Protesters storm parliament in Georgia separatist region Abkhazia over deal with Russia


Protesters stormed the parliament of Georgia's Russia-backed breakaway region of Abkhazia on Friday while the government was set to discuss a real-estate investment agreement with Russia. Some Abkhaz fear the deal would price them out of the property market and boost Moscow's control in the region.


Issued on: 15/11/2024 

Protesters rally outside the parliament building in Sukhumi (Sukhum), the capital of Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia, on November 15, 2024. 

© DNA News Abkhazia, Reuters

Protestors stormed the regional parliament in Abkhazia on Friday, forcing the government to halt an investment deal with Russia that some fear will spoil the breakaway Georgian region's natural beauty.

The Black Sea separatist region is backed by Moscow but recognised as part of Georgia by most of the world.

It has been thrust into turmoil over concerns that a proposed investment deal with Russia could see apartment complexes mushroom in a region famed for its natural beauty and beaches.

Russian news agencies posted videos showing hundreds of demonstrators barging into the regional parliament on Friday, where lawmakers had gathered to discuss ratifying the treaty.

The state-run TASS news agency said protesters also took control of the presidential adminstration building, adjoining parliament.

Amid the unrest, the president of Abkhazia announced plans to halt the treaty.

"The presidential administration is preparing a document to withdraw from parliament the draft law" on ratification, its press service said on Telegram.

"The decision has been taken with the goal of stabilising the situation in the republic."

Police had earlier fired tear gas on protesters, who had rammed through the gates of the parliament complex using a truck and threw eggs and plastic bottles at the police, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Moscow on Friday expressed "concern" over the protests, urged Russians not to visit Abkhazia and said those there should consider leaving.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Abkhazia's opposition of "provoking an escalation of the conflict," and said the "crisis situation" was "hampering the development of Abkhazia".

Following a short war with Georgia in 2008, Russia recognised both Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries and has maintained a military presence there.

Local concerns over construction and foreign land ownership in the region, which has a population of some 240,000, run high.

The region's parliament earlier this year dropped a bill that would have partially reversed an official ban on non-residents building and buying property after public outcry.

Protesters had earlier this week blocked roads and bridges in Abkhazia after authorities briefly detained opposition activists opposing the deal with Russia.

The Georgian government in Tbilisi has not commented on the protests.

(AFP)

Prosecutors demand jail time, ban on public office for Le Pen over embezzlement charges

Agence France-Presse
November 15, 2024

Marine Le Pen 

French prosecutors demanded Wednesday that far-right leader Marine Le Pen receive a jail sentence and be banned from public office for five years over charges she embezzled European Parliament funds.

The prosecution made the request in a Paris court where Le Pen and other defendants from her National Rally party are on trial accused of creating fake jobs at the EU parliament. She denies the charges.

If granted by the court, the ban would exclude the 56-year-old from running in France's 2027 presidential election.

The prosecution demanded the ban be effective immediately, even if the defense team appeals. The National Rally, like other far-right parties around Europe, is riding high following a strong performance in European elections in June.

The prosecution demanded that all of the two dozen defendants be excluded from running from public office.

It demanded a five-year jail sentence for Le Pen, calling for at least two years of that to be a "convertible" custodial sentence, meaning there would be a possibility of partial release.

The prosecutors also demanded the RN be fined two million euros ($2.1 million).

Le Pen promptly denounced the prosecutors' motion as excessive, branding it an "outrage" and accusing prosecutors of trying to "ruin the (RN) party".

"I think the prosecutors' wish is to deprive the French people of the ability to vote for who they want," she said.


The alleged fake jobs system, which was first flagged in 2015, covers parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004 and 2016.

Prosecutors say the assistants worked exclusively for the party outside parliament.

Addressing the trial last month, Le Pen said she was innocent.


"I have absolutely no sense of having committed the slightest irregularity, or the slightest illegal act," she told the court.

