Sweden’s International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance finds this year that the United States of America has joined the ranks of “backsliding democracies,” joining India, Brazil, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.
Tag: USA
The US will have 300 gigawatts of wind and solar by the end of 2022. We also have about 100 gigawatts of hydroelectric power. That is 400 gigawatts. If we can get enough battery storage to make full use of the sun and of strong winds, that would amount to a third of the 1200 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity in the US.
Source: Good Climate News: US will increase Solar Power by nearly 50% in 2022, and add 29 Gigawatts of Wind
NEW YORK (AP) — New York prosecutors investigating former President Donald Trump’s business dealings have convened a new grand jury to hear evidence in the probe as the previous panel’s term was set to run out, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press Thursday.
Source: New Grand Jury Seated As Trump Criminal Probe Continues | HuffPost Latest News
On the eve of it’s 48th anniversary, documents just declassified by the Australian National Archives show the extent to which the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) worked closely with the CIA in the lead-up to the Coup-d’état in Chile in September 1973. Story by Peter Kornbluh and Clinton Fernandes. The Australian Government’s obsession with secrecy has a long history. As The New York Times wrote two years ago, “no other developed democracy holds as tight to its secrets.” Just how deep this culture of secrecy goes, is being tested by Professor Clinton Fernandes who has been petitioning for the release of intelligence records on clandestine activity in Chile at the behest of the CIA to overthrow Salvador Allende. In short, 50 years ago, the documents show that the Australian Government set up an intelligence station in Santiago at the behest of the CIA, spied on Allende and conducted covert operations, and then played a role as a liaison between the CIA and Pinochet.
Plan to advocate for carbon neutrality in Australia is not likely to change Fox News’ climate denial coverage in the U.S.
The drone strike that hit Khwaja Burgha, a working-class residential neighborhood in Kabul, was said to have killed numerous members of the Ahmadi family, with the youngest alleged victim being a 2-year-old girl. Morgue footage shared on social media showed the burned bodies of several children, as well as photos of the victims before their deaths. One of the dead, according to members of the Ahmadi family who spoke to reporters, was a former Afghan military officer who had served as a contractor for U.S. forces, as well as a worker at a charity organization. Join Our Newsletter Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you. I’m in “The Americans said the airstrike killed Daesh members,” a neighbor of the family angrily told reporters after the strike, referring to the Islamic State. “Where is Daesh here? Were these children Daesh?”
Source: New Chapter of Afghanistan War: U.S. Drone Strike Kills Family
If we’re serious about stopping impending climate disaster, we have no choice but to radically rein in one of the world’s worst polluters: the US military.
Source: We Can’t Fight the Climate Crisis Without Fighting the Military-Industrial Complex
In more and more of the country Amazon acts like an employer in a company town, sucking up whole communities and shaping public goods and services to fit its profit-making needs.
Source: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States
Australia’s PM is caught between Biden and his Coalition partner while the country suffers. Watch the salesman promise what he can’t or wont deliver.
The importance of having a U.S. leader like Joe Biden, who has come to believe in the necessity of drastically cutting the emission of greenhouse gases, was demonstrated Wednesday when Japan announced that it was doubling its proposed cuts to carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. This according to Reuters.
Union mine workers in Alabama are taking part in a historic strike, the first of its kind in four decades, accusing Warrior Met Coal of first exploiting its workers and now inspiring violence against them on the picket line. Freelance journalists are on the ground and local news has been covering the story from the start — yet more than three months into the strike, the historic labor action has not received so much as a single mention from CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC, according to a new analysis from Media Matters.
A manual used in the Navy’s anti-terrorism courses lumped anarchists, socialists, and neo-nazis together as examples of “political terrorists.”
Source: Military Removes Training Document Conflating Socialists With Terrorists
The highest standard of torture in the world has been shown and set by the USA
The UK’s High Court has granted the US government permission to appeal a decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be sent to the United States to face espionage charges. The judicial office said on Wednesday that the appeal had been granted and the case would be listed for a High Court hearing. No date has been set.
Source: Julian Assange extradition: US can appeal denial, UK court rules
Joe Biden is still bombing Iraq in 2021, and Iraq is still supporting the Palestinians, and refused to join Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in recognizing Israel. Iraq is now so firmly an ally of Iran that its leaders have to do photo ops with Arab leaders to try to escape the perception that Baghdad is too tightly linked to Tehran. Neoconservative fail.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is one of the great crimes of the last century. It has been made possible by Israel’s utility to US imperialism.
The leftist Democratic Socialists of America, which helped congressional star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez get elected in 2018, looks to be a big political player again in New York City’s 2021 municipal elections. The group has not yet endorsed anyone for mayor – the top prize in New York’s June 22 Democratic primaries. But all 51 city council seats are up for grabs this year, and the DSA has members running for six of them – including Queens public defender Tiffany Cabán and Brooklyn tenant activist Michael Hollingsworth. With two state senators and five representatives out of 213 lawmakers, the New York State Legislature already has the country’s largest DSA legislative caucus. These Democrats share a leftist platform that includes guaranteeing housing as a human right and ending mass incarceration The DSA has upended local politics in this Democratic stronghold, and its wins extend well beyond New York – into Virginia, Nevada and beyond. How did socialism jump from the fringes of American politics into its very center?
