RSN: Marc Ash | What if Roberts Holds Out?

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RSN: Marc Ash | What if Roberts Holds Out?

Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "That's a stark and unequivocal statement of intent by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He's on record saying he has no intention of facilitating anything resembling a fair trial of the impeachment charges against Donald Trump. What role does that leave Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cast in?"
READ MORE

John Bolton. (photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP)

Schumer Calls for Testimony From Mulvaney, Bolton
Seung Min Kim, Karoun Demirjian and Steven Mufson, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "The top Senate Democrat on Sunday called for subpoenaing several senior Trump administration officials who have yet to testify in the House's impeachment probe as witnesses for President Trump's likely trial - part of an opening salvo in negotiations that could determine the parameters for the Senate proceedings next month."
READ MORE


West Point cadets. (photo: Elsa)

West Point Officials Looking Into Possible 'White Power' Gestures During Army-Navy Game
Allison Quinn, The Daily Beast
Quinn writes: "West Point officials say they are 'looking into' what prompted West Point cadets to flash a hand sign during the annual Army-Navy football game on Saturday that has frequently been associated with the 'white power' movement."
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Demonstrators outside the company headquarters of Purdue Pharma, owned by the Sackler family, in Stamford, Conn., on Thursday. (photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images)

Big Pharma Empire Behind OxyContin Now Selling Overdose Cure
Claire Galofaro and Kristen Gelineau, Associated Press
Excerpt: "The gleaming white booth towered over the medical conference in Italy in October, advertising a new brand of antidote for opioid overdoses. 'Be prepared. Get naloxone. Save a life,' the slogan on its walls said."
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California governor Gavin Newsom. (photo: Elijah Nouvelage/EPA)

California Governor Rejects PG&E Bankruptcy Reorganization Plan
Tom Hals and Steve Gorman, Reuters
Excerpt: "California Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday rejected a bankruptcy reorganization plan submitted by PG&E Corp (PCG.N), the state's largest investor-owned utility, saying its proposal fails to meet the requirements of a recently enacted wildfire law."
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Troops in Bucharest in 1989. They sided with demonstrators during the revolution. (photo: Sophie Elbaz/Getty)

Thirty Years On, Will the Guilty Pay for Horror of Ceaușescu Orphanages?
Shaun Walker, Guardian UK
Walker writes: "They were the pictures that, for many across the world, were the defining image of the aftermath of Romania's 1989 revolution: emaciated children clothed in rags, looking into the camera with desperate eyes amid the squalid decay of the country's orphanages."
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Soren Sondergaard, a pig farmer in Denmark, with his pigs. (photo: Ciril Jazbec/NYT)

Denmark Raises Antibiotic-Free Pigs. Why Can't the US?
Andrew Jacobs, The New York Times
Jacobs writes: "How many rounds of antibiotics does it take to raise a Danish pig?"
READ MORE

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CounterCurrents: 4 Reasons The Paris Agreement Won’t Solve Climate Change, IMF Warns Of Record High Global Debt

Dear Friend,

Today is the 15th anniversary of Afghanistan invasion. Kansas artist Priti Gulati Cox shares with us an ongoing art project on the invasion, deaths and destruction in its aftermath. 

Franklin Lamb who is a Faculty of Law, at Aleppo University  and a witness of the horrific siege of Aleppo writes about the violation of international laws by both parties of war. He puts the onus on each one of us to take action to alleviate the suffering of the besieged population of Aleppo who suffer from hunger, water and fuel shortage, deaths and destruction from continuous bombardment from both parties of the conflict. 

James Hansen a pioneering climate scientist and a whistle blower says that the Paris Cliamte agreement won't solve anything. He writes "Global temperatures are already at the level of the Eemian period (130,000 to 115,000 years ago), when sea level was 6-9 meters higher than today. Considering the additional warming “in the pipeline,” due to delayed response of the climate system and the impossibility of instant replacement of fossil fuels, additional temperature rise is inevitable."

IMF warns that eight years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the conditions are being created for another meltdown of even bigger proportions. Some may ask, what's the big deal? Debt is the lifeline of capitalism, isn't it? The problem is that the system is so rotten that only so much debt can be absorbed by the system, beyond which the whole edifice will collapse. Current debt levels are 225 percent of global GDP! How long will this cassino run? Will it come down like a house of cards?

And also more stories from around the world. 

If you don't mind, and if you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/. 