(AFP)

As planet heads toward 2.7°C rise, tracker warns global climate action has 'flatlined'

Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams
November 14, 2024 

Earth melting (Shutterstock)

Existing policies and actions taken by world governments put the world on track for a median estimate of 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, Climate Action Tracker revealed on Thursday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

If global leaders make no further effort to reduce emissions, temperatures have a 33% chance of spiking past 3°C of warming by 2100 and a 10% chance of overtaking 3.6°C, which report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga called "an absolutely catastrophic level of warming."

"The combined global effect of government action on climate change has flatlined over the last three years, underscoring a critical disconnect between the reality of climate change and the lack of urgency on policies to cut emissions," Climate Action Tracker (CAT) announced during its annual update at 

The report attributes the lack of progress to the fact that few governments announced new climate targets in 2024 while they continued to facilitate the increased burning of fossil fuels, despite the pledge made at last year's COP28 to transition away from oil, gas, and coal.

It comes on the heels of a series of reports released ahead of or during COP29 that paint a consistent picture of escalating greenhouse gas emissions and climate extremes paired with government inaction. The U.N. Emissions Gap Report, published in late October, projected that the world was on track for 3.1°C of warming based on current policies. The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, also published last month, found that all three main greenhouse gases reached record atmospheric levels in 2023.

"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked."

2023 was also the hottest year on record, but the WMO's State of the Climate 2024 update for COP29 warned that 2024 was likely to surpass it. Further, global temperatures from January to September averaged 1.54°C above preindustrial levels, temporarily surpassing the 1.5°C warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement.

"The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought, and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate."

Yet this is precisely what is not happening: Another study from the Global Carbon Budget released on Wednesday projected that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would increase by 0.8% from 2023 to reach 37.4 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent, a record high.

"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked," study leader Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor at Exeter's Global Systems Institute, said in a statement. "Time is running out to meet the Paris agreement goals—and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above preindustrial levels."

The Climate Action Tracker report adds to these findings, concluding that while renewables have surged in recent years, continued reliance on fossil fuels have undermined that progress. While clean energy like wind and solar and clean transit like electric vehicles now receive double the investments of oil, gas, and coal, funding for the latter still ballooned by a factor of four between 2021 and 2022 while fossil fuel subsidies are at a record high.




"We are clearly failing to bend the curve," Gonzales-Zuniga said. "As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent."

CAT called on the world's largest emitters to lead the way. It recommended 1.5°C-aligned 2035 targets for the world's seven biggest climate polluters—China, the U.S., India, the E.U., Indonesia, Japan, and Australia—as well as the "troika" countries of Brazil, UAE, and Azerbaijan. To bring its policies in line with the 1.5°C goal, the U.S. would have to cut its total emissions (including from land-use and forests) by 65% of 2005 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2035.

This is unlikely to happen under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to "drill, baby, drill" as soon as he retakes the White House in January. CAT concluded that Trump's promised energy policies would raise its projection for 2100 temperatures based on current actions by 0.04°C. However, if the U.S. permanently axes its net-zero goals, and if other countries decide to follow Trump's lead, that temperature increase could be higher.

"Clearly, we won't know the full impact of the U.S. elections until President-elect Trump takes office, but there is a clean energy momentum in the U.S. now that will be difficult to stop," Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics, said in a statement. "While the Trump administration will undoubtedly do its best to throw a wrecking ball into climate action, the clean energy momentum created by President [Joe] Biden, being actioned across the country, is likely to continue at significant scale."

"The key issue is whether countries stick together and continue to move forward with action," Hare concluded. "A Trump rollback of U.S. policies, as damaging as it is, can be overcome."

Methane, a climate time bomb: On the trail of leaks in Romania

REPORTERS © FRANCE 24
Issued on: 15/11/2024 - 

Nearly three years after more than 100 countries promised to tame methane emissions, the indiscriminate leakage of this powerful greenhouse gas is still rampant. As world leaders convene in Azerbaijan for the COP29 climate summit, FRANCE 24's reporters follow the trail of methane leaks in Romania, home to one of Europe's largest oil reserves.

When we think of the climate crisis, carbon dioxide usually comes to mind. However, methane is not only the second-largest contributor to global warming, it's also 84 times more potent than CO2.

