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Public Health Emergency in Southeastern Texas
Stephen Lendman
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price declared a public health emergency in Texas in response to Hurricane Harvey, saying:
“HHS is taking the necessary measures and has mobilized the resources to provide immediate assistance to those affected by Hurricane Harvey.”
“We recognize the gravity of the situation in Texas, and the declaration of a public health emergency will provide additional flexibility and authority to help those who have been impacted by the storm.”
Conditions are dire following six days of heavy rain and severe flooding. Over 20 Houston area hospitals evacuated patients and/or temporarily closed, others operating under emergency conditions.
Roads to the University of Texas MD Anderson’s Medical Center remain impassable. On Monday, employees were told to stay home until further notice.
Houston and surrounding areas face a likely public health disaster because of huge amounts of toxins released into the air and water, turning the area into a dangerously polluted swamp.
Hurricane Harvey: An Epic Disaster, An Environmental Nightmare
Stephen Lendman
Natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey are greatly exacerbated by America’s neglected infrastructure nationwide - a deplorable situation unaddressed by Republicans and undemocratic Democrats alike for decades.
Poor maintenance, aging pipe networks installed up to a century ago, and lack of proper drainage facilities in flood-prone cities like Houston, New Orleans, and Chicago’s downtown Loop, along with poor communities in these and other cities left especially vulnerable, make disasters like Katrina and Harvey far worse than otherwise if proper protections were in place. They’re not nationwide. America’s neglected infrastructure bears much of the blame for Houston’s epic disaster - worsening as rain keeps falling, making landfall a second time west of Cameron, LA, heavy rain hitting the state’s coastal areas.
The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency, its severest flood alert. Millions of Texas and Louisiana residents vulnerable. Rainfall in Houston already exceeds 50 inches.
By Tuesday afternoon, an estimated 444 square miles were flooded, an area six times the size of Washington, DC. Shocking, and things keep worsening as rain keeps falling - lightly in Houston, not torrentially like earlier, but floodwaters are still rising.
Mixed Messages on Syria
Stephen Lendman
America intends permanent control of countries it attacked post-Soviet Russia’s dissolution - by occupation and/or installed puppet regimes.
America didn’t come to Syria to leave. It wants control over the entire country.
CENTCOM commander General Joseph Votel said US forces will remain in Syria after the battle for Raqqa is over.
So did Talal Silo, spokesman for the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish fighters and Arab terrorists.
Deputy Operation Inherent Resolve commander General Rupert Jones said Washington won’t let Syrian forces move north of the Euphrates River - territory US forces and their proxies control.
Nikki Haley: An Embarrassment as US UN Envoy
Stephen Lendman
It’s hard imagining why Trump chose her for the diplomatic post. The former South Carolina governor knows little about geopolitics. Her over-the-top remarks show it.
Her extremist rants are an embarrassment to the position she holds. Trump should replace her with someone qualified for the job.
She’s ideologically extremist like numerous other neocons infesting Washington. On her first day on the job, she warned US allies and adversaries alike - provocatively saying “(y)ou're going to see a change in the way we do business.”
“Our goal with the administration is to show value at the UN, and the way we'll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure our allies have our back as well.”
“For those who don’t have our back, we're taking names. We will make points to respond to that accordingly.”
Irreconcilable US/North Korea Differences
Stephen Lendman
The problem lies in Washington, not Pyongyang the way it’s been throughout the DPRK’s history.
America tolerates no sovereign independent states it doesn’t control - why it wages preemptive wars, stages color revolutions, and assassinates foreign leaders, its post-WW II agenda.
The only way to resolve contentious issues with Pyongyang is through face-to-face diplomacy.
Reported backchannel talks between US envoy for North Korea policy Joseph Yun and senior DPRK UN mission diplomat Pak Song-il in New York are better than nothing, but not good enough.
