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“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. The public will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened.”

-- Josef Stalin

News and Opinion

Syria Talks Quickly End Without Any Deals

The first multilateral talks on Syria began today in Switzerland, and ended a few hours later with no reports of any progress toward any actual deals. The US went into the talks saying they doubted any deals would be made, while Russia sought agreement on separating the Nusra Front from moderate rebels.

But the US–Russia talks lasted all of 40 “businesslike” minutes, and the rest of the talks, while apparently not full of too much acrimony, ended with an agreement to meet again in the coming days. Secretary of State John Kerry said they’d meet again Monday.

Exactly what the next round of talks are aimed at is unclear, because no one seems to be in a deal-making mood.

Air Force Caught Repainting Several Jets To Appear Russian

Last week, a Canadian journalist published pictures of the US Air Force repainting their F/A-18 jets to match the paint scheme of Russian jets currently deployed in Syria. Though the journalist, Christian Borys, suggested that the unusual paint job was due to standard military “aggressor squadrons” war-games meant to simulate engaging “the enemy,” some have speculated it could be proof of an imminent false flag meant to justify US “boots on the ground” in Syria. Regardless of whether it is standard procedure or indicative of an impending false flag, either threatens to worsen what is already an increasingly desperate geopolitical situation that could easily develop into full-scale, global war. ...

Just four days ago, the Air Force practiced dropping “dummy nukes” from aircraft. Though no live warheads were used, the B61 nuclear bombs tested are considered “critical elements” of the US nuclear arsenal. Russia itself seems to think the threat of a major nuclear war is imminent as they recently held a massive, nationwide drill involving 40 million Russians to prepare for a nuclear disaster. The Russian government has also ordered the family members of all Russian government officials to return to Russia effective immediately.

Yet, these obvious preparations for war have also raised understandable concerns that the newly painted jets could be used in a US-backed false flag operation. Indeed, many major wars involving the US were provoked by now-declassified false flags, such as the Spanish-American War (sinking of the USS Maine), US involvement in World War I (sinking of the Lusitania) and the Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin). Other suspected false flags, such as September 11^th, have been blamed for justifying the now 15-year-old War on Terror. False flags have been so frequently employed by the US government for a variety of reasons that a former CIA agent admitted in an interview that “every single terror attack in the US was a false flag.” Given that the US has carried out false flags in the past for various purposes, what would they stand to gain from a false flag now, particularly one involving “Russian” jets?

Actually, the Obama administration stands to gain a lot from any potential false flag, especially one that could pin civilian deaths on the Russians in Syria. In the past weeks, the US and its allies have been relentlessly accusing Russia of bombing civilians in Aleppo as well as UN aid convoy. However, these claims have been based on speculation and wishful thinking. The State Department, in an extremely awkward press conference, failed to name a single example of civilian infrastructure Russia had bombed in Aleppo, and mounting evidence suggests the US-led coalition was actually to blame for the destruction of the UN aid convoy. ...

Regardless of the real motivation behind the paint job, both possibilities sadly seem to lead toward the same, terrifying conclusion: war is on the horizon.

I posted excerpts from the transcript of this last week. It's worth watching.

John Pilger: A World War Has Begun

The Warnings of a New World War

The state television program on the Rossiya 1 channel, Vesti nedeli (News of the Week), is presented by Dmitri Kiselyov. This two-hour show on prime time is the single most widely watched news broadcast in Russia with tens of millions of viewers. ... Dmitri Kiselyov is not merely the anchorman of Vesti nedeli. He is also the boss of all news and information programming on state radio and television. He is tough and wears his patriotism on his sleeve. We may assume that what he says has been approved by the Kremlin.

[Here are some excerpts from his Oct. 9 show]:

“This past week relations between the USA and Russia went through a sharp but expected turn. To bend over backwards further in the face of [American] lies has lost all sense and is simply harmful. By bending over backwards we mean looking for diplomatic compromises.

“We held endless expectations that the USA will finally separate the non-terrorists from the terrorists [in Syria]. We waited more than a year for this. But it is clear they did not want to. They are taking us and the whole world for fools. America is working on the side of Al Nusra [Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate], providing them with diplomatic cover; providing them with additional arms; helping them by their supposedly mistaken bombing of a Syrian army position. ...

