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ERIC ZUESSE | 14.09.2018 | WORLD / AMERICAS, MIDDLE EAST

George Washington’s Farewell Address — one of the most important documents of America’s Founders — warned against any and all permanent alliances; he said, on 19 September 1796:

The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

(I urge the reader to see likewise that entire passage, because it is eloquent, and profoundly applicable to the present, and not only to the past.)

On 10 September 2018, at the Federalist Society (which pretends to be based upon America’s Founders, such as George Washington), the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, John Bolton, stated that Israel is effectively part of US territory — though, if it is that, it’s the only part which is allowed to attack the United States and to be privileged to possess complete immunity from any prosecution by the United States Government for doing that.

Bolton, ironically, titled his speech “Protecting American Constitutionalism and Sovereignty from International Threats”. Either that title was a bald lie, or he’s ill-read in America’s founding documents, because he flatly contradicted those documents. He said (as excerpted in a Reuters news-report on Sunday, September 9th, quoting from Bolton’s advance-text):

“The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel.”

“We will not cooperate with the ICC [International Criminal Court]. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.”

“We will consider taking steps in the U.N. Security Council to constrain the court’s sweeping powers, including to ensure that the ICC does not exercise jurisdiction over Americans and the nationals of our allies [such as Israel] that have not ratified the Rome Statute.”

The Reuters summary also noted that if the ICC nonetheless proceeds with its investigation of Israel, “the Trump administration will consider banning [that Court’s] judges and prosecutors from entering the United States, put sanctions on any funds they have in the US financial system and prosecute them in American courts.”

So, the National Security Advisor to today’s US President disagrees strongly with George Washington, and — regarding Israel — he is determined that the US shall be (in Washington’s words) “a slave … a slave to its animosity or to its affection” for that country (Israel), and against what that country determines to be its enemies (such as Palestinians, Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah).

Washington’s Farewell Address had also said:

“Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.”

“Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.”

“So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country.”

“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.”

Washington’s successor, the Second President, John Adams, in his Inaugural Address, on 4 March 1797, condemned “the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments.”

The Third President, Thomas Jefferson, said at his First Inaugural on 4 March 1891: “It is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.; …”

The CIA-edited Wikipedia devotes an article to denigrating what America’s Founders said regarding foreign relations, and it equates the Founders’ view with such movements in US history as isolationism, and especially with the America First organization that opposed America’s going to war against Hitler; in other words: it distorts US history beyond recognition as “history” at all. Another, similar, Wikipedia article tries to deceive readers to think that what the Founders said about this matter was intended to apply only to their own time and not to the country they were founding and throughout its future. Such Wikipedia “editing” is often involving Wikipedia employees, more like writing than editing, and even includes outright banning of certain ‘unpleasant’ facts. But, fortunately, America’s founding documents themselves haven’t yet been rewritten. And they are painfully clear, that this country isn’t at all what they had founded, but more like its opposite.

This, therefore, was a bipartisan matter by America’s Founders, and they made their intentions and hopes as clear as possible. The nation that America’s Founders established was conquered by internal subversion after World War II, an American counter-revolution by subterfuge that now controls both of this nation’s political Parties. Today’s America is profoundly inimical to the Founders’ hopes and dreams — the country not only of our Constitution, with the flaws it necessarily included in order to be accepted by all of the colonies (and which flaws, such as slavery, have produced numerous Amendments in order to repair), but more importantly, the country they were aiming for it to become, and which was embodied, for all eternity, in these and similar passages, in which the Founders stated with remarkable clarity and unanimity, their nation’s basic principles, which today’s US Government desecrates, instead of consecrates.

About the author

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.

What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?

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Democrats spelling out their new phony "bettter deal" to gullible audiences. Trump's oafishness has been a boon to these mountebanks.

Liberals and the sectarian West

[dropcap]P[/dropcap]eerless essayist and notorious crank Gore Vidal wrote that, "History is nothing but the story of the migration of tribes." This is a useful insight from a veteran critic of western republicanism. In the West, after all, we pretended to live in a society that has evolved beyond tribalism, thanks to the Enlightenment, the printing press, and sundry other magical innovations. In fact, we are so well-evolved, it is our responsibility to defend, on a global basis, the defenseless (and perhaps huddled) masses against the scourge of sectarianism from the scurvy hordes in 'developing' nations.

In reality, like almost everything in the West, the enduring practices of tribalism are merely disguised behind rhetorical facades that neither change nor mitigate the pernicious products of sectarianism. Be it ethnological or genealogical or other, we are still beholden to the ideologies of exclusivist power that generate human conflict. We are ruled by a bipartisan elite that jostle amongst themselves in intra-class battles for supremacy. These internecine wars, like cage fighting, are televised for the consumption of the masses, who clamor for bread and circuses. But make no mistake, these elites are two sides of the same corporate coin, locked in a symbiotic relation without which neither would survive. With a few necessary exceptions, the ruling class as a whole abides by the “vile maxim” articulated by Adam Smith: “...all for ourselves and nothing for other people."

