Chris Hedges's Blog, page 163

Lawmakers Seize Brexit Agenda in Major Blow to Boris Johnson

LONDON—On a day of humiliating setbacks, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a major defeat in Parliament on Tuesday night as rebellious lawmakers voted to seize control of the Brexit agenda, prompting the embattled prime minister to say he would call for a new general election.

The 328 to 301 vote, made possible by fellow Conservatives who turned their back on Johnson’s pleas, cleared the way for Johnson’s opponents to introduce a bill Wednesday that would seek to prevent Britain from leaving the European Union without a deal Oct. 31. It was a momentous day in Britain’s centuries-old Parliament as the legislature rose up to successfully challenge the power of the prime minister and his government over vital Brexit policy.

Even if they can force Johnson to seek a delay to that deadline, any extension would have to be approved by each of the other 27 EU nations.

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The cross-party rebels are determined to prevent a “no-deal” Brexit because of fears it would gravely damage the economy and plunge Britain into a prolonged recession while also leading to possible medicine and food shortages. The vote came hours after Johnson suffered a key defection from his party, costing him his working majority in Parliament.

On a day of high drama and acerbic debate in the House of Commons, lawmakers returned from their summer recess to confront Johnson over his insistence that the U.K. leave the European Union on Oct. 31, even without a withdrawal agreement to cushion the economic blow. Many shouted, “Resign!” and protesters gathered outside Parliament to call for Britain to remain in the EU.

A new general election would take Britain’s future directly to the people for a third general election in four years. It is not clear he would immediately get the two-thirds majority in Parliament needed to call a fresh vote because opponents are wary he might postpone the election date until after Brexit has taken place.

Earlier Tuesday, two other prominent Conservatives signaled their intention not to seek re-election rather than bend to Johnson’s will. Former Cabinet minister Justine Greening and former Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt also signaled their intention to stand down.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, lambasted the weakened Johnson and accused him of “riding roughshod” over the constitution in order to crash Britain out of the EU without a deal.

He said he will not agree to a new election until legislation preventing a “no-deal” exit is in place.

“He isn’t winning friends in Europe. He’s losing friends at home. His is a government with no mandate, no morals and, as of today, no majority,” Corbyn said.

Johnson, who became prime minister in July, has tried to crack down on members of his Conservative Party who oppose his Brexit plans, warning they would be expelled from the party if they supported parliamentary efforts to block or delay the withdrawal.

Dominic Grieve, who was attorney general in David Cameron’s government, says the expulsion threats demonstrate Johnson’s “ruthlessness.” Greening said she feared her beloved party was “morphing into Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.” Former Treasury chief Philip Hammond warned of the “fight of a lifetime” if officials tried to prevent him from running in the next election.

All three oppose Johnson, with Hammond saying he expected a procedural motion to take control of business. If it passed, a vote to block a no-deal would be considered Wednesday.

Time to block a “no-deal” departure is running short. Johnson last week maneuvered to give his political opponents even less time to block a chaotic no-deal Brexit, getting Queen Elizabeth II’s approval to suspend Parliament. His outraged critics sued, and attorneys arguing the case at a court in Scotland completed submissions Tuesday. The judge could rule as soon as Wednesday.

A no-deal Brexit will sever decades of seamless trade with Europe’s single market of 500 million people. Economists warn of disruptions in commerce, and the U.N. trade agency UNCTAD estimated Tuesday a no-deal Brexit will result in U.K. export losses of at least $16 billion. Leaked government documents predicted disruptions to the supply of medicine, decreased availability of fresh food and even potential fresh water shortages because of disruption to supplies of water treatment chemicals.

Johnson insists the potential for leaving without a deal must remain as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the EU.

Though the EU is Britain’s biggest trading partner, a no-deal Brexit would also hurt Europe — a fact not lost on Brussels. Johnson’s supporters said lawmakers were weakening the government’s negotiating position with the EU.

“The one thing that has helped focus minds in the EU is that we’re leaving come what may and we’ve got a very focused task of what a good deal would look like,” Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told ITV. “But the lingering doubt they’ve got is: Will the shenanigans in Parliament somehow lead to the cancellation or the delay of Brexit?

“That’s encouraging them, and weakening our position to actually get the deal we all want.”

The bloc insists it won’t renegotiate the agreement struck with former Prime Minister Theresa May, which Johnson considers unacceptable.

Johnson has told French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel he could come up with a better alternative to the main sticking point in the stalled negotiations — the deadlock on the Irish border question.

Only 58 days from exit, the EU said it had received no proposals from the British government aimed at overcoming the impasse.

European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said the EU’s executive body, which supervises talks on behalf of Britain’s 27 European partners, is operating on the “working assumption” that Britain will leave the bloc Oct. 31.

___

Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed.

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Follow AP’s full coverage of Brexit and British politics at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit

Joe Biden Taps Influence Industry Despite Pledge on Lobbyists

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden entered the Democratic primary promising “from day one” to reject campaign cash from lobbyists.

“I work for you — not any industry,” he tweeted.

Yet hours after his April campaign kickoff, the former vice president went to a fundraiser at the home of a lobbying executive. And in the months since, he’s done it again and again.

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It’s difficult to quantify how much Biden has raised from the multibillion-dollar influence industry, but the roughly $200,000 he accepted from employees of major lobbying firms is far more than any of his rivals has received, according to a review of campaign finance data by The Associated Press.

Though it is a small fraction of the $21.5 million he reported raising in the second quarter of 2019, the money demonstrates a comfort with an industry that is the object of scorn of Democratic activists and some of Biden’s principal rivals.

Biden’s pledge applies only to federally registered lobbyists, and most of the money tracked by the AP was from others in the influence industry. But thousands of dollars did come from federally registered lobbyists, and Biden’s campaign said it is returning such donations.

