I wish we didn't have 12 years. It's our lungs that are going to get choked with wildfire smoke. ... Climate delayers are the new climate deniers.
~AOC on Instagram Live.
Puppet Masters
Millennials and Gen Z and all these folks that come after us are looking up, and we're like, "The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change." ~Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, interviewed by Ta-Nehisi Coates at the MLK Now event.
I wish we didn't have 12 years. It's our lungs that are going to get choked with wildfire smoke. ... Climate delayers are the new climate deniers.
~AOC on Instagram Live.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, is the youngest member of Congress and she is preoccupied with the coming Apocalypse. The world, she warns anyone who will listen, is going to end in 12 years. "Like, I'm sorry to break it to you," she announced during a live Instagram broadcast as she made dinner in her Bronx kitchen. "If we do nothing, there is no hope. There is a global threat to the planet. We are dying now." Her Green New Deal, she insists, is the only way to avoid this looming catastrophe.
I wish we didn't have 12 years. It's our lungs that are going to get choked with wildfire smoke. ... Climate delayers are the new climate deniers.
~AOC on Instagram Live.
SD Association. Bluetooth SIG, WiFi Alliance and JEDEC.
After the SD Association removed Huawei from its list of members last week, effectively preventing the use of SD and microSD cards on the Chinese giant's products. Now the association has retraced its steps, re-entering Huawei on the list, without however issuing any official communication on the matter.
© AP / Evan Vucci
Netanyahu and Trump meet at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue.
Netanyahu and Trump meet at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel on Madison Avenue.
If Donald Trump has an agenda in the Middle East, it's Benjamin Netanyahu's. Lately the president has gone to the extraordinary length of endorsing Netanyahu's desperate efforts to build a governing coalition- interfering in another country's election process.
But as usual, Israel is maintaining a low profile in the story of the U.S.'s aggressive actions aimed at Iran. It's more of a murmurous undertone in the reporting.
Let's review some of the reporting on Israel's push for war with a regional rival, at a time when the U.S. is deploying ships and 1500 soldiers to the Gulf, and John Bolton, the national security adviser who came to Trump straight outta Sheldon Adelson's back pocket, is threatening "unrelenting force" and regime change re Iran.
Comment: Israel behind Trump's 'negotiating' strategy with Iran - and it's not working
Israel's Mossad provided the US with false intelligence that ballistic missiles were being carried on wooden boats, as though Iran doesn't have enough deserts and places to hide its missiles. Incredibly enough, the Mossad was believed.
This is just one illustration of Israel's power to manipulate the US government into a lose-lose scenario, while Israel can only win-win. The US will lose prestige from backing down, but will lose much more if it is backed into a senseless and catastrophic war. The 12 demands Netanyahu has persuaded the US to make on Iran are impossible for Iran to comply with, as Israel well knows. If Iran were to submit, it would be a victory for Israel. If not, the US will try to go to war or will impose more sanctions - both beneficial to Israel's position. Israel can push the US to a confrontation and push Iran to its limits because Netanyahu has nothing to lose in a situation where the US military assumes the risks of his reckless strategy; Israel has no skin in the game. It is Trump confronting the Iranians not Netanyahu. Israel can sit back, eat popcorn, and watch events unfold. It will consider itself the winner whatever the consequences. Israel's influence over Trump's incompetent administration is the greatest threat to peace today.
© Mikhail Metzel/TASS
Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska
Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska
Calling the claims of his supposed ties to the Russian government "incompetent," the billionaire's representatives said they will raise questions "about the integrity and true intentions" of the Treasury's investigations.
Curiously, the list of sources that forms the basis to put Deripaska on the US sanction list has been revealed by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as part of the tycoon's lawsuit against the US. Those include several billionaire "lists" from the likes of Bloomberg, a Google Maps link showing what was said to be his property in London, and Mainstream Media (MSM) reports claiming to reveal Deripaska's links to the Russian energy sector and to President Vladimir Putin himself.
Comment: Deripaska is not a squeaky-clean businessman by any stretch, but it's pretty clear the US made him a target of sanction with the view of damaging the Russian economy.