The L Train
The principal western tribe is liberalism. The secondary western tribe is racist white patriarchy. But that tribe has been losing ground to the liberal tribe for decades now, slowly eclipsed as the complexion of American society broadens. Democrats got behind demographics in the Sixties, presumably as an electoral strategy, eschewing the shrinking white populace for the influx of ethnicities whose minority status would allow Democrats to transition from the party of labor to a party of multiculturalism without a significant shift in its discourse. Still fighting for the underdog. The standard fustian still applied.

Though the constituencies are different, on the core issue of class and imperialism and exploitation, the elites are truly bipartisan, that is to say, nonpartisan. Donald Trump, recognizing the Democrats abandonment of their old working class base, played the populist card, running to the left of that pastiche of false progressivism, Hillary Clinton, and took the election.

"...these choices are merely rhetorical and token displays. We have simply drafted a multicultural team into a class war."

Rather than face their hypocrisy and do the work of reconstruction, the Democrats hastily constructed a few flimsy scapegoats on which to pin their frustrations. They conflated Donald Trump with what they now call a "Russian influence campaign" into a colossal media construct called Russiagate. They have since herded all the liberal sheeple into a band of bleating resisters who clamor for the president's impeachment. They recently held a summit at a Republican’s funeral, where they lionized a warmonger and bonded over their shared contempt for the president.

As we have seen since the election, the credo of the liberal tribe can be distilled from the liberal response to Trump himself. It is simple: we must follow the rules of decorum. As journalist Michael Tracey says, "Aside from a few marginal deviations, Trump has faithfully implemented an orthodox GOP agenda. These grousing internal "resisters" (a reference to the anonymous Times op-ed from a Trump administration official) are getting just about everything they could've wanted policy-wise. It's the style/rhetoric that they find intolerable. They're obsessed with decorum."

Deliberately calibrated to affuent audiences, elitist smooth talkers like Obama have been able to sell a form of de facto imperial fascism to adoring multitudes still believing in their moral superiority.

This is precisely it. The language of politics must be massaged until it renders inoffensive terminology that is suitable to bourgeois audiences. Tame rhetoric must be employed. That is the mandate of the liberal tribe. What is being done behind the scenes, policy-wise, is an open question. What is not up for debate is the need to employ and deploy the calm platitudes and soothing phraseology of liberalism. Hence, when Barack Obama decides to mimic Jimmy Carter and fund a proxy war in the Middle East, he does so under the banner of helping "moderate rebels" to unseat a "brutal dictator", neither of which are accurate descriptions. The former refer to mercenary terrorists and the later to an elected president. But, drummed into bourgeois minds with ceaseless regularity, the labels stick.

Everything else is negotiable. This is possibly because the apparent fungibility of the liberal ethos. For modern liberals, everything is relative. It is all a matter of perspective; all is merely opinion. This sliding scale of moral suasion freed Democrats to sell themselves to corporate America on the premise that they could still make incremental progress on social issues even as they coffered coin from the purveyors of global imperialism. To do so, a flexible perspective was a prerequisite; one would have to triangulate policies that shaded left of conservatives but appealed to big business. Though they would have to advance the imperial agenda, they could do good by tempering its excesses. That old catchphrase in reverse: do good by doing well. The outlook was clear. The growing ranks of people of color would bolster their electoral power. Running candidates in suitable gender and ethnic categories would draw POC to the polls. And minor fiddling on the fringes of the capitalist system of exploitation could be trumpeted every four years as the small triumphs won in the face of Republican obstructionism. It seemed a flawless narrative strategy for political domination. And it all hinged on intellectual relativism and a vocabulary of empathy. It has worked for 16 of 24 year up to 2016, when the unraveling mise-en-scene of American austerity finally betrayed the narrative on a mass scale.

Class Before Color
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the great successes of the liberal tribe's multiculturalism is that it has convinced many Americans that we have in some sense overcome sectarianism. Thus when the "Washington crime syndicate" gets a black leader who appoints women and Hispanics to key government positions, we are led to believe the traditional tribal barriers have been broken down, and that perhaps we have moved into a meritocratic era, where one's work ethic and natural skills are the measure of our success. Yet these choices are merely rhetorical and token displays. We have simply drafted a multicultural team into a class war. It is class that reveals the tribal conflicts that still rage among us. Class expresses the race, gender, and national bigotries that shape the American experience. Class is economic, and that's why it is likely the fundamental category of stratification. But because class has been largely scrubbed from our national vocabulary, we often fail to notice the class war in which we are all enmeshed. Which is precisely the purpose of multiculturalism--to disguise class violence behind a mask of post-racial and post-gender brotherhood. Did the Democrats push the 1965 immigration act because they were deeply committed on supporting the dreams of Latinos and Asian immigrants? Or did they do it as part of a calculated electoral strategy?