His campaign accepted roughly $6,000 in contributions from at least six federally registered lobbyists, including representatives of Google, aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin, and pharmaceutical companies, records show. An additional $5,750 was donated by two lobbyists who had been registered shortly before making contributions to Biden’s campaign, records show.

In at least two instances, donations came from lobbyists with criminal records who have served time in federal prison.

Former Florida Rep. Lawrence J. Smith, a federally registered lobbyist representing the city of Pembroke Pines, gave Biden $1,000 after attending a fundraiser in May. Smith left Congress in 1993 after it was revealed he bounced 161 bad checks. He was convicted months later of tax evasion and using campaign cash to settle a gambling debt.

Maryland statehouse lobbyist Gerard E. Evans gave Biden $2,600, records show. He was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison in 2000 after being found guilty of participating in an elaborate fake legislation scheme that bilked clients out of more than $400,000 in lobbying fees, according to court records.

Excluded from Biden’s pledge are lobbyists who work at the state level and those who lobby, or supervise lobbyists, but do not meet the legal threshold requiring them to register.

Spokesman Matt Hill said in a statement that Biden will “fight the influence of corporations and special interests in our political system, which is why his campaign refuses donations from corporations, their PACs, and federal lobbyists.”

Biden’s approach contrasts sharply with Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who have built their campaigns around a vow to reject big money in politics. Both have sworn off big-dollar fundraisers, while Biden has embraced them.

Such an embrace “doesn’t mean your positions are up for sale,” said John Wonderlich, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a nonpartisan group that advocates for government transparency. But it “can certainly change what issues seem the most salient and whose voice gets heard.”

Biden is not alone in accepting contributions from the influence industry. President Donald Trump vowed to “drain the swamp” but has since reaped contributions from powerful industries with business before his administration. And many of Biden’s Democratic rivals have made similar pledges that also include subtle caveats and omissions.

Still, he collected about $30,000 more from employees of top lobbying firms than California Sen. Kamala Harris and roughly $100,000 more than South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, both of whom made similar pledges but have been in the race longer than him. Every other White House hopeful received far less.

Several recent fundraisers held for Biden highlight his ties to prominent figures in the influence business, many of whom have been active in Washington for decades.

In August, Biden was feted at the home of Nelson W. Cunningham, president and co-founder of McLarty Associates and a former adviser to Bill Clinton. The global public affairs firm represents Chevron, General Electric, Walmart and Uber, but notes on its website that the list only includes “the ones we can mention.”

Several days before, Biden attended a fundraiser at the Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home of Peter Shields, the leader of Washington-based Wiley Rein, a firm with recent lobbying clients that include AT&T, global mining company Glencore, Nucor steel, Verizon and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

His campaign kickoff fundraiser was at the Philadelphia home of David L. Cohen, a Comcast executive who oversees the telecom giant’s lobbying operation.

Biden’s campaign says the fundraiser hosts are not registered lobbyists and often have diverse work portfolios that include much more than government relations. But they are also players in the influence game.

Biden’s pledge to reject money from lobbyists is a change for him. Before he entered the 2020 race, his American Possibilities political action committee had no such prohibition.

The PAC, which Biden used to finance his political activities after leaving the White House in 2017, accepted at least $113,000 from at least a dozen current and formerly registered lobbyists, in addition to more than 30 others who work in the influence industry, records show. Among them are representatives for Boeing, Apple, the NFL, Facebook, General Motors and the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, as well as other representatives of the big pharmaceutical, tech, telecom and financial services companies, records show.

One of the top recipients of money from the PAC was a company Biden created.

His campaign says the $137,000 routed to Biden’s company, Celtic Capri, was used to pay or reimburse aides for work, such as during last year’s midterm elections when Biden kept up an aggressive campaign schedule.

Yet the move is commonly used to avoid disclosing how political money is spent. Because the money was routed to Celtic Capri, campaign finance records don’t detail the end recipient of the payments, which are listed as reimbursements or “staff support.” Around the same time, Biden collected $425,000 in salary from Celtic Capri, according to a financial disclosure.

Adav Noti, a former Federal Election Commission attorney, said the use of limited liability companies such as these is a growing problem. “The ultimate recipients of the money aren’t disclosed. Sometimes it’s for legitimate, or quasi-legitimate, reasons. And sometimes it’s for illegitimate reasons.”

We Are Living in the Wreckage of the War on Terror

This piece originally appeared on antiwar.com.

It has taken me years to tell these stories. The emotional and moral wounds of the Afghan War have just felt too recent, too raw. After all, I could hardly write a thing down about my Iraq War experience for nearly ten years, when, by accident, I churned out a  book  on the subject. Now, as the American war in Afghanistan – hopefully – winds to something approaching a close, it’s finally time to impart some tales of the madness. In this new, recurring, semi-regular series, the reader won’t find many worn out sagas of heroism, brotherhood, and love of country. Not that this author doesn’t have such stories, of course. But one can find those sorts of tales in countless books and numerous trite, platitudinal Hollywood yarns.

With that in mind, I propose to tell a number of very different sorts of stories – profiles, so to speak, in absurdity. That’s what war is, at root, an exercise in absurdity, and America’s hopeless post-9/11 wars are stranger than most. My own 18-year long quest to find some meaning in all the combat, to protect my troops from danger, push back against the madness, and dissent from within the army proved Kafkaesque in the extreme. Consider what follows just a survey of that hopeless journey…

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The man was remarkable at one specific thing: pleasing his bosses and single-minded self-promotion. Sure he lacked anything resembling empathy, saw his troops as little more than tools for personal advancement, and his overall personality disturbingly matched the clinical definition of sociopathy. Details, details…

Still, you (almost) had to admire his drive, devotion, and dedication to the cause of promotion, of rising through the military ranks. Had he managed to channel that astonishing energy, obsession even, to the pursuit of some good, the world might markedly have improved. Which is, actually, a dirty little secret about the military, especially ground combat units; that it tends to attract (and mold) a disturbing number of proud owners of such personality disorders. The army then positively reinforces such toxic behavior by promoting these sorts of individuals – who excel at mind-melding (brown-nosing, that is) with superiors – at disproportionate rates. Such is life. Only there are real consequences, real soldiers, (to say nothing of local civilians) who suffer under their commanders’ tyranny.