Former special envoy for earlier six-party talks with North Korea Joseph DeTrani said it’s time for formal negotiations to “get North Korea to halt all nuclear tests and missile launches and return to unconditional nuclear discussions and negotiations.”
Sanctions against Pyongyang, China and Russia are counterproductive, accomplishing nothing positive.
Trump’s Fascism versus Obama’s Fascism
Eric Zuesse
Barack Obama was the only U.S. President who at the United Nations defended nazism — racist fascism — and Holocaust-denial. It received almost no reporting by the press at the time (or subsequently). But his successor President Donald Trump could end up being removed from office because he said that racist fascists are just the same as are people who demonstrate publicly against them. Trump’s politically stupid (not to say callous) remark became viral, and apparently the press (which had ignored Obama’s defense of nazism at the U.N.) just won’t let go of Trump’s statement unless and until he becomes replaced by his even-more-far-right Vice President, Mike Pence.
Why is there this intense press-coverage of Trump’s support of racist fascism, when there wasn’t of Obama’s (which was actually far more meaningful)? The answer comes closer if we ponder first a different question: How could the Republican Party, which is right-wing at its core, condemn a Democratic Party President who goes out of his way at the U.N. to protect today’s nazis? That wouldn’t be politically practical for Republican politicians to complain about (a Democrat’s being too far to the right); so, they didn’t do it. Similarly, no Democrat will criticize a Republican for being too leftist. There may be a few exceptions, but that’s the general rule: Successful politicians don’t offend their base.
NYT War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
The Times and other media scoundrels waged managed news disinformation war on Venezuela since Hugo Chavez’s December 1998 landslide presidential victory.
They support monied interests, deplore popular ones, are disgracefully hostile to Bolivarian social democracy - polar opposite how America and other Western societies are run, serving privileged interests exclusively.
Chavez was repeatedly accused of being a strongman, populist demagogue and dictator, President Maduro vilified the same way.
Kushner/Netanyahu Meeting
Stephen Lendman
Prospects for resolving decades of Israeli/Palestinian conflict are nil - because Washington and Tel Aviv reject an equitable solution.
Peace and stability defeat their agenda. Endless violence and confrontation further it. Neither country negotiates. They demand.
Trump’s Zionist son-in-law/senior advisor/geopolitical know-nothing is back in Israel.
He arrived along with Zionist administration international negotiator Jason Greenblat and Deputy National Security Advisor Dina Powell - another futile trip to restart peace talks, dead-on-arrival each time initiated.
Russia’s New Ambassador to Washington
Stephen Lendman
It’s no easy job operating in hostile territory. Longtime diplomat Anatoly Antonov is up to the challenge.
The Kremlin’s web site announced his appointment, saying:
“Vladimir Putin issued an Executive Order appointing Anatoly Antonov Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the United States of America and, concurrently, Permanent Observer of the Russian Federation at the Organisation of American States in Washington, USA.”Antonov succeeds Sergey Kislyak, his tenure from July 2008 - July 2017. Envoys are tasked with understanding policies of the nations they’re assigned to, including as they unfold daily.
They provide relevant information to their governments back home.
Interfacing with host country officials is part of their job – including diplomats, legislators, and administration officials to the highest levels.
Deplorable US Mainstream Media
Stephen Lendman
Press agent journalism substitutes for the real thing. Truth-telling is a lost art, absent in Western reporting on issues mattering most.
The fourth estate was never more disreputable than now, a shameful disgrace to its profession - featuring disinformation, fake news and advocacy instead of what legitimate journalism is supposed to be.
Trump is wrong on most issues, on the mark about the media’s deplorable state, painful to follow, impossible to know anything about the state of the nation and world by following its reports - red meat for critics like myself to take them to task, the deplorable NYT my favorite target.
Defending itself from justifiable criticism, arguments by the Times ring hollow.
Claiming its columnists, correspondents and editors are journalists, not Trump’s enemies, is utter rubbish.
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