Obama embodied this class strategy. Before he was black, he was elitist. He was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Yet he presided over seven wars, shattering international law at every turn. But he recited the rhetoric of peace. He spoke of humanitarian action. He spoke in measured terms, rarely tweeted, delivered articulate speeches that reified the tropes of liberal ideology: empathy, equality, and justice for all. Humility and principle, patriotism and free markets. Yet behind that wall of words he bombed brown people every day. He backed Israel in its slow-motion eradication of Palestine. He supported Saudi Arabia’s criminal siege on Yemen. He expanded fossil fuel drilling. He lobbied for fracking. He prosecuted patriots when they blew the whistle on government corruption. With a filibuster proof Senate majority, he appointed bipartisan elites to shelter the rich from the “pitchforks”. He stood aside while banks threw five million mostly POC from their homes. African-Americans lost unprecedented amount of wealth during his presidency. He lifted Republican programs and passed them off as his own version of the Great Society or New Deal initiatives. The ACA was anything but, yet the language--"affordable" and "care"--were plucked from the Democratic dictionary of false sympathy. Before Obama, it was Bill Clinton that gutted welfare and passed a crime bill that exploded the prison population, but he, too, professed to “feel your pain.”

For this reason the liberal tribe was silent over their offenses. Decorum. These presidents narrated the soothing mantras that reinforced the Democrats false image of themselves: as peace-loving, patient, magnanimous, and altruistic. It is the self-deceit of liberals that is the deepest tragedy of politics. Not Republican myopia. Read David Sirota on the compromise of the Democratic Party. Read Glen Ford on how Democrats don't care for minorities much more than Republicans do. They're just content to let minorities steer the racist, imperial, corporate ship of state now and then. Now, of course, as Sirota points out, a small groundswell of hopeful "social democrats" are challenging establishment Dems in various primaries. Summoned by the spectacle of Bernie Sanders quixotic charge in the 2016 primaries. Some will win, some will lose, but most of the winners will be ground up by the meat grinder of the party's beltway machine. Candidates like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have already vacillated before the pressures of the party--to support the status quo policies of endless austerity and war.

The Language of Conviction
[dropcap]L[/dropcap]iberals are happy to espouse the lexicon of equality but play the foot soldier of capital so long as they haven't got skin in the game. The ruling class, and the professional classes that serve it, rarely do. Failing that, wars a thousand miles away and merely perused in the morning papers are hardly sufficient to stimulate radical change. Through this lens, Vietnam was perhaps a bourgeois rebellion against being drafted into service. Once the draft was rescinded, the bourgeoisie professional class settled back into its groove of rehearsing liberal vapidities while surreptitiously supporting imperial slaughter. Whenever the vile and venal motives of war are exposed, liberals can simply say they were fooled by the humanitarian rhetoric of the Democratic Party. They can stoutly claim, "Well, I believed we needed to act before Milosevic launched another European genocide..." They can glibly shrug their shoulders and remark, "Well, I thought we were supporting moderate rebels against a brutal dictator. Are you telling me Assad..." Or shrug and say, "Surely Yanukovych was a corrupt politician..." and "Seventeen intelligence agencies agreed that Russia..."

And so on. The great unspoken goal of corporate media propaganda is plausible deniability. The rhetoric the media employs perverts reality and creates a mask of rectitude behind which liberals can hide, even when their narratives are exploded. I was fooled. I didn't know. This is news to me. Still the lesser evil. Malcolm X said white liberals were the friendly fox that wasn’t your friend. MLK said they care more about "order than justice." To that he might have added they also care more about platitudes than policy. In a society of spectacle, best to perfect the pose. When it comes to the Democratic Party's campaign pitch this fall, caveat emptor.

About the Author

The Sins of Empire: Unmasking American Imperialism. He lives in New York City and can be reached at jasonhirthler@gmail.com.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

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Fossil fuels, animal agriculture and an amoral industrialism have created the current ecocide
Understand your place in the collapsing web of life. Click on images for best results.

By Reynard Loki, Truthout.org

Whole Foods bills itself as “America’s healthiest grocery store,” but what it’s doing to the environment is anything but healthy. According to a new report, the chain is helping to drive one of the nation’s worst human-made environmental disasters: the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

By not requiring environmental safeguards from its meat suppliers, the world’s largest natural and organic foods supermarket — and most of its big-brand counterparts in the retail food industry, like McDonald’s, Subway and Target — are sourcing and selling meat from some of the worst polluters in agribusiness, including Tyson Foods and Cargill. The animal waste and fertilizer runoff from their industrial farms end up in the Gulf of Mexico, where each summer, a growing marine wasteland spreads for thousands of miles, leaving countless dead wildlife in its oxygen-depleted wake.