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org





The Day After the Fall Of Aleppo Will International Humanitarian Law Still Be Relevant?
by Franklin Lamb

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/the-day-after-the-fall-of-aleppo-will-international-humanitarian-law-still-be-relevant/

The few eye-witnessed cases of battlefield restraint pale when compared to the heavy and seemingly indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas during which neither side appears hesitant when it comes to mass homicide.





15 Years Of War On Terror: US Follies And Sufferings
by Dr Vivek Kumar Srivastava 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/15-years-of-war-on-terror-us-follies-and-sufferings/

Today completes the fifteen years of US entry in Afghanistan. It was on 7th October 2001 when US had entered the Afghanistan





Unfinished Portrait
by Priti Gulati Cox 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/unfinished-portrait/

Now, thanks to dedicated people documenting more names, faces, and other details of Pakistani, Afghan and other non-U.S. citizen victims, I am able to include at least some of them in the work. So I hope that by October 7, 2017, the 16th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, I will have an updated version of Unfinished Portrait in which people will be able to read the names and look into the faces of Afghans, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Syrians and others. How people will react to this new work? We will have to wait and see.






IMF Warns Of Record High Global Debt
by Nick Beams

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/imf-warns-of-record-high-global-debt/

Eight years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the conditions are being created for another meltdown of even bigger proportions, amid rising geo-political and economic tensions between the major capitalist powers.





4 Reasons The Paris Agreement Won’t Solve Climate Change
by James Hansen  

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/4-reasons-the-paris-agreement-wont-solve-climate-change/

Global temperatures are already at the level of the Eemian period (130,000 to 115,000 years ago), when sea level was 6-9 meters higher than today. Considering the additional warming “in the pipeline,” due to delayed response of the climate system and the impossibility of instant replacement of fossil fuels, additional temperature rise is inevitable.





The Role Of Memory And Identity In The Obştea Forest Commons Of Romania
by Monica Vasile 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/the-role-of-memory-and-identity-in-the-obstea-forest-commons-of-romania/

In the Vrancea Mountains of Romania, the Eastern Carpathians, people in dozens of villages have used community-based institutions known as obştea to manage forest commons since the sixteenth century. The original sense of the word, coming from Slavonic, is “togetherness,” and it underlines the participatory essence of the institution. The traditions of obştea are so deeply rooted among Vrâncean villagers that the forest is not regarded simply as a resource; it is a powerful source of collective identity, social practice and pride that has near-mythological resonances. 






Toxic Allegiances And Corporate Power: Open Letter To The Oxford Martin Commission
by Colin Todhunter 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/toxic-allegiances-and-corporate-power-open-letter-to-the-oxford-martin-commission/

The Oxford Martin School is based at Oxford University in the UK. In what seems to be a laudable aim, the school has set up the ‘Oxford Martin Commission for Future Generations’ (OMC), which has brought together 19 international leaders from government, business and civil society to address the growing short-term preoccupations of modern politics and business and identify ways of overcoming today’s gridlock in key international negotiations. But if falls short of expectations




Obscured American: Amanda Zinoman The Film Editor
by Linh Dinh 

http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/10/07/obscured-american-amanda-zinoman-the-film-editor/

Yes, it is a bit odd to include Amanda in my series of obscured Americans. She is a very successful editor of films that have appeared on television and in theaters.

CorpWatch: East European Shoe Factories Often Pay Below Minimum Wage, Says New Report

East European Shoe Factories Often Pay Below Minimum Wage, Says New Report by Richard Smallteacher, Special to CorpWatch June 22nd, 2016