At the COP26 summit in 2021, nearly 100 countries signed on to the Global Methane Pledge, promising to limit emissions by 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. Nearly 160 countries have since joined the movement, but have they kept their promise?

Clean Air Task Force was one of the first non-profits to put the spotlight on a common yet devastating practice: methane deliberately vented from fossil fuel facilities. FRANCE 24's reporters joined a team of so-called “methane hunters” on a mission in Romania, where the NGO has reported high emissions escaping from oil fields.

Thanks to a new EU regulation set to come into force in May 2025, it will soon be harder for leaks to go unpunished. Companies will be forced to monitor and limit their emissions or face penalties. So far, industry initiatives in Romania remain limited – the country is home to ageing infrastructure prone to leaks – but the work of activists is beginning to pay off.

12:42

'Karmic Justice': The Onion's owner takes victory lap after acquiring Infowars

Matthew Chapman

RAW STORY
November 14, 2024 


After the satirical publication The Onion acquired all the assets and intellectual property of far-right webcaster Alex Jones' Infowars platform, CNN's Jake Tapper sat down on Wednesday with Ben Collins, who runs the Onion's parent company Global Tetrahedron, and John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, to get their thoughts on the matter.

Jones was forced to liquidate his assets to help pay off a $1.5 billion judgment against him won by the families who lost their children in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, which Jones repeatedly claimed was a false flag staged by the government with child actors. The conspiracy theorist incited his supporters to harass the victims' families for years, and those families ultimately gave The Onion backing to purchase Infowars' assets at auction.

"What is it like for you, as somebody who used to fight disinformation?" Tapper asked Collins, who worked for NBC before acquiring The Onion.

"It obviously — it feels good," said Collins. "But I think in general, people need a little hope right now. People need the idea that a good thing can happen. Alex has made — and people like him, the general ecosystem he created — have made it so the families in these situations don't even appear to be anything other than characters in his universe. What is great about this, the families, we are human beings. We have senses of humor. This is a big cosmic joke to play on Alex Jones and the whole world. The Onion, which is known for making fun of everybody, has purchased Infowars from him at a Storage Wars-style auction. It feels good. Hopefully, if you are a Sandy Hook family right now, there is a cosmic justice happening. That's why we did this. We want people to feel at home. We want people to think that a good thing can happen."

"John, the acquisition could be symbolic for the families," said Tapper. "Are you concerned that Alex Jones will find and make a new platform?"

"Look, I think that what our job is right now, the one right in front of us, to fight fear and fight misinformation," said Feinblatt. "And by writing the new chapter at Infowars, that is what we are doing. As you say, that is poetic justice and karmic justice."

"Thanks to you and congratulations," said Tapper. "And most important, congratulations to the Sandy Hook families, for this moment of justice in the dark world."

Watch the video below or at the link here.

Marjorie Taylor Greene: Matt Gaetz will prosecute vaccine 'crimes against humanity'

NUTBAR TRIFECTA; MTG, RFK Jr., MG

David Edwards
November 14, 2024 

Marjorie Taylor Greene (House Oversight Committee/screen grab)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) predicted that former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) would prosecute vaccine-related "crimes against humanity" if he becomes President-elect Donald Trump's next attorney general.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on pandemic preparedness on Thursday, Greene accused the federal government of using "the American people's hard-earned tax dollars to create viruses that can be unleashed on the world like COVID-19 was."

"Dr. [Anthony] Fauci lied to the American people, abusing his power and position and role, a very powerful role paid for by the American tax people," she said. "He lied, and many, many people died.

"Now vaccines have been mandated on the population in order to work, go to school, and live as functioning citizens in the United States," she continued. "I can tell you when you talk about vaccine hesitancy, as one sitting before you that never took the COVID vaccine, nor will I take it, thank God. I'm so glad I didn't take it."

Greene falsely suggested other vaccines were linked to "the rise of autism, learning disabilities, neurological problems, and so much more that children are suffering from today."

"Preparing for the next pandemic is actually recognizing that the last pandemic resulted in crimes against humanity," the lawmaker opined.

