with a Kissinger-ian preference for an archipelago of U.S.-aligned strongman governments to keep the dual threats of “Islamic Terrorism” and pan-Arabism in line. That foreign policy includes robust American expeditionary forces and drone warfare capabilities to prosecute the so-called War on Terror.

Clinton, meanwhile, seems constitutionally incapable of letting go of the bogus narrative that she lost to Donald Trump in 2016 not because she ran a lousy campaign that couldn’t turn out the vote in critical states, but because of Jill Stein’s third-party run, which garnered less than one third of the votes of fellow third-party candidate Gary Johnson. Combined with the still-nebulous conspiracy of “Russian interference,” of which Jill Stein is and is not a part, depending on the theorist, this keeps getting Clinton in trouble.

Much like Trump himself, the Clintons have long surrounded themselves with a coterie of slavish hangers-on, so it follows that there is no one left in their inner circle to say, Mrs. Clinton, maybe you’d better not. Ironically, in picking this fight with Gabbard, Hillary could be recapitulating the very error that she and her husband made in 2015, when Bill infamously encouraged Trump to run as Republican spoiler, inadvertently elevating the one character  Hillary was least equipped to confront and defeat.

Gabbard is no Trump: she lacks his odious magnetism, his greedy horniness for fame and notoriety. And unlike Trump, for whom a tacky, gross American ordinariness is a huge part of his successful public charm, she is a genuine eccentric—a bundle of personal and political contradictions totally out of keeping with the aggressive someone-oughtta-do-something resentments of the angry America that elected our current president.

But Hillary Clinton is no Hillary Clinton; not anymore. And on the vastly diminished stage of Twitter spats and cable media hits, she cannot hope to win here. Even were she to manage to make some political enemy look small, she can only look smaller, this figure who could have retired to a life of philanthropy, for which she would have been feted by cultural tastemakers, and out of which she might have actually engendered the very sentiment for which she is so obviously and ineffectively clamoring now: a sentimental, hypothetical nostalgia for that which might have been had she won.

This makes all the more grotesquely poignant the recent New York Times report that a “half-dozen Democratic donors” had gathered in Manhattan at the Whitby Hotel, “a celebration of contemporary art and design . . . on the doorstep of some of New York’s leading restaurants, galleries and museums, including MoMA.” (Including MoMA! Lord save us from the Manhattan provincialism of the stupidly rich.) These donors were getting together to ask themselves seemingly the only question their wealth and privilege will allow them about the Democratic primary: “Is there anyone else?” Could they, in other words, draft some other centrist sucker into the race: the already-abandoned Howard Shultz? Former Attorney General Eric Holder? The perennial will-he/won’t-he billionaire, Michael Bloomberg? Hillary?

“Democrats who have recently spoken with Mrs. Clinton say she shares the same concerns other party elites have about the field — worried about Mr. Biden’s durability [and] Ms. Warren’s liberal politics,” reported the Times. Only anonymous Democrats could fantasize about drafting one of the biggest losers in the party’s history for a race that has exposed the divide separating the legitimately anti-war, democratic socialist campaign of Bernie Sanders and the technocratic left-liberalism of Elizabeth Warren from the content-less, happy-days-are-here-again pabulum of Joe Biden and the corporatism masquerading as progress of Pete Buttigieg.

A “half-dozen” rich dummies in a room does not an insurgency make, but the fact that Clinton is in this conversation, and the fact that it very clearly impelled her to send up a trial balloon for a fuller return to public life, does suggest that Gabbard isn’t altogether wrong about that “rot.” Most of these people, after all, are the Clintons’ contemporaries. Despite the embattlement of his own impeachment, I suspect they fondly remember Bill’s presidency as the last deep gasp of a lost era of good feelings, a boom time that actually felt like a boom time. They forget just how much official Washington hated that oversexed redneck, Bill, what a cruel time the nineties really were, and that Newt Gingrich was an absolute madman who combined the gross personal excesses of Trumpism with the moon-man technocratic fascism of today’s Elon Musk brigade.

