The basic obstacle to addressing the social causes of catastrophes like that in Northern California is the capitalist system, which subordinates all of economic life to the interests of the corporate and financial elite. There is not a single social problem, including the need for massive investment in social infrastructure, that can be solved without a frontal attack on the wealth of the ruling elite.

The US state of California has been devastated by the most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the state’s history. While wildfires, like hurricanes, are rooted in natural causes, the horrific consequences are the product of corporate malfeasance and government neglect.

The most devastating impact had been in Northern California, where the Camp Fire largely destroyed the rural town of Paradise, population 26,000. The official death toll now stands at 81. Hundreds remain missing, with many likely to have perished in the blaze. Search and rescue teams continue to sift through the debris for remains from a fire that burned hot enough in parts to destroy bone. Millions of people face unknown health consequences from widespread air pollution.

With little to no warning, families had to flee the rapidly advancing flames only to find roads blocked by overwhelming traffic. Some managed to escape on foot, others died in their cars as the flames overtook them, while many never made it out of their homes. The lucky ones have still lost almost everything, forced to live as domestic refugees in crowded and unhealthy shelters or makeshift tent cities.

The victims in Paradise were older and poorer than the rest of California. The median age was 50, and the median household income $20,000 a year less than for the state as a whole. As far as the government response has been concerned, their lives and continued survival are a matter of indifference. Aside from a handful of shelters—where a norovirus outbreak sent at least 25 survivors to the hospital—and a pittance in FEMA supplies, those fleeing Paradise have had to rely on friends, family and charity.

The Camp Fire joins the long list of disasters over the past few years, including Hurricanes Michael (60 dead), Florence (53 dead) and Maria (3,057 dead) in the US. It comes four months after the Attica wildfires in Greece, which killed 99. In each case, natural events have been compounded by crumbling infrastructure and inadequate emergency planning to create social catastrophes.

The response of government officials, Democrat and Republican, has been to downplay the extent of the disaster while seeking to deflect attention from those responsible. On Sunday, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke absurdly declared that unnamed “environmental radicals” are to blame for preventing good forest management. This followed Trump’s tour of the state with Democratic Party officials, which was characterized by empty platitudes and mutual declarations of support.

What are the real factors responsible for the devastation?

First, there is the role of the energy companies, whose aging infrastructure is known to have caused many fires.

At the heart of California’s energy infrastructure is a group of three investor-owned utilities: Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) with monopolies in their respective regions. Combined, these utilities have been responsible for over 2,000 wildfires in California since the state began requiring them to report incidents in 2014. PG&E alone is responsible for over 1,500 fires, including 16 major fires in 2017. Eleven of those sixteen were determined to involve PG&E negligence, and the company faces potentially $17 billion in liability for the lives and buildings lost that year.

The precise cause of the Camp Fire is still being investigated, but it began next to Poe Dam, 10 miles east of Paradise, only minutes after PG&E reported a power failure on its lines there. Firefighters initially responding to the blaze reported downed powerlines.

In a document filed with the Security and Exchange commission last week, PG&E stated that if it was found responsible for the fire, the damages would exceed its insurance coverage and threaten its financial stability. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) immediately responded by issuing a statement Friday that it would limit damages victims could recover from PG&E to protect the company’s “financial status,” under the provisions of the newly adopted state law supported by Governor Jerry Brown. In short, even if the company is found responsible through negligence, the state regulators will shift liability for the damages from PG&E’s shareholders onto the victims.

Second, there is the impact of government neglect and the failure to take basic precautionary measures, despite ample warning. Paradise has long been known to be in danger. In 2002, a powerful wind storm toppled five PG&E steel towers at Poe Dam, sparking a fire that threatened the town. The incident commander at the time told the Chico Enterprise-Record that it was “a miracle so many homes were saved, so few homes lost and no major injuries or fatalities.”

In 2008, the Humboldt Fire threatened Paradise from the southwest, cutting off all but one rural road out. Luckily, the town was spared. A government report from the time noted that the city had only one viable evacuation route that was only designed to carry 1,200 cars an hour.