Photo: Davide del Giudice, Change Your Shoes campaign Shoes labeled "Made in Europe" are often assembled in poor East European countries for 'starvation wages' according to a new research report from the Change Your Shoes campaign. The companies whose labor practices were examined include Ara, Bata, Deichmann, Geox, Leder & Schuh AG, Lowa and Zara. A factsheet published by the campaign, based on interviews with 179 shoe workers from 12 factories in six countries - Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia - found that most shoe workers were not paid minimum wage, let alone a living wage for a family of four. These conditions are believed to affect some 120,000 registered workers across the six countries. Working conditions were uniformly bad, say the researchers of Labour on a Shoestring, according to the workers they interviewed. "As many workers earn a wage based on units produced and not hours worked, they often work unpaid overtime or refuse to follow safety procedures that protect them from glue and hazardous chemicals in order to maintain high productivity," they write. "In many factories workers face extreme cold in winter and temperatures so high in summer that they frequently collapse." The worst paid workers are in Albania, where they were paid monthly wages of €140 ($155), less than the minimum wage of €169 per month. Perhaps the widest disparity in living costs were in Bosnia-Herzegovina where average wages of €164 are less than a fifth of the estimated €933 needed to support a family of four. Bu contrast average wages in China are €213 a month. All the other countries surveyed by Change Your Shoes showed average wages in shoes factories lagged behind minimum wage. In Macedonia, wages averaged €145, less than the minimum wage of €220 and below living wages for a family of four of €479. In Romania average wages of €156 were less than the minimum wage of €166 and what a family of four needed which stood at €736. In Poland average wages of €318 were less than the minimum wage of €392 and the amount needed for a family of four which was €799. The highest wages were in Slovakia at €354 which was still less than the minimum wage of €468 and below the amount needed for a family of four at €517. In addition to the low wages, shoe manufacturers who use factories in Eastern Europe, are also able to creative labeling tactics by taking advantage of European Union rules known as the 'outward processing trade (OPT)' system. For example an Italian brand might choose to design and cut leather, then ship the material to a lower wage country where the actual shoe assembly is done, before re-importing the finished product duty free to be labeled, packed and marketed as 'Made in Italy.' "It is not required that we have to add a label 'Made in Bosnia' though the consumer could inform himself regarding the country of origin by reading a registration number sewn into the garment," Jan Ahlers, vice chairman of the Ahlers AG supervisory board, told Reuters in an email for a 2009 article. "After finishing the clothes, we put in a neutral label that has no 'made in' on it,"  Dimitar Stojanov, owner of the Pelister factory in Macedonia, told Reuters at the time. "That is later applied by the client. What they put, we don't know." With little or no oversight from national agencies, let alone from the brands that sell the shoes, workers have to resort to other means to survive. "Poverty wages also result in poverty related coping strategies that double and triple the burden, especially on women," write the researchers of Labour on a Shoestring. "Workers in Macedonia told us, for instance, that in addition to their factory job, they have to engage in subsistence agriculture to survive." "Savings? We cannot save anything from our salary," one Romanian worker told the researchers. "My husband had to go to Germany for a few months to work in construction in order to make some money for winter heating. Those are our savings." http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=16079

There is no planet B, even for the Koch Brothers

As always, CounterCurrents offers the wonderful selective below. Please consider subscribing and supporting.


Dear Friend,

If you think the content of this news letter is critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/subscribe.htm. You can also follow us on twitter, http://twitter.com/countercurrents and on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/countercurrents

In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
www.countercurrents.org


Toxic Overflow Of Thousands Of Fukushima Tanks Following Heavy Rains
By Lauren McCauley

http://www.countercurrents.org/mccauley221013.htm

Containment areas surrounding 12 of 23 groups of tanks overflowed, with one of them containing Strontium-90 as highly concentrated as 710 Becquerels per liter - 71 times higher than the level set by the company as safe for release. Tepco told Kyodo News that they "cannot rule out the possibility that contaminated water has reached the Pacific Ocean via drainage conduits near the clusters," and added that they are working to determine that amount of contaminated water and what possible radioactive substances were released


Why Governments Are Blind To Fossil Fuel Energy Risk
By Jeremy Leggett

http://www.countercurrents.org/leggett221013.htm

Theese statements are all held as comforting core beliefs across much of society today : Oil supply can keep growing for decades. Climate change is not that big a threat. Fossil-fuels count as assets at zero risk of being devalued by policy action on climate. Fracking shale is a sustainableroute to new mass prosperity in the US and beyond. Each one of these assertions is false, so I and others like me believe. Each one entails a belief system that threatens society with disaster of some kind


A Question Of Scarcity
By Andrew Fanning

http://www.countercurrents.org/fanning221013.htm

The scarcity principle, however, is just an assumption, and it appears to be a dangerous one. Maybe in the empty world of the 18th century classical economists, it was mostly harmless to assume that people have unlimited wants because the vast majority of people had so little. But now that we live in a full world where the global economy is bumping against ecosystem limits, it’s time for economists to stop assuming that everyone always wants more and start accepting that it’s not possible to have too much