In other words, in fiscal year 2021, it appears that migrants are continuing to enter the United States in the same numbers as in fiscal year 2019 — plus the pent-up demand from people who would have come in fiscal year 2020, but for the pandemic. That’s visible in the first figure, earlier, in which the blue trend line for the five months of data available for fiscal year 2021 (October, November, December, January and February) neatly reflects the trend line for fiscal year 2019 — plus the difference between fiscal year 2020 and fiscal year 2019.
A new analysis shows no migrant “surge” or border “crisis.” Here’s how often broadcast news has said there is one. | Media Matters for America
The wealthiest 1% of Americans fail to report more than 20% of their income to the IRS, and some of those ultra-rich people use “sophisticated evasion technologies” and criminal tactics to avoid paying their full share, according to a new analysis by researchers at the IRS and economists. The analysis estimated that the top 1% of households fail to report 21% of their income. Nearly a third of that is through sophisticated schemes that random IRS audits fail to detect. The trend is even starker among the top 0.1% of earners, whose unreported income may be twice as high as the IRS estimates.
Top 1% fails to report over 20% of income using potentially “criminal” tactics: IRS analysis | Salon.com
‘Counter-Terrorism’?: Two Decades After 9/11, New Interactive Map Details Footprint of US War Machine in 85 Countries | Common Dreams News
“The map raises a number of questions. Why is the United States militarily active in so many countries? Are these operations meeting the stated U.S. goals of reducing violence against Americans?”
‘Counter-Terrorism’?: Two Decades After 9/11, New Interactive Map Details Footprint of US War Machine in 85 Countries | Common Dreams News
Is this ‘the most innocent man anywhere in the history of the United States’?
Donald Trump: what crimes has the ex-president been accused of?
The US Justice Department has appealed a British judge’s ruling that prevents Wikileaks founder Julian Assange being extradited to the United States to face espionage charges.
Biden administration appeals Assange’s non-extradition ruling
In 2021 legislative sessions, lawmakers in 28 states have pushed a whopping 106 bills that would restrict voting access
Republicans are going all-out to limit voting rights. We know why | Republicans | The Guardian
A new bombshell emerged: the Trump Administration unfounded accusation of China for spreading the ‘Wuhan virus’ worldwide. It did not matter that such infamy had been questioned by both Japanese and Chinese reports. A report from a Japanese TV station which suspected some of the 14,000 Americans died of influenza may have unknowingly contracted the COVID-19 went viral on Chinese social media, stoking fears and speculations in China that the new virus may have originated in the United States. The report, by TV Asahi Corporation of Japan, suggested that the United States government may have failed to grasp how rampant the virus had gone on the United States soil. (Japanese TV report sparks speculations in China that COVID-19 may have originated in US, Global Times, February 23, 2020). Nor did the presence of suspected similar cases had occurred in Italy in late 2019 and elsewhere, as will be seen. On 12 March 2020, in a statement to the House Oversight Committee of the United States Congress the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Robert R. Redfield candidly admitted that: yes, some cases diagnosed as seasonal flu could have been COVID-19. As to exactly when that occurred, in October?, in November?, he could not be precise. China’s Foreign Ministry reacted to Dr. Redfield’s statements intimating that the virus could have originated in the United States.
Was COVID-19 born in the United States? (part 2) – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Trump’s coup plot has been treated by many in the media as the last gasp of a deranged political despot, but we are told that American democracy remains strong and that a new day is dawning. Had the news been coming from almost anywhere else in the world the headlines might have been different. We would have been reading about a “failed state”.
The USA, CIA and a poor night’s sleep for the world
Opponents of the $2,000 survival checks claim they’re poorly targeted. That’s nonsense. They would help the working class and poor far more than the rich.
Just Give Us the Damn Checks
Donald Trump is gone. But the conditions that gave rise to his brand of noxious politics aren’t going away anytime soon.
Trumpism Will Endure
When America faces a leader with totalitarian impulses who thinks he can will his way into another term, it is also facing its greatest democratic crisis in decades. The passage of time always heals wounds, including political wounds. But what can be done to revive public trust in elections in the meantime is not just an open-ended question. Democracy’s fragile skin has been stretched as never before, when tens of millions of voters say that they don’t trust the results from the best-run election in years.
A Deepening Democracy Crisis: More than 70 Percent of Trump Voters Distrust the Best-run Election in Years | The Smirking Chimp
Deaths Rate has increased by 68%
The number of COVID-19 patients being treated in hospitals across the United States has reached 90,000 after nearly doubling in the past month, just as holiday gatherings are expected to propel the next wave of infections.
Coronavirus: Hospitalised COVID-19 patients hit record 90,000 in US ahead of expected surge
So much for “we stand alone” stance insisted by Morrison. Broadsides coming from America suggest otherwise. (ODT)
Senior United States Senator Marco Rubio has lashed the Chinese government for its “economic coercion” against Australia, saying it is important for a global alliance of democracies to speak up in support of Canberra. The intervention from the former Republican presidential candidate followed a sharp escalation in rhetoric from Beijing as it doubled down on its claim that the Morrison government is solely to blame for deteriorating relations between China and Australia.