“American forces directly bombed a Syrian military outpost. This was no mistake. It was coordinated with the terrorists, who followed up with an attack. Then there came a camouflaged attack on the humanitarian convoy near Aleppo [Sept. 20]. Finally, it became clear to Moscow that diplomacy is merely a ‘service’ for the Pentagon. Kerry, in intellectual style, justifies the actions of the Pentagon. Often, post factum. ...

“To be sure, Washington has loudly announced that it is shifting now to the so-called Plan B. Formally there are no details. But in general terms, everyone understands what we are talking about. Plan B is when America applies in Syria direct military force. It is not hard to guess against whom, against Bashar Assad, the government army, and that means against the armed forces of Russia, who are present in Syria on legal grounds.

“Can we exclude such a variation? No. We cannot exclude provocations to justify the start of war, as happened in the past in the two world wars. The Vietnam War also began with a provocation organized by the Americans. See the false pretenses for invading Iraq and the action in Libya. U.S. ignored international law, decided there can be no obstacles in the path of their assaults.”

According to Kiselyov, Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Pankov said his ministry is reviewing the question of reestablishing military bases in Cuba and Vietnam. ...

Summing up, Kiselyov acknowledged that all these events give the impression of a highly charged atmosphere. They are, he said, all the consequence of America’s steady campaign of expanding NATO, its renunciation of the ABM treaty, its color revolutions, its vilification of Russia, and its information war based on lies. These unfriendly acts had to be a stop.

He asked rhetorically: is this dangerous? To which he responded in the affirmative.

The US just bombed Yemen, and no one's talking about it

What if the United States went to war and nobody here even noticed? The question is absurd, isn’t it? And yet, this almost perfectly describes what actually happened this past week.

While many Americans, myself included, were all hypnotized by the bizarre spectacle of the Republican nominee for president, a US navy destroyer fired a barrage of cruise missiles at three radar sites controlled by the rebel Houthi movement in Yemen. This attack marked the first time the US has fought the rebels directly in Yemen’s devastating civil war. ...

If we investigated, we would find that the Pentagon justified this attack as retaliation. Last week, missiles were fired on two separate occasions at another navy destroyer off of Yemen’s southern coast. Those missiles fell harmlessly into the water, but they were enough of a provocation that the navy responded with its own bombardment.

But we would also find that immediately prior to those incidents, on Saturday 8 October, a 500lb laser-guided US-made bomb was dropped on a funeral procession by the US-sponsored Saudi-led coalition fighting the rebels who, the Saudis say, are backed by Iran. This bomb killed more than 140 people, mostly civilians, and wounded more than 525 people. Human Rights Watch called the incident “an apparent war crime”. ...

The situation in Yemen is already catastrophic and largely out of view. Since the conflict began 18 months ago, more than 6,800 people have been killed. Both rebels and the regime have committed atrocities, though most of the dead are civilians and most have been killed by Saudi-led airstrikes. Almost 14.4 million people are now “food insecure”, according to the UN’s World Food Program, and 2.8 million people have been displaced. In 2015, there were 101 attacks on schools and hospitals. After two Doctors Without Borders hospitals were bombed resulting in 20 deaths – one in Taiz on 2 December 2015 and the other in Abs on 15 August this year – the humanitarian group was forced to withdraw from its six hospitals in northern Yemen. And the latest news is a cholera outbreak.

U.S. Assisted the Disastrous Bombing of a Funeral in Yemen

Did the U.S. directly assist the Saudi-led coalition aerial bombing of a funeral in Sanaa, Yemen this weekend, reported to have killed over 140 people and injured as many as 600? A renowned combat aircraft engineer and former Pentagon official, Pierre Sprey, says the evidence suggests the U.S. did exactly that.

In the ‘60s, Sprey was one of Robert S. McNamera’s whiz kids at the Pentagon, where he served as an engineer developing the military’s next generation of combat aircraft. As a chief architect of the Air Force’s F-16 (its predecessor, the F-15, is the most common combat aircraft in the Saudi arsenal), Sprey revolutionized the fighter jet by prioritizing agility over what he saw as unnecessary bells and whistles. His F-16 remains widely used by the Air Force to this day, even outperforming the latest generation of fighter jet.