"People that perpetuated and continue to perpetuate these crimes need to be prosecuted, and that needs to be starting in the next administration, and I'm pretty sure our next attorney general will do that, and I look forward to seeing that happen," she added.

Watch the video below from the House Oversight Committee.

A second reign of terror: Inside Trump’s blueprint for home raids

Thom Hartmann, AlterNet
November 15, 2024 

Stephen Miller, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner listen as Donald Trump speaks onstage following early results from the 2024 U.S. presidential election in Palm Beach County Convention Center, in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., November 6, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

When Trump was elected, many Americans wondered if we were in for a brutal nationwide reign of terror, or if he’d merely content himself with more tax cuts for billionaires and a repeat of his last term’s personally profitable crony capitalism.

While the mainstream media has treated him (for years) as if he’s just another, albeit quirky, politician, others among us, as Carole Cadwalladr noted at The Power, remember that, when Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines (whose constitution is modeled after ours), within a mere 6 months he was imprisoning opposition politicians, protesters, and journalists.

Taking down the free press in Germany and imprisoning dissidents and journalists took Hitler only three months, about the same as Mussolini and Pinochet.


America’s right-wing oligarchs are apparently ready for the fun to begin: Elon Musk tweeted last week that it’ll soon be time to use the force of law and the Department of Justice to prosecute the people at The Center for Countering Digital Hatewho’ve been relentless in outing Nazis on Xitter. (Musk just lost a lawsuit to them.)

But even though they moved quickly, Hitler, Pinochet, Mussolini, and Duterte didn’t start with journalists; they started with the most marginalized and least powerful people in their nations. For Hitler it was trans people he went after within his first two weeks; for Duterte it was drug addicts.

Pinochet and Mussolini arrested vulnerable working class supporters of their opposition political parties who dared show up in the streets to demonstrate against them.


So, who’s the weakest here in America? While Trump campaigned against trans people (just like Hitler had in 1933), it looks like he has another group in mind for his first genocide.

Trump has his sights on undocumented Black and Hispanic migrants to begin the state-sponsored violence and inure the American public to what will eventually come for many more of us.

Get ready for midnight doorknocks by men with guns starting in January. Particularly if you or anybody in your extended family has a last name that ends with a vowel or a z, or even if you simply have black hair and brown eyes.


Trump and Thomas Homan are on the case.

Homan notoriously ran ICE during the last Trump administration and is often considered, along with Stephen Miller, as the father of Trump’s brutal child-separation policy that traumatized so many thousands of young families and has left about 1,000 youngsters trafficked into pop-up “Christian” adoption services missing to this day.

Alone. Frightened. Not knowing where their parents are or if they’ll ever see them again.


Homan also helped write part of the immigration policies for Project 2025 - and famously bragged to CBS that if he found families with “illegal” members in this country, he’d simply deport the entire family, US citizens or not.

When asked by Cecilia Vega on 60 Minutes, “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” Homan barely took a breath before asserting, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”

America has done this before, and the results were ugly.


In the 1920s, Republican President Herbert Hoover initiated a nationwide roundup and deportation of people of mostly Mexican ancestry. Police and border agents simply went house-to-house in Hispanic neighborhoods from Arizona to Alaska, often kicking in doors and dragging out people who couldn’t immediately prove their citizenship. As many as 2 million people with Hispanic last names were arrested.

As a result, an estimated 40% to 60% of the people arrested, detained, and deported were actually US citizens by virtue of their birth on US soil. Because they were deported without proof of citizenship (often because of home births without hospital records), however, they were never able to return to the US.

During WWII, American employers encouraged Mexicans to come to the US to fill jobs vacated by US citizens who’d been drafted and sent off to war.


After the war, President Eisenhower launched Operation Wetback and essentially replicated Hoover’s program; an estimated 300,000 to 1.1 million people were similarly dragged from their homes. Nobody is certain how many were US citizens, but estimates range from 30% to as many as 60%.

Again, because they weren’t able to instantly prove citizenship when the police arrived at their homes, they had no way to get back into the US once they were dumped in Mexico.