I don’t think Hillary will actually do it. By the time Biden does collapse and the primaries shake into their final form for 2020, it will be too late. But I don’t expect her to go away, either. I know an addict when I see one. After each binge, she will tell herself: I’m not doing that again. A few weeks later, she will find herself fingering her phone in her pocket, bargaining herself into making that call: one more, one last time.

Judge Hands Democrats a Victory in Impeachment Inquiry

WASHINGTON — A judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to give the House secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, handing a victory to Democrats as they gather evidence for the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

In a ruling that also affirmed the legality of the impeachment inquiry itself, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the department to turn over the materials by Oct. 30. A Justice Department spokeswoman said it was reviewing the decision. The administration can appeal.

The ruling in favor of the House Judiciary Committee comes as Democrats gather closed-door testimony from current and former government officials about the Trump administration’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden and the Democrats. The Mueller materials could reveal previously hidden details to lawmakers about Trump’s actions during the 2016 election and become part of the impeachment push.

Related Articles











The Case for Trump's Impeachment Is Only Growing



by

















The Impeachment Dam May Finally Be Bursting



by

















Donald Trump Is Finished



by Bill Blum

The material covered by Howell’s order consists of redacted grand jury material mentioned in Mueller’s report. The Justice Department says the grand jury information is the only piece of the document that key lawmakers have not had access to.

Democrats believe the still-redacted information could shed new light on key episodes of the investigation, including discussions Trump is reported to have had with associates about the release of stolen emails during the campaign and conversations about a 2016 Trump Tower meeting at which Trump’s oldest son expected to receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

In a 75-page ruling accompanying the order, Howell slashed through many of the administration’s arguments for withholding materials from Congress, including that there was need for continued secrecy. The judge said the materials could inform lawmakers as they decide what witnesses to call for an impeachment inquiry and what additional lines of investigation should be pursued.

“The reality is that DOJ and the White House have been openly stonewalling the House’s efforts to get information by subpoena and by agreement, and the White House has flatly stated that the Administration will not cooperate with congressional requests for information,” Howell wrote.

While the Justice Department said it could not provide grand jury material under existing law, “DOJ is wrong,” she wrote. And though the White House and its Republican allies argued impeachment is illegitimate without a formal vote, she wrote: “A House resolution has never, in fact, been required.”

The judge also rejected the Justice Department’s argument that impeachment does not qualify as a “judicial proceeding.” That distinction matters because, though grand jury testimony is ordinarily secret, one exemption that allows it to be legally disclosed is in connection with a judicial proceeding.

“To the extent the House’s role in the impeachment context is to investigate misconduct by the President and ascertain whether that conduct amounts to an impeachable offense warranting removal from office, the House performs a function somewhat akin to a grand jury,” the judge wrote.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he was pleased by the ruling.

“The court’s thoughtful ruling recognizes that our impeachment inquiry fully comports with the Constitution and thoroughly rejects the spurious White House claims to the contrary,” Nadler said in a statement. “This grand jury information that the Administration has tried to block the House from seeing will be critical to our work.”

Justice Department lawyers argued against providing the materials at a hearing earlier this month. They pointed out that House Democrats already had significant evidence from Mueller’s investigation, including copies of summaries of FBI witness interviews. But the judge said that information is no substitute for the actual testimony.

“To insure most effectively against being misled, HJC must have access to all essential pieces of testimony by witnesses, including testimony given under oath to the grand jury,” Howell said, referring to the House Judiciary Committee.

“Additionally, for purposes of assessing and following up on the Mueller Report’s conclusions, the full Report is needed: the grand jury material may offer unique insights, insights not contained in the rest of the Report, congressional testimony” or FBI reports, she added.

Many of the key witnesses in the Trump orbit, including former White House counsel Don McGahn, submitted to voluntary interviews before Mueller’s team rather than appear before the grand jury, making it unclear how much significant new information tied to the president is contained in the grand jury transcripts.

The department also argued that the House panel could not show how the material would help in the committee’s investigations of Trump.

The Mueller report found insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. It also examined multiple episodes in which Trump sought to thwart the investigation and pointedly determined that he could not be exonerated on obstruction of justice allegations.