Back in 2011-12, the man served as my commander, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. As such, he led – and partly controlled the destinies of – some 500 odd soldiers. Then a lowly captain, I commanded about one-fifth of those men and answered directly to the colonel. I didn’t much like the guy; hardly any of his officers did. And he didn’t trust my aspirational intellectualism, proclivity to ask “why,” or, well, me in general. Still, he mostly found this author an effective middle manager. As such, I was a means to an end for him – that being self-advancement and some positive measurable statistics for his annual officer evaluation report (OER) from his own boss. Nonetheless, it was the army and you sure don’t choose your bosses.

So it was, early in my yearlong tour in the scrublands of rural Kandahar province, that the colonel treated me to one his dog-and-pony-show visits. Only this time he had some unhappy news for me. The next day he, and the baker’s dozen tag-alongs in his ubiquitous entourage, wanted to walk the few treacherous miles to the most dangerous strongpoint in the entire sub-district. It was occupied, needlessly, by one of my platoons in perpetuity and suffered under constant siege by the local Taliban, too small to contest the area and too big to fly under the radar, this – at one point the most attacked outpost in Afghanistan – base just provided an American flag-toting target. I’d communicated as much to command early on, but to no avail. Can-do US colonels with aspirations for general officer rank hardly ever give up territory to the enemy – even if that’s the strategically sound course.

Walking to the platoon strongpoint was dicey on even the best of days. The route between our main outpost and the Alamo-like strongpoint was flooded with Taliban insurgents and provided precious little cover or concealment for out patrols. On my first jaunt to the outpost, I (foolishly, it must be said) walked my unit into an ambush and was thrown over a small rock wall by the blast of a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) with my apparent name on it. Since then, it was standard for our patrols to the strongpoint to suffer multiple ambushes during the roundtrip rotation. Sometimes our kids got wounded or killed; sometimes they were lucky. Mercifully, at least, my intelligence section – led by my friend and rebranded artillery lieutenant – did their homework and figured out that the chronically lazy local Taliban didn’t like to fight at night or wake up early, so patrols to the strongpoint that stepped off before dawn had a fighting chance of avoiding the worst of ambush alley.

I hadn’t wanted to take my colonel on a patrol to the outpost. His entourage was needlessly large and, when added to my rotational platoon, presented an unwieldy and inviting target for Taliban ambush. Still I knew better than to argue the point with my disturbingly confident and single-minded colonel. So I hedged. Yes, sir, we can take you along, with one caveat: we have to leave before dawn! I proceeded to explain why, replete with historical stats and examples, we could only (somewhat) safely avoid ambush if we did so.

That’s when things went south. The colonel insisted we leave at nine, maybe even ten, in the morning, the absolute peak window for Taliban attack. This prima donna reminded me that he couldn’t possibly leave any earlier. He had a “battle rhythm,” after all, which included working out in the gym at his large, safe, distant-from-the-roar-of-battle base each morning. How could I expect him to alter that predictable schedule over something as minor as protecting the lives and limbs of his own troopers? He had “to set an example,” he reminded me, by letting his soldiers on the base “see him in the gym” each and every morning. Back then, silly me, I was actually surprised by the colonel’s absurd refusal; so much so that I pushed back, balked, tried to rationally press my point. To no avail.

What the man said next has haunted me ever since. We would leave no earlier than nine AM, according to his preference. My emotional pleas – begging really – was not only for naught but insulted the colonel. Why? Because, as he imparted to me, for my own growth and development he thought, “Remember: lower caters to higher, Danny!” That, he reminded me, was the way of the military world, the key to success and advancement. The man even thought he was being helpful, advising me on how to achieve the success he’d achieved. My heart sank…forever, and never recovered.

The next day he was late. We didn’t step off until nearly ten AM. The ambush, a massive mix of RPG and machine gun fire, kicked off – as predicted – within sight of the main base. The rest was history, and certainly could’ve been worse. On other, less lucky, days it was. But I remember this one profound moment. When the first rocket exploded above us, both the colonel and I dove for limited cover behind a mound of rocks. I was terrified and exasperated. Just then we locked eyes and I gazed into his proverbial soul. The man was incapable of fear. He wasn’t scared, or disturbed; he didn’t care a bit about what was happening. That revelation was more terrifying than the ongoing ambush and would alter my view of the world irreparably.

Which brings us to some of the discomfiting morals – if such things exist – of this story. American soldiers fight and die at the whims of career-obsessed officers as much they do so at the behest of king and country. Sometimes its their own leaders – as much as the ostensible “enemy” – that tries to get them killed. The plentiful sociopaths running these wars at the upper and even middle-management levels are often far less concerned with long-term, meaningful “victory” in places like Afghanistan, than in crafting – on the backs of their soldiers sacrifices – the illusion of progress, just enough measurable “success” in their one year tour to warrant a stellar evaluation and, thus, the next promotion. Not all leaders are like this. I, for one, once worked for a man for whom I – and all my peers – would run through walls for, a (then) colonel that loved his hundreds of soldiers like they were his own children. But he was the exception that proved the rule.

The madness, irrationality, and absurdity of my colonel was nothing less than a microcosm of America’s entire hopeless adventure in Afghanistan. The war was never rational, winnable, or meaningful. It was from the first, and will end as, an exercise in futility. It was, and is, one grand patrol to my own unnecessary outpost, undertaken at the wrong time and place. It was a collection of sociopaths and imbeciles – both Afghan and American – tilting at windmills and ultimately dying for nothing at all. Yet the young men in the proverbial trenches never flinched, never refused. They did their absurd duty because they were acculturated to the military system, and because they were embarrassed not to.