If Trump’s leading candidate for Attorney General, Mike Davis, assumes that role he’ll almost certainly back up Holman’s efforts, even if millions of US citizens are seized, imprisoned, and deported. He’s the guy, after all, who just tweeted:

“Fuck unity. We have the votes. And they tried to kill Trump.” And “Here’s my current mood: I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course.)”

The fact that Trump and the people around him are giddy about going after Hispanics and other Black and Brown immigrants from “shithole countries” answers the question everybody is asking about how brutal his second administration could become.

It’s going to be rough. Get ready.

Stephen Miller has already said he’s gleefully going to try to undo the citizenship of naturalized US citizens (presumably not the Norwegians, though) so he can throw them into the concentration camps along with the “illegals”:

And if you you’re a natural born citizen with an Hispanic last name or live anywhere near Hispanics and have black hair and brown eyes, be sure to get your proof of citizenship ready and carry it with you at all times, even when you sleep.

And the rest of us? No dictator in history has ever started a violent inquisition attacking the weakest in society — and they all begin there — without soon extending his terror against every person he thought opposed him or who represented a challenge to his power.

The smug media idiots who’ve been sanewashing Trump for yearswill either roll over (as has already begun) or end up in jail themselves, along with many of us on Substack and in the progressive press.

As JD Vance recently said, implying the thought and speech police will soon be coming for Trump’s critics:
“You cannot lie, take your position of public trust, and lie to the American people for political purposes. It’s disgraceful. And people have to suffer consequences for it.”

Welcome to Trump’s version of hell. And welcome to the resistance.

'Inhumane' conditions at Atlanta's main prison: Justice Dept

Agence France-Presse
November 15, 2024 

Bars Prison Jail - Dan Henson:Shutterstock.com

Conditions at Atlanta's main prison are "inhumane, violent, and hazardous," a Justice Department official said Thursday following an investigation into the Fulton County Jail.

"Detention in the Fulton County Jail has amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of the atrocious conditions inside the facility," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said.

"We cannot turn a blind eye to the inhumane, violent, and hazardous conditions that people are subjected to inside the Fulton County Jail," Clarke said. "At the end of the day, people do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door."


In a report last month, the Justice Department said prisons in Georgia, of which Atlanta is the capital, are plagued by assaults, murder and sexual violence and officials in the southern state are "deliberately indifferent" to the horrible conditions.

The latest report focused on conditions at the Fulton County Jail, where former US president -- and now president-elect -- Donald Trump famously had his mug shot taken after being charged with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The Justice Department said living conditions in the Fulton County Jail do not meet basic constitutional standards and inmates are not adequately protected from threats of serious violence.

Prison guards routinely use force against inmates "without adequate justification" including the use of Tasers, the report said.

The Justice Department cited the case of an inmate who was "neglected to death" and died alone in a filthy cell in the mental health unit of the jail in September 2022.

Lashawn Thompson, who had a history of mental illness, was arrested for spitting at a police officer and then held on an outstanding warrant. He was found dead in his cell three months later, malnourished and infested with body lice.

According to the report, Black people are overrepresented in the jail, accounting for 91 percent of the inmates while making up only 45 percent of Fulton County's population of more than one million.

Georgia has the fourth-largest incarcerated population in the United States with nearly 50,000 people behind bars in 34 state-operated prisons and four private prisons.

The Georgia Department of Corrections reported a total of 142 homicides in its facilities between 2018 and 2023.

'We are unafraid': In face of Trump win, champions of working class vow epic fight

Julia Conley, Common Dreams
November 15, 2024

United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain speaks at a campaign rally in Flint, Michigan, on October 4, 2024. (Geoff Robins/AFP)

The results of last week's U.S. elections were cataclysmic for the Democratic Party, which lost control of the White House and Senate as the Republicans gained a trifecta, but economic justice advocates on Wednesday said that for many working people, the fight for a better standard of living and a political system that places people over Wall Street profits remains the same.

United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain acknowledged in a letter to members that while the election outcome was not one that "our union advocated for, and it's not the outcome a majority of our members voted for, our mission remains the same."

"We must raise the standard of living for our members and the entire working class through unity, solidarity, and working-class power," said Fain. "No matter who is in the White House."




Noting that "in a democracy, the four most important words are: The People Have Spoken," Fain suggested that the Democratic Party did not convince a key constituency—working people, including an estimated 78% of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck—that it represents their interests, and as a result handed the presidential victory to President-elect Donald Trump.

While the UAW endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and Fain campaigned with her, he said, "for us, this was never about party or personality. As we have said consistently, both parties share blame for the one-sided class war that corporate America has waged on our union, and on working-class Americans for decades."

Trump ran an openly xenophobic campaign, but won the support of low-income voters from a range of ethnic backgrounds as he demonized undocumented immigrants and made outlandish, racist claims about Ohio residents from Haiti, sticking to his longtime narrative that immigration—not corporate greed—is to blame for the country's housing crisis, economic inequality, and stagnant wages.

"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90%... the party that rejects Elon Musk and the entire American oligarchy."

As numerous progressives have pointed out since the election, the Biden administration has introduced a host of pro-worker policies and Harris unveiled numerous economic justice proposals during her brief campaign—but her decision to campaign with billionaire businessman Mark Cuban and unveil a more Wall Street-friendly tax proposal have been criticized moves that highlighted the Democratic Party's close ties to rich donors and muddied her message to working families.

With the Democratic Party still taking part in the "one-sided class war" referenced by Fain, the UAW leader said that the union "stand[s] today where we stood last week."

"We stand for bringing back American jobs," said Fain. "We stand for taking on corporations that break their promises to American workers. And we stand against the same things we've always stood against. We will never support the destruction of the union movement. We will never support efforts to divide and conquer the working class by nationality, race, and gender. We will never support handouts to the ultra-wealthy or paying for it by cutting crucial federal investments."

"We are unafraid to confront any politician who takes actions that harm the working class, our communities, and our unions," he said.


Fain's comments came as progressive lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) spoke at an event titled Delivering for the Working Class.

While the caucus is set to be in the minority in the House and Senate for at least the next two years, the senators used the event to rally Democratic leaders to "learn the right lessons" from Trump's victory.

As Democrats decide who they answer to, Warren asked, "Is it going to be a handful of billionaires? We know what kind of policy they want to set. Or are we going to show voters that Democrats are the ones who are willing to unrig this economy?"


Sanders suggested that Fain's rallying of the UAW's more than 400,000 members will also be a key to fighting Trump's agenda, including Republicans' plans to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare and his likely reversal of Biden's pro-worker policies.


"The antidote to enormous economic and political power on the part of the few is mass organizing at the grassroots level among working people—to stand up and fight for an economy that works for all," said Sanders.

Just after the election last week, Sanders became one of the first members of the Democratic caucus to release a statement on the party's major losses, driving home the same message he has repeated during his decades in public service: "It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them."


On MSNBC on Wednesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the election results in several red states proved that many of Trump's supporters prioritized working class issues.

"Voters actually want the populist, popular ideas that we have been pushing at the Progressive Caucus, certainly, for quite some time," said Jayapal. "They went to the ballot in three states that voted for Donald Trump... and they voted for a higher minimum wage, they voted for paid sick leave."


Voters in Alaska and Missouri approved ballot measures requiring a higher minimum wage and demanding that employers provide paid sick leave; Nebraska voters also supported a measure allowing workers to earn paid sick leave.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Thursday also took a close look at voting figures, writing at his Substack newsletter that the election didn't deliver "a very big mandate" to Trump as the president-elect claimed, or even "a 'red shift' to Trump and the Republicans."

"It was a blue abandonment," he wrote. "We now know that 9 million fewer votes were cast nationwide in 2024 than in 2020. Trump got about a million more votes than he did in 2020 (700,000 of them in the seven battleground states). That's no big deal... The biggest takeaway is that Biden's 9 million votes disappeared... So what happened to the 9 million?"

Reich posited that 9 million potential voters refused to vote for Trump, but also didn't turn out for the Democratic Party because they were left thinking, "They don't give a damn about me."


"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90%—the party of people who don't live off stocks and bonds, of people who are not CEOs or billionaires like Mark Cuban, the party that rejects Elon Musk and the entire American oligarchy," he wrote. "Instead, the Democratic Party must be the party of average working people whose wages have gone nowhere and whose jobs are less secure."

He continued:
Blue-collar private-sector workers earned more on average in 1972, after adjusting for inflation, than they are earning now in 2024. This means today's blue-collar workers are on average earning less in real dollars than their grandparents earned 52 years ago.

Yet the American economy is far larger than it was 52 years ago. Where did the additional money go? To the top. So what's the Democrats' task? To restructure the economy toward more widely shared prosperity.

In his statement on Wednesday, Fain said the lives and daily struggles of many working class voters are unchanged after the election.





"Today, our members clock in to the same jobs they clocked into last week," said Fain. "You face the same threats—corporate greed, Wall Street predators, and a political system that ignores us. And we are driven by the same force, as outlined in our UAW Constitution generations ago: 'The hope of the worker in advancing society toward the ultimate goal of social and economic justice.'"

Fain urged union members to get involved in "political action on every level of government, in every state, in every sector has an impact on every contract, every organizing drive, and every standard we win as a union," while Sanders implored the Democratic Party to urgently "determine which side it is on in the great economic struggle of our times."

"It needs to provide a clear vision as to what it stands for," wrote Sanders in a Boston Globe op-ed on Tuesday. "Either you stand with the powerful oligarchy of our country, or you stand with the working class. You can't represent both."

KAKISTOCRACY

'Conditions are ripe' for Trump's friends 'to loot the place from top to bottom': analysis

Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk speaks as Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. president Donald Trump reacts during a rally at the site of the July assassination attempt against Trump, in Butler, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Brad Reed
November 15, 2024 

RAW STORY

The New Republic's Greg Sargent has written a lengthy article about what he believes will likely be unprecedented corruption within the second Trump administration.

In particular, Sargent notes that this time Trump didn't even make a pretense of obeying any kinds of ethics rules, which he believes he will interpret as a green light to blatantly enrich himself at the public's expense.

"There are several reasons to fear this could amount to a level of oligarchic corruption that outdoes anything Trump did in his first term," Sargent explains. "In short, conditions are ripe for right-wing elites to try to loot the place from top to bottom."


Sargent says that Democrats' loss of control of the United States Senate means that they now no longer have investigative tools to dredge up embarrassing dirt on the administration, and in particular will close up probes into the promises that Trump made to oil executives and into Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's firm receiving a massive influx of foreign investment from countries such as Saudi Arabia.

“The next four years are going to be a smash and grab under Trump,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told Sargent. “Special interests who put Trump back in office expect a return on their investment."

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, pointed to the way that Trump is letting X CEO Elon Musk push a policy agenda as evidence that there will be no guardrails on corruption and looting.

"Trump is showing that he will reward people who help him by giving them tremendous influence over his administration,” he said. “This will encourage more people to direct their largesse Trump’s way. We expect government to look out for the public interest. Trump is open about the fact that government is meant to serve his supporters, business partners, and friends.”

'Blueprint of destruction': Experts outline 'chillingly clear' view of Trump's next term

Travis Gettys
November 15, 2024 

Donald Trump's political career has closely tracked the trajectories of autocratic leaders Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin, whose rise to power offer a "chillingly clear" picture of where his second term could lead, according to historians.

The former president and his supporters are tremendously hostile to civic institutions like the judiciary, the media, universities, many nonprofits and even some religious groups, and Trump will likely follow the lead of those autocratic leaders in Hungary and Russia by sidelining experts, regulators and other civil servants, wrote New York Times columnist M. Gessen.

"When Orban was re-elected, he carried out what [Hungarian historian Balint] Magyar calls an 'autocratic breakthrough,' changing laws and practices so that he could not be dislodged again," Gessen wrote. "It helped that he had a supermajority in parliament. Trump, similarly, spent four years attacking the Biden administration, and the vote that brought it to the White House, as fraudulent, and positioning himself as the only true voice of the people. He is also returning with a power trifecta — the presidency and both houses of Congress. He too can quickly reshape American government in his image."