“The major meat producers like Tyson and Cargill that have consolidated control over the market have the leverage to dramatically improve the supply chain,” according to the report, which was released by Mighty Earth, an environmental action group based in Washington, DC. “Yet to date they have done little,” the report’s authors note, “ignoring public concerns and allowing the environmentally damaging practices for feeding and raising meat to expand largely unchecked.”

How animal feed moves through the meat supply chain. Source: Mighty Earth

On August 2, the day the report was released, those public concerns found a voice as citizens, environmentalists and sustainability advocates gathered outside Whole Foods headquarters in Austin, Texas, to deliver 95,000 petition signatures demanding that the company hold its meat suppliers accountable for their role in destroying the environment.

“Grocery stores like Walmart and Whole Foods and meal outlets like McDonald’s and Burger King have the power to set and enforce standards requiring better farming practices from suppliers,” states the report, which Mighty Earth says is the “first comprehensive assessment of major US food brands on their environmental standards and performance for sourced meat.”

Feeding the Nation, Failing the Environment

Ranking the largest food companies in the US based on their sustainability policies for meat production, the report found that the biggest players in the food industry — including major fast food, grocery and food service companies — are failing to protect the environment from the impact of their supply chains. Remarkably, the researchers found that not a single one of the 23 major brands surveyed have policies in place to require “even minimal environmental protections from meat suppliers.” Even more startling is that so-called “green” brands like Whole Foods that have built their reputations on providing sustainable food options have, according to the report, “failed to commit to environmentally responsible farming practices that protect drinking water, prevent agricultural runoff and curb climate emissions.”

The 23 companies surveyed were evaluated on their requirements for meat suppliers regarding where they source their animal feed, how they process their animals’ manure and how they manage their greenhouse gas emissions.

All but one of the companies scored an “F” overall for their environmental policies (or lack thereof) for meat sourcing. The only company to score better than an “F” was Walmart, which received a “D” due to its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions across its supply chain, as well as the launching of programs meant to improve the management of manure and increase the sustainability of corn and soy farming.

Soil erosion and agricultural runoff are the top sources of water pollution in the United States. Source: Mighty Earth

Dead Cows on Your Plate, Dead Fish in the Ocean

In oceans and large lakes across the globe, human activities are creating oxygen-depleted areas where marine life can no longer survive. These hypoxic areas, currently numbering more than 400 around the globe, are commonly known as “dead zones,” and are caused by an increase in certain chemical nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus that drive the massive growth of algae, causing the spread of deadly “algal blooms.” As the algae decomposes, their biomass consumes the oxygen in the water, suffocating fish and other marine life.

Algal blooms are harmful to ecosystems because the blooming organisms contain toxins, noxious chemicals or pathogens. They also suck up all the oxygen, killing fish and other marine life. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

In the United States, the largest recurring dead zone is located in the Gulf of Mexico, mainly off the coast of Louisiana, and extending east to the Mississippi River Delta and west to Texas. The Gulf acts as a massive drainage basin for polluted water containing manure and fertilizer runoff coming from the American heartland, from major beef-producing states like Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. During summer months, this area becomes a 7,000-mile-wide lifeless region — the only reminders of past life being the bodies of fish, crabs, shrimp and other marine animals that have suffocated due to a lack of oxygen. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is the second-largest human-caused dead zone in the world, after the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Oman.

“Excess nutrients bleeding off fertilized crops constitute the overwhelming source—over 70 percent—of the nutrient pollution that causes the Gulf Dead Zone,” Donald Boesch, a professor of marine science and former president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, told the Independent Media Institute.

In August 2017, scientists measured the Gulf of Mexico dead zone and found that it was at its largest since the mapping of the zone began in 1985 — more than 8,000 square miles. But recently, scientists reported that the area is only about 40 percent of its average size. That doesn’t mean that it is no longer an issue. “Although the area is small this year, we should not think that the low-oxygen problem in the Gulf of Mexico is solved,” Nancy Rabalais, a marine ecologist at Louisiana State University and the lead scientist of the study, told The Associated Press. “We are not close to the goal size for this hypoxic area.”

Nearly half (45 percent) of the Earth’s landmass is being farmed by the global industrial livestock system, which includes both the animals killed for human consumption and the crops used to feed those animals. The current human population, 7.6 billion, is expected to swell to 9.8 billion by the year 2050. And if most of them will be meat-eaters, the negative impact of the meat industry on marine ecosystems and coastal communities, if not addressed soon, will surely get worse. According to NASA, “The number and size of ocean dead zones is closely connected to human population density.” It’s basic math: More people means more meat-eaters, and more meat production means more and bigger dead zones.

More Pathogens, More Pollutants, Less Profit

Dead zones could also introduce a host of public and animal health issues. Boesch points out that “various pathogenic microorganisms can thrive” in hypoxic areas. A 2012 study published in FEMS Microbiology Ecology discovered “sequences affiliated with Clostridium,” a human pathogen that causes botulism and diarrhea, in the hypoxic zone of China’s Lake Taihu. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warns that algal blooms contain cyanobacteria, “which are poisonous to humans and deadly to livestock and pets.”