After all, lower caters to higher…

Danny Sjursen is a retired US Army officer and regular contributor to Antiwar.com. His work has appeared in the LA Times, The Nation, Huff Post, The Hill, Salon, Truthdig, Tom Dispatch, among other publications. 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. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

‘Catastrophic’ Damage in Bahamas in Wake of Hurricane Dorian

FREEPORT, Bahamas—Relief officials reported scenes of utter ruin in parts of the Bahamas and rushed to deal with an unfolding humanitarian crisis in the wake of Hurricane Dorian, the most powerful storm on record ever to hit the islands. At least five deaths were reported, with the full scope of the disaster still unknown.

The storm’s punishing winds and muddy brown floodwaters destroyed or severely damaged thousands of homes, crippled hospitals and trapped people in attics.

“It’s total devastation. It’s decimated. Apocalyptic. It looks like a bomb went off,” said Lia Head-Rigby, who helps run a local hurricane relief organization and flew over the Bahamas’ hard-hit Abaco Island. “It’s not rebuilding something that was there; we have to start again.”

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She said her representative on Abaco told her that “there’s a lot more dead” and that the bodies were being gathered up.

Emergency authorities, meanwhile, struggled to reach victims amid conditions too dangerous even for rescue workers, and urged people to hang on.

“We wanted to go out there, but that’s not a risk we’re capable of taking,” Tammy Mitchell of the Bahamas’ National Emergency Management Agency told ZNS Bahamas radio station. “We don’t want people thinking we’ve forgotten them. … We know what your conditions are. We know if you’re stuck in an attic.”

Practically parking over a portion of the Bahamas for a day and a half, Dorian pounded the northern islands of Abaco and Grand Bahama with winds up to 185 mph (295 kph) and torrential rain before finally moving into open waters Tuesday on a course for Florida. Its winds were down to a still-dangerous 110 mph (175 kph).

Over 2 million people along the coast in Florida, Georgia and North and South Carolina were warned to evacuate. While the threat of a direct hit on Florida had all but evaporated, Dorian was expected to pass dangerously close to Georgia and South Carolina — and perhaps strike North Carolina — on Thursday or Friday.

“Don’t tough it out. Get out,” said U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency official Carlos Castillo.

In the Bahamas, Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane said more than 13,000 houses, or about 45% of the homes in Grand Bahama and Abaco, were believed to have been severely damaged or destroyed. U.N. officials said more than 60,000 people on the hard-hit islands will need food, and the Red Cross said some 62,000 will need clean drinking water.

“What we are hearing lends credence to the fact that this has been a catastrophic storm and a catastrophic impact,” he said.

Lawson Bates, a staffer for Arkansas-based MedicCorps, flew over Abaco and said: “It looks completely flattened. There’s boats way inland that are flipped over. It’s total devastation.”

The Red Cross authorized a half-million dollars for the first wave of disaster relief, Cochrane said. And U.N. humanitarian teams stood ready to go into the stricken areas to help assess the damage and the country’s needs, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said. The U.S. government also sent a disaster response team.

Abaco and Grand Bahama islands, with a combined population of about 70,000, are known for their marinas, golf courses and all-inclusive resorts. To the south, the Bahamas’ most populous island, New Providence, which includes the capital city, Nassau, and has over a quarter-million people, suffered little damage.

The U.S. Coast Guard airlifted at least 21 people injured on Abaco. Rescuers also used jet skis to reach some people as choppy, coffee-colored floodwaters reached roofs and the tops of palm trees.

“We will confirm what the real situation is on the ground,” Health Minister Duane Sands said. “We are hoping and praying that the loss of life is limited.”

Sands said Dorian rendered the main hospital on Grand Bahama unusable, while the hospital in Marsh Harbor in Abaco was in need of food, water, medicine and surgical supplies. He said crews were trying to airlift five to seven kidney failure patients from Abaco who had not received dialysis since Friday.

The Grand Bahama airport under 6 feet (2 meters) of water.

As of 2 p.m. EDT, Dorian was centered about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Freeport and 105 miles (170 kilometers) east of Fort Pierce, Florida. It was moving northwest at 5 mph (7 kph). Hurricane-force winds extended up to 60 miles (95 kilometers) from its center.

The coastline from north of West Palm Beach, Florida, through Georgia was expected to get 3 to 6 inches of rain, with 9 inches in places, while the Carolinas could get 5 to 10 inches and 15 in spots, the National Hurricane Center said.

NASA satellite imagery through Monday night showed some places in the Bahamas had gotten as much as 35 inches (89 centimeters) of rain, said private meteorologist Ryan Maue.

Parliament member Iram Lewis said he feared waters would keep rising and stranded people would lose contact with officials as their cellphone batteries died.

Dorian also left one person dead in its wake in Puerto Rico before slamming into the Bahamas on Sunday. It tied the record for the strongest Atlantic storm ever to hit land, matching the Labor Day hurricane that struck Florida Gulf Coast in 1935, before storms were given names.

Scientists say that climate change generally has been fueling more powerful and wetter storms but that linking any specific hurricane to global warming would require more detailed study.

Across the Southeast, meanwhile, interstate highways leading away from the beach in South Carolina and Georgia were turned into one-way evacuation routes. Several airports announced closings, and hundreds of flights were canceled. Walt Disney World in Orlando planned to close in the afternoon, and SeaWorld shut down.

Police in coastal Savannah, Georgia, announced an overnight curfew. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper ordered a mandatory evacuation of the dangerously exposed barrier islands along the state’s entire coast.

Having seen storms swamp his home on the Georgia coast in 2016 and 2017, Joey Spalding of Tybee Island decided to empty his house and stay at a friend’s apartment nearby rather than take any chances with Dorian.

He packed a U-Haul truck with tables, chairs, a chest of drawers, tools — virtually all of his furnishings except for his mattress and a large TV — and planned to park it on higher ground. He also planned to shroud his house in plastic wrap up to shoulder height and pile sandbags in front of the doors.

“In this case, I don’t have to come into a house full of junk,” he said. “I’m learning a little as I go.”

In Folly Beach, South Carolina, many restaurants and shops wasted no time in boarding up, but some hurricane-hardened residents had yet to decide whether to heed the evacuation order.

“If it comes, it comes. You know, God always provides, y’all,” Sammye Wooded said.

___

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Weissenstein from Nassau, Bahamas. Associated Press reporters Tim Aylen in Freeport; Russ Bynum in Georgia; and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

Videos From Bahamas Show Devastation Left by Hurricane Dorian

Videos posted online late Sunday and early Monday provided the first glimpse of the scale of destruction Hurricane Dorian—a historic Category 5 storm—left in its wake in the Bahamas as it slowly moves toward the southeastern coast of the United States, forcing nearly a million residents of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas to evacuate.

“I have seen utter devastation here … We are surrounded by water with no way out,” said ABC News correspondent Marcus Moore, who was on the ground in Marsh Harbour.

“Absolute devastation, there really are no words,” said Moore, surveying destroyed homes and buildings. “It is pure hell here on Marsh Harbour on Aboca Island in the northern part of the Bahamas.”

Hurricane Dorian’s destruction in the northwestern Bahamas (Video: Alicia Nesbitt/ FB) pic.twitter.com/yyNVZaYAVa

— Joel Franco (@OfficialJoelF) September 1, 2019

"Please someone, please come help us": Bahamas residents survey devastated apartment building after Hurricane Dorian hit Abaco Islands. https://t.co/P3RbMFtW2G pic.twitter.com/BpF3DINXCu

— ABC News (@ABC) September 2, 2019

Walk through storm-hit Elbow Cay shows extent of destruction in Hope Town as Hurricane Dorian lashes the Bahamas. https://t.co/cH8sAKuRWQ pic.twitter.com/WSNORsZu4o

— ABC News (@ABC) September 2, 2019

The Guardian characterized Dorian as “the biggest storm to hit the Caribbean island chain in modern times,” with wind gusts reaching as high as 220 mph.

During a press conference Sunday, Bahamian prime minister Hubert Minnis said Dorian “will put us to a test that we’ve never confronted before.”

“This is probably the most sad and worst day of my life to address the Bahamian people,” said Minnis. “I just want to say as a physician I’ve been trained to withstand many things, but never anything like this.”

According to the National Hurricane Center, the storm remained at Category 5 strength Monday as it drifted over Grand Bahama Island, unleashing heavy rainfall and severe wind.

“This is a life-threatening situation. Residents on Grand Bahama Island should not leave their shelter when the eye passes over, as winds will rapidly increase on the other side of the eye,” the center said. “These hazards will continue over Grand Bahama Island during most of the day, causing extreme destruction on the island.”

Forecasters on Monday said the storm could get “dangerously close to the Florida east coast” as early as Monday night.

Hurricane #Dorian continues to track south of due west during the overnight hours, leftward of the official forecast and increasing the chances of an eventual landfall in Florida. https://t.co/stvdXMwCfv

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) September 2, 2019

Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina have declared a state of emergency as the hurricane crawls toward the U.S. coast.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Sunday issued a mandatory evacuation order for 830,000 people along the state’s coastline. The order is set to take effect Monday at noon.

Texas’ New Firearms Laws Are a Gift to the Gun Industry

Texas experienced its second mass shooting in a month on Saturday. A gunman, stopped by police for a traffic violation, killed seven people and injured 22 in a drive-by rampage outside Odessa. Less than a day after the murders, new legislation went into effect, not to limit the prevalence of firearms, but, as CNN reported Sunday, to “make it easier to have guns just a month after a shooter stormed a Walmart in El Paso and killed 22 people.”

House Bills 1143, 1387, 2363, 302 and 1177 will, collectively, allow licensed gun owners to store (concealed) guns inside parked cars on school grounds, store guns in foster homes, have guns in all rental properties, and carry handguns during a disaster. Schools will also be allowed to appoint more armed marshals. Last, but not least, Texas Senate Bill 535 will let licensed gun owners carry firearms in houses of worship.

Other states, when confronted with mass shootings, have tended to strengthen gun control laws, according to a 2016 working paper from Harvard Business School, which counted 20,400 pieces of gun legislation in the last 25 years, of which 3,000 were passed. According to researchers, state legislatures are typically quicker to act than Congress. California’s state legislature, in response to a 2015 mass shooting, passed six gun control bills in 2016. After the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Fla., state legislatures passed 50 new gun control laws, according to the Pew Charitable Trust’s 2018 Stateline Legislative Review.

“It’s not that nothing changes after a mass shooting,” Deepak Malhotra, one of the paper’s authors, told NPR in 2016, adding, “A lot of the action on [gun control] happens across states instead of at the federal level.”

When the state legislatures are controlled by Republicans however, those laws tend to look more like the recent bills from Texas, loosening gun restrictions rather than enacting gun control.

“It makes no sense to disarm the good guys and leave law-abiding citizens defenseless where violent offenders break the law to do great harm,” State Sen. Donna Campbell, co-sponsor of SB 535, said in a statement, explaining that the new law improved on unclear and “clunky” previous legislation.

During a press conference, after a reporter asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, “What do you say to people who look at [the new laws] and say that Texas went in the wrong direction”? Abbott answered with a defense of the new legislation: “Some of these laws were enacted to make our communities safer,” referring specifically, as as Vox reported, to the law that will add more armed marshals to Texas schools.