Magyar described the disorientation that accompanied Orban's return to power after eight years spent consolidating support from his base, and said he quickly unleashed an agenda that gathered autocratic powers for himself – which Gessen expects Trump to attempt from the start.

"We all remember it from Trump’s first term, this sense of everything happening all at once and the utter impossibility of focusing on the existentially threatening, or distinguishing it from the trivial — if that distinction even exists," Gessen wrote. "It’s not just what the autocrats do to stage their breakthrough, it’s how they do it: passing legislation (or signing executive orders) fast, without any discussion, sometimes late at night, in batches, all the while denigrating and delegitimizing any opposition."

Trump starts his second term with a sprawling road map for transforming the U.S. government to reflect his priorities, even if many of the policies conflict one another.

"Much has been written about Project 2025 as a sort of legislative blueprint for the second Trump presidency," Gessen wrote. "Consistent with Magyar’s theory of autocracy, the document is more a reflection of the clan of people who empower Trump and are empowered by him than an ideological document. It is not a blueprint for coherent legislative change, but it is a blueprint still: a blueprint for trampling the system of government as it is currently constituted, a blueprint of destruction."

Trump picks Big Oil ally and drilling enthusiast Doug Burgum for Interior Secretary

Jake Johnson, 

Common Dreams
November 15, 2024 

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum speaks during the third day of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 17, 2024.(Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP)

President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has chosen billionaire North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and vocal proponent of oil drilling, to serve as head of the Interior Department in the incoming administration, a critical post tasked with overseeing hundreds of millions of acres of federal land and water.

Burgum, a friend of oil billionaire Harold Hamm, served as a kind of middleman between Trump's presidential campaign and the fossil fuel industry during the 2024 race. The Washington Post reported that Burgum's selection as interior secretary will "give Hamm expansive influence over policy related to drilling on public lands, at a time his company stands to benefit from the rule changes Trump envisions."

Burgum and Hamm have already worked to shape Trump's energy policy during the presidential transition, with Reutersreporting Thursday that the pair is leading the push for a repeal of electric vehicle tax credits—a key component of the Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.


During a fundraiser over the summer, Burgum said Trump could "on day one" move to unleash "liquid fuels," accusing the Biden administration of waging war on "American energy."

"Whether it's baseload electricity, whether it's oil, whether it's gas, whether it's ethanol, there is an attack on liquid fuels," Burgum declared.

"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way."

Trump campaigned on a pledge to "drill, baby, drill" in the face of a fossil fuel-driven climate emergency that is wreaking deadly havoc in the United States and around the world. While the Biden administration has presided over record oil and gas production and approved many new drilling permits to the dismay of climate advocates, Trump has made clear that he intends to take a sledgehammer to any guardrails constraining the fossil fuel industry.

In Burgum, Trump will have an enthusiastic champion of oil and gas drilling in a Cabinet that is shaping up to be a boon for the fossil fuel industry. Burgum helped organize the dinner at which Trump urged the oil and gas industry to raise $1 billion for his campaign in exchange for tax breaks and large-scale deregulation.

"We're going do things with energy and with land—Interior—that is going to be incredible," Trump said late Thursday.

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that "Burgum is an oligarch completely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who cherish our natural heritage and don't want our parks, wildlife refuges, and other special places carved up and destroyed."

"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way," Suckling added.

In his current capacity as North Dakota governor, Burgum is pushing a 2,000-mile carbon pipeline project set to be built by Summit Carbon Solutions with the stated goal of capturing planet-warming CO2 and storing it underground. Climate advocates have long derided carbon capture and storage—a method boosted by the fossil fuel industry—as a dangerous scam that can actually result in more emissions.

The Associated Press reported earlier this year that "the blowback in North Dakota to the Summit project has been intense with Burgum caught in the crossfire."

"There are fears a pipeline rupture would unleash a lethal cloud of CO2," the outlet noted. "Landowners worry their property values will plummet if the pipeline passes under their land."

The North Dakota Public Service Commission is planning to meet Friday to vote on the project.