Renee Dufault is a former environmental health officer for the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration, as well as the founder of the Food Ingredient and Health Research Institute. Dufault told the Independent Media Institute that the antibiotics and hormones injected into animals raised for food “are pollutants themselves when they are released from manure via surface water runoff into streams that may be used as drinking water supplies.”

Dead zones also have economic impacts that harm local communities. The NOAA estimates that marine dead zones cost the US food and tourism industries $82 million every year.

Risky Business: Eating Meat

The main source of water contamination in the United States is the manure and fertilizer coming from industrial farms that grow feed to raise animals to be killed for human consumption.

The production of meat isn’t just one of the most polluting of all human activities, contaminating waterways and driving the growth of dead zones across the world; it’s literally bulldozing the planet’s landscape. By converting rainforests and prairies into industrial farms, large-scale meat producers are responsible for the widespread destruction of many of the planet’s native ecosystems, which threatens wildlife by destroying native habitats and releases stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, further exacerbating climate change. Animals raised for food produce 42 percent of agricultural emissions in the US. Two-thirds of those gases are emitted directly by those animals in the form of belches and farts. And the majority of those emissions—around 44 percent—is methane, a greenhouse gas that is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

A report released in July by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy offers some perspective: The top five meat and dairy companies, including Tyson and Cargill, emit more greenhouse gases combined than ExxonMobil, Shell or BP.

A Few Bright Spots

The Mighty Earth report does note a few positive developments. Of the sectors studied, the food service industry that caters meals to universities and hospitals “is doing the most to promote plant-based diets, with Aramark reporting that 30 percent of its menus offer non-meat options and Sodexo reducing beef consumption through its mushroom-blended burger initiative.” And McDonald’s states that it is moving toward 100 percent sustainably certified soy by 2020 to feed the chickens it sources in Europe. (Unfortunately, that requirement isn’t in place for US suppliers.)

“Bright spots were few and far between,” the report states, “but indicate that awareness is growing and improvements are possible.”

Possible, yes. But probable? The food industry has shown a reluctance to enact sustainable practices, but has sometimes responded to consumer demand for change. “Many of these companies have set requirements for meat suppliers to improve practices around animal welfare and antibiotic overuse when the public pressured them to do so,” Mighty Earth campaign director Lucia von Reusner told the Independent Media Institute. Her organization is hoping that their report will help raise public awareness, and that in turn will spur change within the industry.

“The public is now waking up to the industry’s polluting practices and demanding improvements,” she said.

Reforming the Meat Industry

One of the biggest misperceptions that the general public has about dead zones, says Boesch, is that “there is nothing we can do about them.” He points out that, “although experience in other parts of the world shows that while it may take years for the excess nutrients to wash out of the watershed and [be] purged from bottom sediments, we can eventually breathe life back into dead zones if we reduce nutrient pollution. We are now seeing the dead zone in the Chesapeake gradually becoming less severe and smaller.”

The Mighty Earth report recommends that meat producers start employing better farming practices to help curtail the destruction. One way to reduce the need of fertilizers on crops used to feed livestock, for example, is to use cover crops, which involves planting certain species on fields that can suffocate weeds, control pests and diseases, reduce soil erosion, improve soil health, boost water availability and increase biodiversity — all of which would benefit any farm. Mighty Earth also recommends that meat producers employ better fertilizer management, conserve native vegetation and centralize manure processing.

“The environmental damage caused by the meat industry is driving some of the most urgent threats to the future of our food system — from contaminated waters to depleted soils and a destabilized climate,” von Reusner said. “More sustainable farming practices are urgently needed if we are going to feed a growing population on a planet of finite resources.”

Unfortunately, there is little that the federal government is doing on this front. “Runoff pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from producing meat are largely unregulated in the US,” von Reusner notes. “There need to be much stronger regulations that protect our waters and climate from the meat industry’s pollution.”

Boesch notes that an action plan agreed upon in 2001 by the Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force was meant to scale down the amount of nutrient pollution in the Gulf by 30 percent. But, he says the plan “lacks teeth.” Consequently, he said, “not only has the Gulf’s dead zone not shrunk, but the concentrations of polluting nutrients in the Mississippi River have not declined — and may have even increased.”

In the meantime, polluting the Gulf with meat production runoff continues apace. The 2001 federal and state action plan, which was reaffirmed and amended in 2008, hasn’t achieved its goal to reduce the hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. NOAA scientists have forecasted this summer’s dead zone to be “similar to the 33-year average Gulf dead zone of 5,460 square miles,” which the agency points out is about the size of Connecticut. “This should be getting more attention by regulators, lawmakers and industry,” said Boesch. “Unfortunately, the industry has worked with politicians to prevent regulations.”