- Foreign Affairs comes right out and says it - Attacks on Russia are because Putin challenges the Western Empire
- Russian businessman sues Associated Press fake news for libel
- Coming Deripaska case versus AP may open worm can"Political scheming":
- Deripaska sues US over "devastating power" of Russian sanctions
- Kremlin: US meddles in Russian affairs, tries to turn citizens into informants
- Oleg Deripaska op-ed: The Deep State's ever-changing 'Russia narrative' is false public manipulation
© Gage Skidmore | Flickr via Creative Commons
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
DeSantis and his cabinet met Wednesday at the US Embassy in Jerusalem to proclaim support for the Jewish state and sign a bill prohibiting anti-Semitism in Florida's public schools. DeSantis, who has promised to be the "most pro-Israel governor in America," called the meeting "historic."
Believe it or not, efforts were being made by Canada's government to work with China not that long ago. Years of planning had been put into consolidating a Canada-China Free Trade Agreement, and Canada signed up to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in March 2017.
So what went wrong, and how did it happen so quickly?
How We Got Here
In its first two years in power, Canada's Liberal government could not help but speak down to China in an apparent attempt to pressure this developing superpower to 'go more green', reform their governance system and 'behave better' on corruption and human rights. This detached and condescending voice was not only alienating to China, but demonstrated the height of hypocrisy as Canada has never been known to treat its indigenous people justly or be free of corrupt practices at the highest levels (see the SNC Lavalin affair, for example).
The failure of this elitist strategy only dawned on Trudeau and his controllers when the Prime Minister returned red-faced from his Beijing trip in December 2017, having been given the clear message that the Free Trade Deal and dreams of a 'special relationship' were finished.
"Here we are world! It's more expensive, but that's because it's imbued with FREEDOM!"
The energy agency trumpeted the expansion of its Freeport, Texas LNG Terminal, boasting of a new facility constructed specifically to supply so-called "freedom gas" to those countries that don't have a free trade agreement with the US - huge markets like China and the EU that are, coincidentally, about to increase their purchases of cheaper Russian gas through nearly-completed pipelines due to open by the end of the year.
"Increasing export capacity from the Freeport LNG project is critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world by giving America's allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy," US Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes proclaimed at the Clean Energy Ministerial meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
Comment: Even the port it departs from is composed of freedom!
Comment: Remember 'Freedom Fries'?
© Reuters / Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Bolivar notes
Bolivar notes
The latest data from the watchdog released on Tuesday means that an item that cost 1 bolivar in 2017, cost 1,300 bolivares a year later. Even compared to the huge inflation spike in 2017 of 862.6 percent, last year was disastrous for the country's economy.
Venezuela's central bank published its previous report three years ago. Before the latest release, inflation data and forecasts were published by the opposition-controlled National Assembly and some international organizations. For example, the International Monetary Fund projected an inflation of over 10 million percent for this and next year.
© Reuters / Henry Nicholls
"If Assange can be declared guilty of espionage for working with sources to obtain and publish information deemed 'classified' by the US government, then there's nothing to stop the criminalization of every other media outlet that routinely does the same," Greenwald wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Tuesday, highlighting what he considers "the greatest threat to press freedom in the Trump era, if not the last several decades."
By redefining Assange's actions as "espionage" rather than "journalism" or "publishing," the Trump administration seeks to exempt him from legal protections governing speech that belong to everyone, from the Post itself to the lowliest blogger, the Intercept editor and former civil rights attorney explains.
© Instagram / raulgorrinb
Raúl Gorrín, president of the TV network Globovision
Raúl Gorrín, president of the TV network Globovision
One of the key figures behind the abortive April 30 uprising intended to oust President Nicolas Maduro in favor of the US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido was Raúl Gorrín, president of the TV network Globovision, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Gorrín, who fled the US after he was indicted for money laundering and bribery last November, was acting as a go-between with three senior Venezuelan officials who were seen as key to regime change in Caracas: chief justice of the Supreme Court Maikel Moreno, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, and military counter-intelligence chief General Ivan Hernández.
Comment: See also: