Elizabeth Warren shuts down fossil fuel industry talking points

During the climate change town hall, moderator Chris Cuomo of CNN raised the issue of whether fighting climate change would require forcing people to give up their straws etc. Warren quickly shut down that line of questioning, saying that the fossil fuel industry wants to put the onus of cleaning up the environment on us and for us to be always talking about such things as violating our personal freedoms, in order to distract from their major role in destroying the environment.

Farcical US attempt at bribery

You may recall the Iranian oil tanker that was seized by the British in the Mediterranean and taken to Gibraltar because of suspicions that it was taking its cargo to Syria. It was released later over the protests of the US government that wanted to seize the ship. It has now been revealed that the US government tried to bribe the ship’s captain to take the ship somewhere where the US could seize it but he ignored them.

The US state department has confirmed it offered millions of dollars to the captain of an Iranian oil tanker which is at the centre of a diplomatic row.

Brian Hook, head of the department’s Iran Action Group, emailed the captain of the Adrian Darya 1 about sailing it somewhere the US could seize it.
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According to the Financial Times, Mr Hook sent an email to the Indian captain of the Adrian Darya 1, Akhilesh Kumar, before it imposed sanctions on the ship.

“I am writing with good news,” the email read. The Trump administration was willing to pay the captain several million dollars to take the ship somewhere it could be seized by US authorities.

The emails reportedly carried a state department phone number to make sure the captain – who took over the ship after it was impounded – did not think they were fake.

Mr Hook told the newspaper that the state department was “working very closely with the maritime community to disrupt and deter illicit oil exports”.

Mr Kumar ignored the emails. The US then imposed sanctions on him personally when they blacklisted the Adrian Darya 1.
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A brief history of slavery in the US

In The 1619 Project of the New York Times that I wrote about earlier, the opening piece that frames the rest of the magazine is by Nikole Hannah-Jones. She looks at the history of how slavery became embedded in the very legal fabric of the nation from the very beginning in August 1619 and she argues that it has been the struggle by slaves and their descendants to achieve basic decency that has resulted in so many of us having rights that the original slaves and their descendants were denied.
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Summary of the Democratic town hall on climate change

Yesterday, CNN hosted a seven-hour climate change marathon where 10 candidates in sequence faced about 40 minutes of questions from the moderators, scientists, and others about their climate change plans. Rolling Stone had a summary of the key points, saying that “We can’t pretend it was fun. But it was historic: This is almost certainly the longest stretch of programming a U.S. news network has ever dedicated to the topic of climate change. We watched all ten of the candidates make their case for their candidacies on the basis of their plans to keep the planet from overheating.”
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Boris Johnson’s terrible, horrible, no-good week continues

Boris Johnson has had a very bad first few days in parliament. In addition to having a 100% loss record in votes, today his own brother Jo Johnson quit the government and said he would not stand in the next election, and a cabinet minister Nick Hurd said the same. In addition, a Labour party MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi took Johnson to task for a 2018 newspaper column where he compared Muslim women covering their faces and bodies to letterboxes and bank-robbers. Watch


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Conan O’Brien goes off to buy Greenland

If there is an unofficial good will ambassador for the US, it may well be late night talk show host and comedian Conan O’Brien. On an occasional series on his show called Conan Without Borders that can be seen on Netflix, he has gone to places that have been demonized by the US over a long period (such as Cuba) as well as those that have been brutally exploited by the US and more recently insulted by Donald Trump (like Haiti and Mexico) and in his interactions with the people and his description of the country shows Americans how mistaken these views are and that we would be a lot better off having good relations with the people of those nations.
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The Brexit endgame begins

The UK parliament has passed the third reading of the bill to ban a no-deal Brexit by a margin of 327-299 and it now goes to the House of Lords for approval before it can be signed into law by the Queen. In response to this second major defeat in the two days he has been in parliament as prime minister, Boris Johnson has called for a new general election to be held on October 15. But under a law that was adopted during David Cameron’s period as prime minister, parliament needs to vote by a two-thirds majority to be dissolved before its scheduled five-year term ends, which means that Johnson needs opposition support for the move. The rules also say that at least 25 days must pass between dissolution and the election. But Johnson’s motion for dissolution only garnered 298 votes, well short of the 434 needed, thus handing him his third consecutive defeat.
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Jeremy Corbyn’s powerful speech in parliament

In yesterday’s debate, in which Boris Johnson lost the vote on the SO24 motion despite his threats to rebel Conservative MPs that they would not be the party’s candidates at the next election if they voted in favor of it, Jeremy Corbyn gave a powerful performance that exposed the reckless behavior of the government. As Corbyn said, “Boris Johnson’s government has no mandate, no morals and, as of today, no majority.”

Here are two short excerpts.


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Yet another day of drama over Brexit

The UK parliament returned to session today with prime minister Boris Johnson facing sharp questioning over what he is doing with Brexit. One former Conservative cabinet minister has crossed over to the Liberal Democrats, meaning that Johnson has lost his slim one-vote majority, though given the fluidity of the shifting alliances, whether that means anything significant is not clear. Complicating matters is that there are some people in the opposition who are not opposed to a no-deal Brexit while there are other Conservative MPs who say they are opposed to it, making the situation hard to read. Adding to the chaos is that Johnson says he is making progress on Brexit talks while EU leaders say that the talks are going nowhere. There is also confusion on whether Johnson will call for a general election on October 14, before the Brexit deadline of October 31. An election would be a gamble for all sides, since it is hard to read the mood of the electorate on this issue.
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The 1619 Project on the legacy of slavery

When the modern history of the USA is told, it often begins with ships arriving here, such as Christopher Columbus in 1492 or settlers arriving in Jamestown in 1607 or the Pilgrims arriving at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Each of those arrivals is used as a symbolic marker, a portent of future events. But there is one major arrival that has been ignored. It is the arrival in August 1619 of the first enslaved peoples, when 20 to 30 of them (the exact number is unknown) were brought ashore. Thus began the history of slavery in what became the USA. This marked the beginning of events that have had a lasting impact on America down through the ages and its legacy manifests itself everywhere today if one only knows how and where to look.
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