He notes that the plan to revive the Chesapeake Bay has each state “allocated a certain amount of reduction in nutrient pollution and is under a legally binding agreement under the Clean Water Act to accomplish this by 2025.” But there is no such legal force when it comes to the Mississippi Basin states that are polluting the Gulf. Those states, says Boesch, “have never even been assigned an amount of pollution reduction for which they are responsible, much less been bound to it. The states have resisted even this first step in accepting responsibility. All efforts are strictly voluntary. So, there can be little wonder why, despite the commitment to reduce the size of the dead zone by two-thirds, there has been virtually no reduction in polluting nutrients discharged by the river after 17 years.”

While reforming the meat industry’s unsustainable practices is a way to stop the spread of dead zones, change from within isn’t coming quickly enough. That’s where consumers can play a vital role, says von Reusner. “Consumers need to demand that their favorite food companies provide more sustainable options by requiring more sustainable farming practices from meat suppliers.”

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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The Russian Peace Threat examines Russophobia, American Exceptionalism and other urgent topics

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

“Mueller isn’t going to find anything in 2017 that these vast, sprawling networks wouldn’t have found in 2016. He’s not going to find anything by ‘following the money’ that couldn’t be found infinitely more efficaciously via Orwellian espionage. The factions within the intelligence community that were working to sabotage the incoming administration last year would have leaked proof of collusion if they’d had it. They did not have it then, and they do not have it now. Mueller will continue finding evidence of corruption throughout his investigation, since corruption is to DC insiders as water is to fish, but he will not find evidence of collusion to win the 2016 election that will lead to Trump’s impeachment. It will not happen.”
~ Me, last year.

I don’t make predictions very often. Pretty much my entire worldview is premised upon the idea that we are in a wildly unprecedented point in history, that old patterns are breaking down and giving way to novelty, and that, more and more, the only thing we should expect is the unexpected. If I didn’t believe that our species is capable of breaking out of our predictable patterns and pulling off something miraculous from way out of left field, I wouldn’t be bothering with the fight against the omnicidal, ecocidal Orwellian oppression machine that is driving us toward extinction. I’d just make art and hug my kids a lot and wait for the end to come.

The above quote was an exception. It was as glaringly obvious then as it is now that if there were any evidence to be found of Trump conspiring with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election, it would have been picked up by the vast, sprawling surveillance networks of the US-centralized empire and leaked to the Washington Post while Obama was still in office. If it didn’t happen then, it won’t happen at all.

The Trump-Russia conspiracy theory is not panning out, as recent developments with three of its key characters -- Papadopoulos, Cohen, and Manafort - show. My latest for @TheNation : https://t.co/6BidSZsE1Y

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 13, 2018

So my prediction has been bearing out comfortably. Since last year Russiagaters have been insisting that various Trump insiders are going to “flip” any minute now, meaning they’ve been put in a position of legal jeopardy which will cause them to finally spill the beans on this massive secret Russia conspiracy in order to save their own hides. They said Flynn’s about to flip. They said Papadopoulos is about to flip. They said Gates is about to flip. They said Cohen is about to flip. They said Manafort is about to flip. So far all Mueller’s investigative team has turned up on Trump’s team is some corruption and process crimes, because DC insiders are corrupt liars. The only flipping that’s been happening is Russiagaters flipping the fuck out as their hopes are dashed to pieces time and time and time again.

Former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort was trending yesterday with the usual mainstream anti-Trump fanfare we see whenever Saint Mueller does literally anything, but it didn’t trend for long and their hearts weren’t in it. Hopes that a “flip” was in the mail as news broke that Manafort had taken a plea deal were quickly dashed as people began actually reading the contents of the Mueller indictment for themselves. As noted by Real News‘ Aaron Maté (who is in my opinion the most lucid voice on the matter of American Russia hysteria right now), the documents in the indictment disprove a longstanding key Russiagate claim that Manafort was supporting Kremlin interests in Ukraine; Mueller’s own documents prove that Manafort was actually advancing western interests.

Additionally, there doesn’t at this time appear to be any reason to believe Manafort’s plea deal will involve the Trump campaign at all, and can involve any of Manafort’s other corrupt shenanigans which stretch back years. In fact one of the names which keeps coming up in mainstream punditry as a likely target resulting from Manafort’s arrangement is the Clinton-aligned Tony Podesta.