Despite all the predictions and near misses, the Democratic Party-controlled state government left the problem unsolved. When the fire came this month, no systematic citywide evacuation notice was given. The government issued no emergency broadcasts, and cell phone alerts were only sent to those who had opted-in, about 30 percent of the city. Many residents trying to escape found the roads clogged, with no planned escape routes. . .

Source: The fire in Paradise, California: From natural disaster to social catastrophe

by DAVE LINDORFF

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In the surreal alternative reality world of the US Congress, there are many bills passed each year that on the surface may sound like good ideas — they even give them high-sounding names like the US PATRIOT ACT or Better Care and Reconciliation Act, that in fact are the opposite of what they claim to be (the former actually being an unpatriotic undermining of the Bill of Rights and the latter actually being an unsuccessful attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (itself a deceptively named bill that forced middle-income families to buy hugely expensive insurance plans or pay a tax penalty).But few of these deceptions are as egregious as one being pushed by embattled incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who is advocating a bill that would require any legislation that would raise taxes on incomes in the bottom 80% to be passed with a 60% majority of the House.

That bill, while promoted by Pelosi as protecting the middle class from future tax rises, actually would make impossible passage of any bill expanding Medicare to cover all Americans, creating a kind of Canadian-model national health system, and might even prevent efforts to strengthen and improve Social Security benefits as called for by progressive Democrats.

The thing is, a broad majority of Americans, including many Republicans, and an overwhelming majority of Democrats, favor Medicare-for-All, a program that would extend and expand Medicare coverage making it a government insurance plan for covering all medical care for all Americans of any age — exactly what Canadians have had since 1971, and which they have overwhelmingly supported through both Liberal and Conservative governments since then.

And to fund such a program, Medicare taxes (currently 1.45% for worker and employer) would of course have to be significantly raised. But what conservative and even so-called “moderate” Democrats who oppose Medicare-for-All deliberately don’t say in criticizing the idea as a tax-increasing horror is that it would eliminate the need to pay insurance premiums for all people and also for employers, that it would eliminate the need to spend $140 billion a year or more on a Veterans Administration bureaucracy to care for military veterans, that it would eliminate Medicaid, the program that provides care for the poor and which currently costs over $600 billion a year in federal and state tax dollars, that it would end “charity care” which is the “free care” hospitals have to provide to ER patients who have to be treated if they have no other funding and don’t qualify for Medicaid — care which ends up raising private insurance premiums for those who do have insurance, and that would even lower car insurance premiums, since these would no longer have to pay for hospital care caused by accidents.

The lie here is that raising taxes on everyone to fund Medicare-for-All could in the end massively reduce health care costs for everyone in society, while also ensuring that nobody was without full access to fully funded health care. It’s what Americans want, poll after poll shows, even given all the propagada and lies about it, but Congress, including Democrats, are so anxious to keep receiving huge amounts of money from the Medical Industrial Complex, that they are loath to support a program that would cut out the private insurance industry, force the drug and hospital industry and physicians to receive negotiated payments reached with the government instead of charging whatever they want in a “market” that doesn’t really permit genuine consumer choice and competition. . .

Source: Pelosi’s Deceptive Plan: Blocking any Tax Rise Could Rule Out Medicare-for-All and Bolstering Social Security

The fires themselves are the direct result of overdevelopment of formerly unsettled parts of California — for divergent yet related reasons. In Southern California, the Woolsey Fire has largely consumed high-priced real estate in beautiful, pristine areas sold to people with money. The Northern California Camp Fire, on the other hand, has affected many poorer and older Californians — some of whom have been pushed out of overpriced urban areas: in other words, due to gentrification.

By Juan Cole

Global Research, November 18, 2018

The CIA has leaked against Jared Kushner and Trump that Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi crown prince, ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

President Trump had asked the CIA to do an assessment of the murder. Apparently, from the leak to the US press, part of the evidence came from National Security Agency wiretaps of the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC. They caught Khalid Bin Salman, the crown prince’s brother and Saudi ambassador to the US, telling Khashoggi that it would be fine for him to pick up the paperwork needed for his marriage to his Turkish fiancee from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Either Prince Khalid was in on the plot to murder Khashoggi, or he was duped by his brother to lull the dissident journalist into a false sense of security. He called Khashoggi on instructions from his brother, MBS.