What Collapse Feels Like, Part 4 of 5: Despair: Every Hour Offers A Choice
By Carolyn Baker

http://www.countercurrents.org/baker221013.htm

As we confront catastrophic climate change and planetary game-changers such as the ever-widening implications of the Fukushima disaster, it is increasingly likely that humanity is already inhabiting hospice. As tempting as it may be to leap into the left brain and begin arguing that we are not inhabiting hospice and that the notion is absurd, it may actually be more useful to notice the potential benefits of imagining such a scenario


Shale Gas Exploitation And Environmental Destruction In Romania
By Florentina Mihaila

http://www.countercurrents.org/mihaila221013.htm

Shale gas exploitation by fracking is not well received in Romania but has created a popular protest movement from concerned citizens


Straw Could Supply Energy To Millions Of Households
By Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc221013A.htm

Straw could play an important role in the future energy mix for Germany. Up until now it has been underutilized as a biomass residue and waste material. These were the conclusions of a study conducted by the TLL (Thueringian regional institute for agriculture), the DBFZ (German biomass research center) and the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ)


New Evidence Of NSA Spying On France, Mexico
By Thomas Gaist

http://www.countercurrents.org/gaist221013.htm

France’s Le Monde published a report Monday based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden describing National Security Agency (NSA) spying operations directed against the French population and the French business and political leadership. Between December 2012 and January 2013, according to Le Monde, the NSA collected over 70 million French communications, which were then categorized either as “Drtbox” or “Whitebox.”


Why There Are No Israelis In Israel?
By Neve Gordon

http://www.countercurrents.org/gordon221013.htm

Three High Court justices rejected a petition filed by several Israelis who had requested a change in the registration in their identity cards. The plaintiffs in the registration case were asking that the Interior Ministry write “Israeli” instead of making the distinction between Jewish, Arab, or Druze in their nationality category. The crux of the matter is that the High Court fears that if Israeli citizens are allowed to be categorised in the state registry as Israeli instead of Jewish, Arab, or Druze then the Jewish character of the state will be jeopardised


Peres Suffering From Portnoy’s Complaint?
By Franklin Lamb

http://www.countercurrents.org/lamb221013.htm

Shimon Peres’ guilt-edged insecurity these days is far more important when it comes to the masking—and unmasking—of an abettor of racist Zionism. His complaint, like Portnoy's Complaint, is also emblematic of the times during which he has lived and his uncertainty as to whether he has squandered his life in an evil cause


The Coming Era Of Tiny Wars And Micro-Conflicts
By Tom Engelhardt

http://www.countercurrents.org/engelhardt221013.htm

What our leaders don’t get is the most basic, practical fact of our moment: war simply doesn’t work, not big, not micro -- not for Washington. A superpower at war in the distant reaches of this planet is no longer a superpower ascendant but one with problems. The U.S. military may be a destabilization machine. It may be a blowback machine. What it’s not is a policymaking or enforcement machine


Some Basic Facts And Background: New Nuclear Negotiations
Between The U.S. And Other World Powers And Iran
By Larry Everest

http://www.countercurrents.org/everest221013A.htm

It is not yet clear how the U.S. , Israel , and other world powers will respond to Iran 's proposal and exactly how they see advancing their imperialist interests in the region and toward Iran . However, it's important to understand that both the U.S. and Iran are confronted with their own set of major necessities, including the deep fissures and rapidly changing situation across the region from North Africa , through the Middle East , to Central Asia


Obama At The UN: Whitewashing The Real "Roots Of Mistrust" Between The U.S. And Iran
By Larry Everest

http://www.countercurrents.org/everest221013.htm

Part 1: The 1953 CIA Coup, the Shah, and the 1979 Revolution


Mining The Ocean Floor
By Countercurrents.org

http://www.countercurrents.org/cc221013B.htm

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Statoil, and the mining company Nordic Mining are collaborating on a research project that will map marine mineral resources along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The parties signed a one-year collaboration agreement at the end of November 2012


AFSPA: Imputnity Must End
By Ravi Nitesh

http://www.countercurrents.org/nitesh221013.htm

On the issue of reviewing/repealing AFSPA (Armed forces special powers act), many come together on one side to oppose any such change, even government and opposition political group both join each other. On the other end, another stakeholder army itself comes on board to oppose any such change


Will Kashmir Forget 27th October ?
By Ishaq Begh

http://www.countercurrents.org/begh221013.htm

If Kashmir gets peace and solution including reunion, then certain dates of Kashmir history such as 27th October will vanish and happiness may return