Russiagaters claim Manafort has "flipped" on Trump & a Russia conspiracy. It's baseless. Manafort had every incentive to avoid a 2nd trial based on much of same evidence as his 1st; new indictment suggests his "cooperation" will ensnare other lobbyists: https://t.co/kGljTUGiWE pic.twitter.com/BFF0zC6gth

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) September 15, 2018

This all fits in with a reliable and consistent pattern which Maté thoroughly documented recently, wherein criminal convictions are being made and plea deals accepted to much manic “BOOM! He’s gonna flip!” celebration among Russiagate conspiracy enthusiasts, but without any part of the actual facts showing any trace of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Russiagaters have been assuring me since the beginning of last year that collusion will be proven, that Trump is going to be impeached and removed from office any minute now and spend the rest of his life behind bars for attacking American democracy and helping a hostile state infiltrate the highest levels of the US government. We are fast approaching the halfway point of this president’s term, and we are not one iota closer to his being removed from office than we were on the day of his inauguration. The BOOMs never bear fruit. The flips never come. All we get is a lot of drama while dangerous escalations between two nuclear superpowers continue to steadily mount with full bipartisan support on Capitol Hill and the full consent of the public.

The collusion narrative is like an old rusty Pinto on cinderblocks that racing enthusiasts keep placing bets on because the NASCAR commentators keep saying it’s going to win. The thing ain’t moving; the bets are fueled by nothing but cultish anti-Trumpism and hope. Without collusion between Trump and the Russian government, all you’ve got is a bunch of CNN liberals freaking out about an icy potato patch they seldom even thought about prior to 2016. That icy potato patch happens to be home to thousands of nuclear missiles and a military which could easily enter into a direct confrontation with the US and its allies in the fog of war as things heat up in Syria. You Russiagaters want your BOOM? There’s your fucking BOOM.

Russiagate Is Like 9/11, Except It’s Made Of Pure Narrative

"Russiagate is 9/11 minus 9/11."https://t.co/CzF8Qub04W

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 18, 2018

How long are they going to keep this up? How long are they going to keep feeding into this psychotic narrative which never accomplishes anything other than advancing longstanding neoconservative agendas, despite never seeing any actual progress toward impeachment? How long can the propagandists keep the masses fixated on this fake nonsense, ensuring support for imperialist foreign policy while advancing internet censorship and shoring up control of the narrative from dissident alternative media? How many BOOMs and flips have to fizzle before the acolytes of the Cult of Mueller lose faith?

I have nothing but disdain for Trump. But while Democrats are burning their Saint Mueller prayer candles and shrieking about Susan Sarandon, this president is showing zero signs of impending impeachment and spending every single day using the bully pulpit to advance the narrative that he is strengthening the economy and bringing in jobs and putting more money in the pockets of Americans. He is receiving very little pushback against that narrative because of how fixated Democrats are on their Russiagate Hail Mary, and if it remains unchallenged he’s probably going to win in 2020.

If the world isn’t a nuclear wasteland by then, of course.

_________________________

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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About the Author

Caitlin Johnstone is a brave journalist, political junkie, relentless feminist, champion of the 99 percent. And a powerful counter-propaganda tactician.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Pedro Sanchez

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]pain’s President ⁽¹⁾, socialist Pedro Sanchez, canceled a week ago the sale of 400 laser-guided missiles to the Saudis for humanitarian reasons (value of the missile contract € 9.2 million –US$ 10.7 million). A couple of days ago, he reversed that noble decision, reinstating the sale, because the Saudis threatened cancelling their contract for 5 “Corvette” warships to be built by Navantia over the next few years, for a value of € 1.8 billion (US$ 2.1 billion), providing work for some 6000 shipyard workers in one of the economically worst hit areas of Spain, Cadiz Province of Andalusia.

So, to safe jobs, Sanchez decided to sell the bombs after all – the very bombs that will further decimate the Yemeni population – kill masses of children and increase the untold, unfathomable misery for this poor country, strategically located on the Gulf of Aden.

The war ships, Spain is producing for the Saudis, are certainly not going to bring peace to the world either; they bring perhaps work to Spanish shipyard workers, but, Dear Mr. Sanchez, where are your ethics, where is your sense of Human Rights?

Would it not be more ethical to help Spanish workers find alternative jobs, or while they are looking, pay them unemployment at a decent level? Perhaps exceptional unemployment, because the reason for the unemployment in this case is ‘exceptional’ and ethical to the point that the workers would probably understand – a sense of integrity and conscience they may proudly pass on to their children.

To top it all off – Spain’s Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, pretends that the Saudis have to guarantee that the missiles will not be used against Yemenis. Whom does she think she is fooling? – Would the Spanish people be so blind to reality to believe this lie? – I don’t think so. The Spaniards, having gone themselves through ten years of foreign imposed economic austerity hardship, an economic warfare of sorts, are more awake than believing dishonesties that serve the capitalist, profit-seeking war industry.

The Spanish bombs may substantially contribute to the killing of tens of thousands of Yemenis and among them countless defenseless children and women. The delivery of these missiles would be a tacit recognition and acceptance that the Saudis, supported by the US, the UK and France, block vital food and medical supplies from entering Yemen, thereby starving literally millions to death. And most likely the Spanish warships are creating in Yemen or elsewhere even worse human suffering.