Gun control advocates like Kris Brown, president at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, were horrified. “Many states took the opportunity in the last two years to learn lessons from the tragedies in Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Parkland, and the everyday gun violence that plagues our citizens, and enacted new laws to protect public safety through expanded background checks and extreme risk laws,” Brown told CNN.

After the Odessa shooting was first reported, Julián Castro, presidential candidate and former mayor of San Antonio, said on Twitter that he wanted to ask Senate Republicans, “How many Americans are you willing to sacrifice to the NRA?”

Texas has been the site of four of the ten deadliest mass shootings in recent decades.

Trump’s Labor Day Attacks on Workers

Labor Day is a holiday designed to honor America’s workers. Instead, Donald Trump continues to attack them. Indeed, his administration is in the midst of a stealth effort that not only attacks workers but also our earned Social Security benefits and our federal government. The long-term goals of Trump and his Congressional allies are to destroy the labor movement, wreck the federal government, and end Social Security.

That may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. Trump’s latest stealth attack is not only anti-union, it will eventually make it so difficult to access Social Security benefits that some beneficiaries (particularly those attempting to qualify for their earned Social Security disability benefits) never receive them at all. Others will eventually claim their benefits, but only after an unnecessarily burdensome process of visiting field offices that are rarely open and have hours-long lines when they are.

For Republicans, that’s all according to plan. Trump and his Congressional allies are intentionally breaking our government so they can turn around and say that it doesn’t work.

Trump’s war on workers is extremely well documented. It is perhaps best illustrated by his anti-worker nominees to be Secretary of Labor, a pack of wolves in the hen house. The first nominee was guilty of scores of labor law violations and forced to pay millions of dollars in settlements to workers he cheated. He was ultimately rejected because even many Republicans decided that they couldn’t vote for an ethically challenged nominee who was also an accused domestic abuser.

Trump’s second anti-worker nominee was Alex Acosta, best known for his sweetheart deal with the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. His current acting Secretary of Labor is, if anything, more anti-worker than the first two. And his newest nominee for the job has spent his career defending businesses seeking to roll back labor protections.

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Trump’s war on the federal government is also well-documented. His administration is upending the lives of career civil servants by telling those based in Washington to move to the Midwest and those based around the country to relocate to Washington. Just before the beginning of the school year, these workers have been given virtually no time to decide if they will relocate or resign. This is having the desired effect: Most are quitting.

The Trump administration’s actions are intended to shrink government to the size where they can, in the words of Republican activist Grover Norquist, “drown it in the bathtub.”

Trump’s hostility to Social Security and Medicare is equally clear. He recently floated a proposal to reduce Social Security’s funding. Days later, he gloated over his intentions to cut Medicare as a “fun second-term project.”

The American people did not vote for these benefit cuts. In fact, Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security and Medicare. This was a shrewd political strategy, given that voters of all political stripes strongly value our Social Security and strongly oppose cutting its modest but vital benefits. They strongly value our Medicare, as well. But as with his promise to raise taxes on the rich, to provide quality health care for everyone, even to act presidential, Trump has done the exact opposite now that he’s in the White House.

Despite their claims, the GOP elite’s hostility to Social Security and Medicare — indeed, to anything the government does to help us improve our lives — doesn’t have anything to do with the debt or deficit. It has everything to do with the donor class trying to avoid paying their fair share toward the common good.

Yet because Social Security and Medicare are so popular, Republicans know that direct benefit cuts will be impossible to pass into law, as long as all of us pay attention. That is why Trump and his Congressional allies are conducting a stealth war, using guerilla warfare tactics against our earned benefits.

One of their most nefarious tactics is undercutting the Social Security Administration (SSA), the agency charged with ensuring that workers receive their earned Social Security benefits in a timely and stress-free manner. SSA has suffered nearly a decade of budget cuts from Congressional Republicans. These cuts have resulted in office closures, staff reductions, and a years-long wait for disability hearings.

Attacks on SSA don’t just hurt the agency and its 60,000 workers. They hurt all Americans by making it increasingly difficult to collect the Social Security benefits we earn with every paycheck. That’s why all of us should fight to defend it.

At SSA and across the federal government, the Trump Administration is playing hardball. It has issued anti-worker executive orders. It has failed to negotiate in good faith with those representing federal workers. And recently, the Trump administration launched a new assault. It arbitrarily and unilaterally sought to impose a new contract on SSA workers. That imposed contract would effectively destroy the ability of the workers’ union to represent them.

The Trump administration’s goal is to make conditions at SSA so intolerable that demoralized workers will quit in droves, taking essential institutional knowledge with them. This will directly affect the hundreds of millions of us who call SSA or visit a local field office regarding our earned Social Security benefits.

Federal workers are fighting back in the courts. Their Democratic allies in Congress are seeking to come to their aid, but they do not control the White House and Senate. The only way to protect the hard-working civil servants at the Social Security Administration, and thereby protect our Social Security and Medicare, is to make Donald Trump a one-term president.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Nancy J. Altman is a writing fellow for Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. She has a 40-year background in the areas of Social Security and private pensions. She is president of Social Security Works and chair of the Strengthen Social Security coalition. Her latest book is The Truth About Social Security. She is also the author of The Battle for Social Security and co-author of Social Security Works!

Large Blast in Afghan Capital Targets International Compound

KABUL, Afghanistan — A large explosion rocked the Afghan capital Monday night, targeting an area home to several international organizations and guesthouses, officials said. The blast came just hours after a U.S. envoy briefed the Afghan government on plans for the first 5,000 U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan within five months’ time under a deal with the Taliban that’s been reached “in principle” but still needs President Donald Trump’s approval.

Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahmi confirmed that the Green Village compound was the target of the blast, which sent a plume of smoke into the night sky over Kabul. Another interior ministry official, Bahar Maher, told the local TOLO news channel that the blast was caused by a car bomb.

There was no immediate word of casualties.