Trump had asked for the report, but it is unlikely that he wanted it made public. The CIA is deliberately leaking it. Since the agency is aware that Mohammed Bin Salman is teflon inside Saudi Arabia, it seems probable that the target of the leak is in the US. The member of the administration closest to MBS is Jared Kushner, though Trump himself has admitted that he wants the sale of US arms to MBS more than he wants Khashoggi’s killer brought to justice. The CIA may be attempting to discredit Kushner and to detach Trump from his alliance with the crown prince.

The Saudi government has attempted to whitewash the murder. First it denied the killing. Then it blamed low-level rogue intelligence agents. Then it sentenced the latter to death so as to make sure they do not talk. The Saudis deny that Mohammed Bin Salman ordered that Khashoggi be whacked, which is laughable, since no one would dare do such a thing without his orders. It is an absolute monarchy, after all.

 

Source: Is CIA Leak of Bin Salman’s Guilt in Khashoggi Murder Aimed at Kushner, or Trump Himself?

Illustrative image. AFP

There have been sporadic, but regular reports of “mysterious helicopters” extracting ISIS militants from battlefields in the Middle East.

Most recently, on November 13^th, Syria’s official news agency SANA cited an anonymous source claiming that US-led military helicopters conducted an operation in the village of al-Suwayda in Hasakah province near the border with Iraq. They reportedly rescued several members of ISIS and transported them to an unknown location.

Between November 10^th and 11^th, an alleged US-led aircraft landed in the outskirts of al-Susah in Deir Ezzor province and took away three ISIS members.

Earlier, on October 7^th, SANA also cited residents of the town of al-Shaafah who claimed that American helicopters evacuated ISIS commanders from the Abu Kamal area of Deir Ezzor province to an undisclosed location.

SANA also reported that on September 22^nd the US-led coalition carried out an air landing operation in the outskirts of al-Mrashde village located in the pocket where ISIS militants spread in the southeastern countryside of Deir Ezzor, transferring a number of ISIS commanders.

On August 23^rd, TASS reported that Russia recorded flights of mysterious helicopters supplying weapons to ISIS units active in Afghanistan.

“We would like to once again point to the flights of unidentified helicopters in northern Afghanistan, which deliver weapons and ammunition to local ISIL units and Taliban members cooperating with the group. In particular, the Afghan media and local residents say that such helicopters were seen in the Sar-e Pol Province,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

On March 19^th, SANA cited an anonymous source who claimed that three US military helicopters had evacuated suspected ISIS commanders from northeastern Syria. Reportedly the helicopters landed between the villages of al-Jissi and Kalu, 2 km south of the Tal Hamis township in the Qamishli District of al-Hasakah province.

In late February, Syrian media reported that US helicopters had transported ISIS commanders and their family members to Sabah al-Khair, about 20 km south of al-Hasakah, where US forces have been accused of establishing a terrorist training base.

According to SANA on December 29^th, 2017 US helicopters evacuated the ISIS commanders from the Deir Ezzor province to al-Hasakah province in northeastern Syria. Sources say this is the second time the US evacuates ISIS terrorists.

In May 2017, anonymous local Syrian sources revealed that, US military helicopters evacuated a number of ISIS terrorist group commanders out of their stronghold in Syria’s Raqqa taking them to an undisclosed destination.

In May 2017, Mohammad Zahir Wahdat, governor of Afghanistan’s northern Sar-e Pol province also claimed that unmarked military helicopters had touched down briefly in a known militant stronghold. Stationed Afghan Security Forces could not take pictures because it happened at night.

The Pentagon has repeatedly denied this reports claiming that it is not cooperating with ISIS in any kind. However, the problem is that the US military also denies that it has reached any kind of deals with ISIS in Manbij and Raqqah, which is an obvious lie. So, as reports about US helicopters evacuating ISIS members or providing supplies to them continue to appear, the concern is growing that Washington is still using ISIS as a tool in its geopolitical standoff with other powers.

Source: “Mysterious Helicopters” Continue To Evacuate ISIS Members From Battlefields Across Middle East