Instead, Mr. Sanchez – why not showing your heart and compassion for these innocent victims of western aggression, overriding your Minister of Defense, and block the sale of the 400 deadly missiles and the 5 killer Corvettes?
---

According to Mint Press News (10 September, 2018), the UN estimates that nearly 20 million Yemenis could die from starvation this year. That’s about 70% of the entire population, and that horrific number includes more than 2 million children. Two to three generations wiped out by the world’s most criminal monster nations, the Saudis, supported by the US, UK, France specifically, and more generally, by NATO. About 500,000 of these children already show severe signs of malnutrition, which, if it lasts over an extended period of time, may cause severe brain damage and stunting, effects that might even be passed on to future generations.

Since the onset of the war which typically and conveniently is called by the west a ‘civil war’ which it is of course not – the US has supported the confrontation with over US$ 200 billion of war planes and weapons, and the UK with missiles and bombs. This war of aggression by the US and western puppet allies, aiming foremost at dominating the country’s geographic and geostrategic location, overlooking the Gulf of Aden and further to the east, the Arabian Sea, leading to the Persian Gulf, has created the worst humanitarian crisis in modern history.

Under international pressure and a UN appeal, the Saudis have offered US$ 300 million worth of humanitarian aid – food and medication – with deadly strings attached. They have weaponizing this humanitarian aid, by closing the main ports of entry, especially the one of Hodeida, so the aid could not reach the population in need. Yemen relies for 80% of her food supply on maritime imports, 90% of which normally enters through the Red Sea port of Hodeida.

The Saudis – always with the explicit support of Washington – targeted on purpose key survival installations, like water supply and sewerage systems, agricultural fields, market places, food storage sites, power generation and electricity grids, hospitals, schools, basic transportation infrastructure – all to create the most abject scenario for starvation and disease, especially intestinal diseases, dysentery, cholera, from lack of drinking water and sewage pollution. With a currency that loses every day more of its value and skyrocketing food prices, three quarters of the population depends on humanitarian aid – most of which is blocked at the points of entry.

The last remaining lifeline for about 18 million Yemenis is the port of Hodeida. In fact, the assault on the port city of Hodeida is led by another U.S. Gulf coalition ally, the United Arab Emirates. The deadly operation to capture Hodeida is dubbed “Golden Victory”, putting up to a million people into an open prison of sexual torture, rape, starvation and uncountable other war crimes. According to UN estimates, a quarter-million men, women, and children could die from the military assault alone should the US-backed coalition continue its invasion of Hodeida. Saudi warplanes have already bombed school buses with children and buses of refugees fleeing the airstrikes, killing hundreds.

Mr. President Sanchez, you must be aware of this abysmal situation and crime that your 400 guided missiles would worsen – more bloodshed, more suffering, more children killed? – Aren’t you?

And if you are, Mr. President, don’t you think that the humanitarian gesture that you first intended, not selling these bombs to the Saudis – would by far outweigh the unemployment of 6000 shipyard workers? – An unemployment that your government could easily resolve, if not on a regular, then on an exceptional basis for the exceptional cause of avoiding more killing and more suffering, or what the UN describes as an outright genocide.

But there may be more at stake than meets the eye. Despite some fierce opposition, the US Congress has again voted for unquestioned support for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen. Foreign Secretary Pompeo has made it clear that he expects allied nations, especially NATO nations, of which Spain is one, to follow the US lead in supporting the Saudi-led hostility against a nation already eviscerated, for all practical purposes.

Was this perhaps understood as a threat of US sanctions, in case you disobey this tacit order, Mr. President?

Dear Mr. Sanchez, you would have a brilliant and simple legal reason for NOT selling these deadly and destructive weapons, missiles and warships, to the Saudis. The Spanish Constitution, like the Constitutions of most European countries, prohibits selling weapons to countries “when there are indications that these weapons could be used against inherent human dignity”. In addition, the common position of the EU recommends and insists that her members refrain from selling arms when there is a risk that they are used to violate Human Rights.

Of course, any EU law or regulation is easily overruled by the Masters from Washington. That’s why it takes guts – and a more – for a President, a socialist and humanitarian at heart, one who in his first 100 days in office has already done a lot of good at home, by undoing some of the disastrous social laws of his conservative predecessor, who was forced out of office in the midst of modern Spain’s scandal of worst corruption – hence, for you Mr. President, to resist the pressure form outside as well as from within – would be sending an important message of moral and ethics to the world.

Mr. Sanchez, you would be a hero, not only for Spain and the Spanish shipyard workers, who would most certainly applaud you, but for the entire world. You would demonstrate that your ethics cannot be compromised by money or political pressure. This would, indeed, be a novelty for our neoliberal western world.

And your personal benefit, Mr. Sanchez: You could again sleep at night.

(1) Spain, being a monarchy, does not have a regular president, but the head of the government is called "president of the government", and is effectively a Prime Minister, title s/he also employs.

ADDENDUM
Navantia shipyards promotional video / maintenance work in Cadiz

About the Author

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

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