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The Green Village has been a frequent target of attacks. Many foreigners live in the compound, which is heavily guarded by Afghan forces and private security guards.

The compound was also targeted by a suicide car bomber in January who killed at least four people and wounded scores. That blast also occurred when the U.S. envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, was visiting the capital to brief the Afghan government on his negotiations with the Taliban on ending America’s longest war.

Earlier on Monday, Khalilzad showed the draft U.S.-Taliban to the Afghan president after declaring that they are “at the threshold of an agreement.”

Khalilzad has met twice with President Ashraf Ghani after arriving Sunday evening from Qatar, where the ninth round of U.S.-Taliban talks ended. However, reflecting the sensitivity of the negotiations and the Afghan government’s sidelined role in the talks so far, it was not clear whether Ghani was given the draft to keep.

“We have reached an agreement with the Taliban in principle but of course until the U.S. president agrees with it, it isn’t final,” Khalilzad told the local TOLO news channel. He said that under the deal, the first 5,000 U.S. troops would withdraw within 135 days from five bases in Afghanistan. Between 14,000 and 13,000 troops are currently in the country.

Trump last week told Fox News the U.S. plans to reduce its troop presence to 8,600 and then “make a determination from there.” He has been eager to withdraw troops before next year’s election and the draft deal easily meets that deadline.

The reduction would bring troop levels down to roughly where they were when Trump took office in January 2017.

A further troop withdrawal is expected to depend on the Taliban meeting conditions of the deal, including a reduction in violence.

The Taliban are at their strongest since the U.S.-led invasion to topple their government after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and now control or hold sway over roughly half the country.

For its part, the U.S. seeks Taliban assurances that Afghanistan will not be a safe haven for extremist groups to plan and launch global terror attacks.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks in recent months to strengthen their negotiating position. The United Nations and others say Afghan civilians have suffered, often caught in the crossfire as government forces, backed by the U.S., have pursued the militants with airstrikes and raids. Afghanistan was the world’s deadliest conflict in 2018.

Afghan presidential spokesman Sediq Seddiqi told reporters the government would study the deal to make sure it addresses the goals of a lasting ceasefire and direct talks with the Taliban in the near future. “It will take couple of days, probably, that we will get back to them and give them our observations,” he said.

A deal on ending nearly 18 years of fighting is closer to reality, even as the Taliban attacked the capitals of Kunduz and Baghlan provinces in the north over the weekend. Violence continued in Kunduz on Monday as a suicide bomber targeted a police checkpoint and killed at least four officers and wounded 17 people, including 10 civilians, said provincial health director Esanullah Fazeli.

The Afghan government has been shut out of the U.S.-Taliban negotiations, as the militant group dismisses it as a U.S. puppet, but intra-Afghan talks that include the government are meant to follow a U.S.-Taliban deal. The Kabul government says its negotiating team is ready but refuses to say who is on it.

The Taliban want all of the estimated 20,000 U.S. and NATO forces to leave Afghanistan and already portray their departure as the insurgents’ victory.

“We are on the verge of ending the invasion and reaching a peaceful solution for Afghanistan,” the Taliban spokesman in Qatar, Suhail Shaheen, said over the weekend.

A U.S. official with Khalilzad’s negotiation team recently said that “any potential peace deal will not be based on blind trust, but will instead contain clear commitments that are subject to our monitoring and verification.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

The official added that a deal would lead to “intra-Afghan negotiations where the Taliban will sit with other Afghans and together they will commit to a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.”

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Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon in Guelph, Canada, contributed.

The Era of Cheap and Abundant Clean Energy Is Just Around the Corner

US and European researchers have shown the way to an era of cheap and plentiful renewable energy on a massive scale.

Canadian scientists have worked out how to extract pure, non-polluting fuel from spent or unexploited oil wells at a fraction of the cost of gasoline.

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And British and Danish scholars have worked out that, in principle, Europe could generate enough onshore wind energy to supply the whole world until 2050.

Neither technology is likely to be exploited on a massive scale in the very near future. Wind energy development depends on national and local decisions, and the new study is a simple atlas of possible sites across the entire continent.

And although hydrogen is already driving trains, cars and buses in many nations, the technology is still essentially experimental and the infrastructure for a hydrogen economy has still to be built.

“The study does show the huge wind power potential right across Europe which needs to be harnessed if we’re to avert a climate catastrophe”

But both are instances of the sustained ingenuity and imagination at work in research laboratories and institutions as scientists confront the challenge of a world no longer dependent on the fossil fuels that drive global heating and the climate emergency.

The technology that can take hydrogen straight from existing oil reserves was presented at an international geochemistry conference in Barcelona and depends on university-patented technology now being developed by a scientific start-up.

In essence, the bedrock becomes the reactor vessel for a high-temperature reaction involving hydrocarbon molecules and water: oxygen-enhanced air is pumped downwards at the wellhead and injected deep into a reservoir of tar, bitumen or oil to begin a process that raises subterranean temperatures.

At 500°C the hydrocarbons fracture, and a patented system intelligently locates the hydrogen and filters it: the carbon stays in the ground.

“What comes out of the ground is hydrogen gas, so we don’t have the huge, above-ground purification costs associated with oil refining: we use the ground as our reaction vessel.

Steep cost cut

“Just taking Alberta as an example, we have the potential to supply Canada’s entire electricity requirement for 330 years,” said Grant Strem, of Proton Technologies, which is to commercialise the process at – the technology’s begetters say – a cost per kilo of hydrogen of between 10 and 50 cents. This is a fraction of the cost of gasoline extraction.

Hydrogen is in theory the ideal fuel: the visible universe is made of it. The only product of its combustion with oxygen is water. It is already being exploited as a battery fuel: surplus solar and wind power could be used to split water and store hydrogen as a reserve for electricity generation.