___

Associated Press Writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

GM Workers Ratify Contract, 40-Day Strike to End

ROMULUS, Mich. — General Motors workers voted 57.2% in favor of a new contract with the company, bringing an immediate end to a contentious a 40-day strike that paralyzed GM’s U.S. factories.

Workers voted 23,389 in favor of the deal, with 17,501 against it, according to a statement Friday from the United Auto Workers union.

The union now will turn its attention to bargaining with crosstown rival Ford Motor Co.

Related Articles











Workers Celebrate Deal With GM, Show Union Power in Industry



by

















Chicago Teachers Strike, Say Issue Is Simple: 'It's the Kids'



by

The vote means that workers will put down their picket signs and return to their jobs. Some will start as early as Friday night, and some production could resume on Saturday.

Skilled trades workers will begin restarting factories that were shuttered when 49,000 workers walked out on Sept. 16.

The deal includes a mix of wage increases and lump-sum payments and an $11,000 signing bonus. But GM will close three U.S. factories.

The five-week walkout was big enough to help push down September U.S. durable goods orders by 1.1%, the largest drop in four months.

Trades workers such as machinists and electricians likely will enter the plants quickly, restarting boilers and preparing paint shops, robots and other equipment to restart production.

On the picket line at a transmission plant in Romulus, Mich., worker Tricia Pruitt said the wage gains were worth staying off the job for more than five weeks, but she’s ready to return to work.

Pruitt, a 15-year GM employee, was happy that the contract brings workers hired after 2007 up to the same wage as older workers in four years.

She’ll be glad not to be on the picket line if the strike ends. “Look at us now. We’re in coats,” she said on a gray, chilly Friday afternoon near Detroit. “We’d have been out here in the rain.”

Although GM dealers had stocked up on vehicles before the strike and many still have decent supplies, analysts say GM won’t be able to make up for the lost production. Had the strike been shorter, GM could have increased assembly line speeds and worked the plants on overtime to catch up and refill its stock. But many of the plants that make popular SUVs and pickup trucks already were working around the clock to keep up with demand before the strike began.

Also, companies that supply parts to the factories and halted production during the strike will need time to restart, although GM has some parts in stock.

Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of the consulting firm LMC Automotive, estimates that GM has lost production of 300,000 vehicles, and he said maybe only a quarter of it can be made up.

“You can’t add days to the week and you can’t add hours to the day,” he said.

Some production losses will help thin inventory, especially of cars, Schuster said. But in late October and early November, GM will likely run short of colors and models of trucks and SUVs that are in high demand until stocks are replenished, he said. Although truck and SUV buyers generally are loyal to a brand, customers in a hurry for a new vehicle could go elsewhere, Schuster said.

“There are definitely going to be some limitations on choice, and that is a risk,” Schuster said. “Consumers can opt to wait, or they can go down the street to their competitor.”

Now the union will move on to bargain with Ford, using the GM deal as a template. It’s not clear yet if there will be another strike, but it’s unlikely that Ford will be happy about being stuck with the GM terms.

GM traded the ability to close the three factories in Lordstown, Ohio; Warren, Mich.; and near Baltimore for higher labor costs, David Kudla, chief investment strategist for Mainstay Capital Management of Grand Blanc, Mich., wrote in a note to investors. The contract maintains worker health benefits with low premiums, something that both Ford and Fiat Chrysler wanted to change when negotiations began.

“Ford and FCA didn’t have three factories that they wanted to close, but will have to work around this new framework for higher wages and unchanged health care that the UAW and GM have set,” wrote Kudla, whose firm manages investments for many auto industry workers.

Workers at factories that GM will close have been transferred to plants across the nation, and they campaigned against the deal, which was reached Oct. 16. Workers in Lordstown, for instance, voted 412-61 against it, with 88% of production workers voting “no.”

In the end, economic gains and a $7.7 billion GM investment pledge for U.S. factories were too much to turn down.

____

This story has been corrected to include skilled trades in the Lordstown, Ohio, plant’s vote against the contract. Heather Hollingsworth contributed to this report from Kansas City, Missouri.