Senior Republican senator Marco Rubio slams Beijing for ‘bullying’ Australia
WHEN JOE HOCKEY, former cigar-chomping Australian Treasurer in Tony Abbott’s government and Australian ambassador to the USA between January 2016 and January 2020, made it clear that he agreed with his golfing buddy Donald Trump that fraud “for sure” characterised Democratic Party voting and that “there’s plenty of good reason to have litigation, I mean it is a complete dog’s breakfast right across the country,” he did more than jump into the unaerated, putrid goldfish bowl. He inadvertently shone a light on the real nature of the relationship between the current Australian Government and the Trump White House, a relationship which exposed the Australian Government as a kind of ex-officio branch of the Trump Republican Party.
Morrison’s Trumpist dilemma: A credible revisionist narrative is impossible
US deaths from the coronavirus will reach 410,000 by the end of the year, more than double the current death toll, and deaths could soar to 3000 per day in December, the University of Washington’s health institute has forecast.
Coronavirus: US COVID-19 deaths projected to more than double to 410,000 by end of year
Microsoft is currently in talks with TikTok to buy out operations in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Considering Bill Gates and Microsoft’s massive failure with the Windows phone and in the battle with Android, they would be absolutely salivating at the prospect of owning a mobile app with over a hundred million young consumers. But will they protect private data? That prospect is highly doubtful. In early August, the Washington Post reported that Microsoft could use the data from TikTok for research and development in artificial intelligence. The only way forward is legislation that is both national and global in application and places democracy and the protection of privacy ahead of corporate interests and invasive security measures. Though with the governments of Trump, Scott Morrison and Xi Jinping, I don’t like our chances of that.
TikTok furore exposes data privacy hypocrisy in Australia and the U.S.
BBC Monitoring translates a report in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that alleges a high UAE official told its correspondent that “The aircraft are part of the deal.” That is, an arms deal was part of the agreement between the two countries, and that the US would sell Abu Dhabi F-35s was openly specified. So the United Arab Emirates made the treaty with Israel not to bring peace to the Middle East but to ensure that it is armed to the teeth. The UAE has a citizen population of only about a million (plus 8 million guest workers), so it is the Rhode Island of the Middle East. The country has enormous oil wealth, however, and has used it to begin asserting itself throughout the region, from Libya to Yemen. It joined Saudi Arabia in an air war on the Shiite Houthi rebels of Yemen, and Abu Dhabi clearly sees its sophisticated fighter jets as one key to regional dominance.
Was F-35 Stealth Jet Sale to Arab UAE at heart of deal with Israel and Trump? Did Netanyahu Lie?
Other comparisons relate to the World Bank’s definition of poverty as the pronounced deprivation of well-being:
- Homicides: Numerous sources report a higher homicide rate in the U.S. than in India.
- Suicides: Numerous sources report a higher suicide rate in India than in the U.S. (although WHO shows a higher male suicide rate in the U.S. than in India).
- Alcohol Abuse: All sources report a higher alcohol-related death rate in the U.S. than in India.
- Homelessness: Based on the best available data, the U.S. has a slightly higher rate of homelessness than India. The numbers may be understated for both countries.
via Comparing Poverty in India and America May Surprise You | The Smirking Chimp
Who is leading who by the nose? (ODT)
So, what is the average American citizen to do confronted by an avalanche of Congressional action benefitting Israel while the United States is going through its most trying time since the Great Depression? Israeli lobbying groups like AIPAC, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) have large budgets, hundreds of staff and full and immediate access to Congressional offices. They even write the legislation that is then rubber stamped by the House and Senate, and although they are clearly agents of Israel, they are never required to register as such under Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
There is no defense treaty with Israel and the Jewish state is no ally, much less a “greatest ally.” It is, in fact, a major strategic liability, involving Americans in regional wars that need not be fought and demonstrating to all the world the risible reality of a military and economic superpower that is being led to perdition during a time of crisis by a ruthless and irresponsible client state.
Now more and more people can finally see what few of us have been repeating for years: The entire world has its neck squashed by the U.S. boot. The entire world “cannot breathe”! And the entire world has to fight for its right to be able to breathe!
via ‘The world cannot breathe!’ Squashed by the USA – a country built on genocide and slavery
Tens of millions of Americans are cashless, many desperate to feed their children. Meanwhile the richest Americans merrily float on a rapidly rising tide of money thanks mainly to Trump & Co.
This is our “Friends for Life” we go to war and die for (ODT)
olddogthoughts 
![https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ffccdf7030c46acc299f77fd64d81e5c0c599158/0_0_3319_1991/master/3319.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=e064f7e021d2b6abd0a5776ce2bd0f3e"](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ffccdf7030c46acc299f77fd64d81e5c0c599158/0_0_3319_1991/master/3319.jpg?width=445&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=e064f7e021d2b6abd0a5776ce2bd0f3e"){kind=link}