Researchers have proposed a hydrogen-powered bicycle, engineers have calculated that hydrogen could replace the world’s natural gas supplies in the next 30 years, and designers have even proposed a safe global bulk carrier hydrogen delivery system by automaton airships more than 2kms long.

Wind power, by contrast, is now a highly developed technology that is already advanced in Europe and the US, and, like solar power, it could supply national grids almost anywhere in the world.

One of the bigger remaining questions is: what is the right place to put a battery of wind turbines? European scientists report in the journal Energy Policy that the ideal of a European grid powered entirely by renewables is now within the collective technological grasp.

Hundredfold increase

A new map based on wind atlases and geographic information identifies 46% of the land mass of the continent that would be suitable for wind turbine generation. If all such space were exploited, the turbines could amplify the existing onshore wind supply a hundredfold and could generate energy equivalent to roughly a megawatt for every 16 European citizens.

That adds up to more than 11 million additional turbines over 5 million square kilometres in large parts of western Europe, Turkey and Russia.

“Our study suggests the horizon is bright for the onshore wind sector,” said Benjamin Sovacool, of the University of Sussex in the UK, one of the authors.

“Obviously, we are not saying that we should install wind turbines in all the identified sites, but the study does show the huge wind power potential right across Europe which needs to be harnessed if we’re to avert a climate catastrophe.”

Four dead, 29 missing in California Dive Boat Fire

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — A fire raged through a boat carrying recreational scuba divers anchored near an island off the Southern California coast early Monday, leaving at least four people dead and more than two dozen missing after the gutted vessel sank.

The five-member crew all escaped by jumping off the boat. Rescuers descended on the scene but after hours of searching the water and shore none of the 33 passengers had been found alive. Four bodies were recovered within hours and all had injuries consistent with drowning, said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Kroll.

The fire broke out aboard the vessel Conception around 3 a.m. off Santa Cruz Island, part of a chain of rugged wind-swept isles that form Channel Islands National Park in the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles.

The Coast Guard said the vessel was believed to have carried 38 people, including the five crew, and it’s not immediately clear how the fire started.

“The crew was actually already awake and on the bridge and they jumped off,” Coast Guard Capt. Monica Rochester said. Two suffered minor injuries, Coast Guard Petty Officer Mark Barney said.

Authorities said the crew members were rescued by a good Samaritan vessel called The Grape Escape.

The Grape Escape’s owners, Bob and Shirley Hansen, told The New York Times they were asleep when they heard pounding on the side of their 60-foot (18-meter) fishing vessel about 3:30 a.m. and discovered the frightened crew members. They had used an inflatable boat to escape and were dressed only in their underwear. They told the couple they fled when a fire grew out of control.

“When we looked out, the other boat was totally engulfed in flames, from stem to stern,” Hansen said, estimating it was no more than 100 yards from his craft. “I could see the fire coming through holes on the side of the boat. There were these explosions every few beats. You can’t prepare yourself for that. It was horrendous.

“The fire was too big, there was absolutely nothing we could do,” he added.

Hansen said he and his wife gave the crew clothes and two of them went back toward the Conception looking for survivors. Asked at a news conference if the crew tried to help others aboard, Rochester told reporters, “I don’t have any additional information.”

Rochester said the 75-foot (20-meter) commercial scuba diving vessel was anchored in Platts Harbor, about 20 yards (18 meters) off the northern coast of Santa Cruz Island, when the fire ignited. She said the vessel sank in 64 feet (19.5 meters) of water; its bow was still visible above the waterline.

The Conception, based in Santa Barbara Harbor on the mainland, was on the final day of a Labor Day weekend cruise to the Channel Islands when the fire erupted. It was scheduled to return at 5 p.m. Monday.

“At 3:15 this morning the Coast Guard overheard a mayday call. The call was garbled, it was not that clear, but we were able to get some information out of it to send vessels on scene,” Barney said.

Rochester said that call indicated the boat was already fully ablaze.

The Conception was chartered by Worldwide Diving Adventures, which says on its website that it has been taking divers on such expeditions since the 1970s. It was owned and operated by Truth Aquatics, a Santa Barbara-based company founded in 1974.

Coast Guard records show inspections of the Conception conducted last February and in August 2018 found no deficiencies. Earlier inspections found some safety violations related to fire safety.

A 2016 inspection resulted in owners replacing the heat detector in the galley and one in 2014 cited a leaky fire hose.

Records show all safety violations from the last five years were quickly addressed by the boat’s owners.

Dave Reid, who runs an underwater camera business with his wife and who has traveled on the Conception and two other boats in Truth Aquatics’ fleet, said he considered all three among the best and safest dive-boats around.

“When you see the boats they are always immaculate,” he said. “I wouldn’t hesitate at all to go on one again. Of all the boat companies, that would be one of the ones I wouldn’t think this would happen to.”

Reid said divers sleep overnight in an open bunk room on the vessel’s lowest deck. Coming up to the top deck to get off the boat requires navigating a narrow stairway with only one exit. If the fire was fast-moving, he said, it’s very likely divers couldn’t escape and the crew couldn’t get to them.

The sleeping area is also near the bow, engine and where diving gear is kept, adding to the difficulty of getting out quickly, he said.

“If there was an explosion in the engine area that could have gone right into the sleeping area,” he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board dispatched a team to investigate.

Truth Aquatics’ website reports the vessel, launched in 1981, has rafts and life jackets for up to 110 passengers and exits on the port, starboard and bow that provide “easy water entry.”

The trip promised multiple opportunities to see colorful coral and a rich variety of marine life around the Channel Islands, which draw boaters, divers and hikers.

Five of the eight Channel Islands comprise the national park and Santa Cruz is the largest within the park at about 96 square miles (248.6 square kilometers).

___

Associated Press writers John Antczak, John Rogers, Frank Baker and Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles, Michael R. Blood in Oxnard, California, and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this story.