As Sprey explained to AlterNet, “If that Saudi fighter was based at the main Saudi base near Riyadh, Prince Sultan airbase, then it was almost certainly refueled by USAF [U.S. Air Force] tankers.” Though there is an airbase located close enough to Yemen to not require refueling, King Khaled airbase, Sprey told AlterNet, “I doubt they are stationing very many fighters there these days, given that the Houthis [rebel group that overthrew Yemen’s government in 2014-2015 following protests against a deeply unpopular fuel subsidy cut] have successfully hit that base with Scud missiles on at least one occasion (and could readily overrun it on the ground, given the dismal performance of Saudi ground units).” ...

Though the Yemen offensive is widely attributed to a “U.S.-backed, Saudi-led military coalition,” even this may be too generous in light of the extent of U.S.’ fueling, arms and troop support, none of which appear contingent on Saudi’s respect for the laws of war. The Saudi funeral bombing bears a grim resemblance to U.S. airstrikes, having bombed at least eight wedding parties since 2001. The fact that senior Houthi political and military officials were in attendance at the funeral, many of whom were killed, suggests a possible motive for the bombing.

US Again Attacks Yemen Coast, Despite Growing Doubts Over ‘Missiles’

US warships have once again attacked Yemen’s Red Sea coast after reporting for the third time in a week that they came under fire from the area by anti-ship missiles, a large number of which were fired but none of which actually hit anything. At least, that was the story initially.

After once again attacking Houthi targets along the coast, in spite of any evidence that the Houthis fired the missiles at them, officials are now saying they’re not even sure about the missiles, and are looking into the possibility that the USS Mason, which has claimed all the attacks, has a radar malfunction which is generating ghost signals.

This raises the possibility that the US warships are not only retaliating against the wrong people, but that there was nothing to retaliate against in the first place.

US, Britain Call for ‘Immediate Ceasefire’ in Yemen

Western nations have long stayed out of the public decision-making process in the Saudi war in Yemen, but seem to be looking to get at least somewhat involved, with US and British officials today issuing a joint call for an immediate, unconditional ceasefire in Yemen.

Previous ceasefire efforts brokered through backdoor channels have rarely amounted to much, with the Saudis usually continuing the airstrikes throughout and then escalating further when the ceasefire collapses. The UN has at times expressed support for such deals, but was rarely directly involved in brokering them.

“Unconditional” would be a huge change in ceasefires, as the previous UN-sanctioned ceasefires always came with vague expressions of support for previous UN Security Council resolutions from before the war, which demanded the Houthis withdraw from major cities.

[See also: After Profiting from Weapons Sales and Bombing Yemen, U.S. Calls for Ceasefire - js]

Syria: Turkish-backed rebels take symbolic town of Dabiq from Islamic State group

The battle to clear ISIS out of Mosul and get them into Syria to fight Assad has begun.

The battle for Mosul begins

Early on Monday morning, Iraqi and Kurdish troops, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, began an operation to retake the city of Mosul, which has been under control by the Islamic State for the last two years. Mosul is the last and largest stronghold in Iraq for the Islamic State, and the offensive is being seen as a crucial step in the ongoing U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces and debilitate IS.

Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul fell to IS in 2014 when the Iraqi army fled without a fight. The city holds symbolic significance for the terrorist group as it is the location where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi first declared he had established an Islamic caliphate. Mosul’s critical location on the banks of the Tigris River, makes it a vital transportation hub between Syria and Iraq. And to the north of the city lie large oil fields and a key oil pipeline into Turkey.

Battle for Mosul: Isis city under attack from Iraqi and Kurdish forces

Unlike with previous Iraqi-led attacks on Islamic State strongholds, the US has said that its troops are on the front lines.

In a statement, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of the coalition taskforce, included forward air controllers among the US personnel “supporting” the invasion of Mosul.

The US is therefore acknowledging it has put people on the front lines in order to ensure greater precision for aerial bombing in a densely populated urban area.

The absence of spotters in Iraq and Syria, known by their military acronym JTACs, has been a frequent object criticism for the Pentagon in Congress.

Townsend also prepared the public for a “weeks, possibly longer” battle. ...

The Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, says Mosul will turn into a bloodbath and mass killings if the Iraqi government allows Shia militias to enter the city, as it has in other Iraqi cities liberated from Islamic State control. ....

He added that although there had been reassurances from the Iraqi government about the deployment of Shia militias, he was not sure the Iraqi government was fully in control. ...

Jubier said that if the Daesh were forced out of Mosul, they were likely to go on to Syria, adding its president, Bashar al-Assad, would allow them to grow.

Anti-Islam PEGIDA marks 2nd anniversary

Clinton: US Threatened to Ring China With Missile Defense - Revealed Threat in Private Speech to Goldman Sachs

Much like the Bush Administration’s strategy of launching missile defense projects all along Russia’s frontier in Eastern Europe, while publicly insisting they were meant to counter Iranian missiles that didn’t have the range to get there in the first place, the Obama Administration’s fledgling plans to put missile defense systems in eastern Asia is similarly using North Korea as an excuse to surround China.

That was the revelation of a WikiLeaks-released email, which included the contents of a June 2013 speech by Hillary Clinton to the bankers at Goldman Sachs. The speech was “private,” like so many of her speeches to well-connected financial outlets, and during it she said the US had threatened to “ring China with missile defense” if China didn’t help them crack down on North Korea.

During the speech, she added that the US would never accept North Korea having ICBMs able to carry miniaturized nuclear warheads, and that the US would also put more of its fleet into the area around China in response to that threat.

Freed From Gag Order, Google Reveals It Received Secret FBI Subpoena

Google revealed Wednesday it had been released from an FBI gag order that came with a secret demand for its customers’ personal information. ...

The national security letter issued to Google was mentioned without fanfare in Google’s latest bi-annual transparency report, which includes information on government requests for data the company received from around the world in the first half of 2016.

An accompanying blog post titled “Building on Surveillance Reform,” also identified new countries that made requests — Algeria, Belarus, and Saudi Arabia among them — and reveals that Google saw an increase in requests made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

But Google in its short blog post did not publish the contents of the actual letter the way other companies, including Yahoo, have done in recent months.

Asked about plans to release the national security letter, a Google spokesperson told The Intercept it will release it, though it wouldn’t say when or in what form it will do so. Google hasn’t previously published any national security letters, though it’s possible gag orders for prior demands are still in place.

UK security agencies unlawfully collected data for decade, court rules

British security agencies have secretly and unlawfully collected massive volumes of confidential personal data, including financial information, on citizens for more than a decade, top judges have ruled.

The investigatory powers tribunal, which is the only court that hears complaints against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, said the security services operated secret regimes to collect vast amounts of personal communications data, tracking individual phone and web use and large datasets of confidential personal information, without adequate safeguards or supervision for more than 10 years.

The ruling said the regime governing the collection of bulk communications data – the who, where, when and what of personal phone and web communications – failed to comply with article 8 protecting the right to privacy of the European convention of human rights (ECHR) between 1998, when it started, and 4 November 2015, when it was made public.

It said the holding of bulk personal datasets (BPD) – which might include medical and tax records, individual biographical details, commercial and financial activities, communications and travel data – also failed to comply with article 8 for the decade it was in operation until its public avowal in March 2015.

WikiLeaks dumps ninth batch of Clinton campaign emails

The website released its ninth batch of emails on Sunday, more results from the apparent hack of the personal email account of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

As with previous disclosures, Sunday's release includes information on how Clinton's campaign can appeal to black voters, how the candidate could handle apologies, and dealings with the media.

Posting New Secret Trade Docs, Wikileaks Further Exposes Corporate Plot

Even as it continued to post new batches of emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, Wikileaks on Friday also published new draft chapters of the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) which shed new light on the pending deal that critics say puts global economies at further risk from powerful banks, financial institutions, and corporate greed.

The latest release follows a series of others by the pro-tranparency publication and comes just days ahead of the next round of TISA negotiations set to begin Monday in Washington, DC. The leaked documents included in Friday's release include three draft chapters from the agreement—covering "Financial Services," "Localization Provisions," and "Bilateral Market Access." The chapters are from June of this year and bring the number of documents related to the TISA negotiations published by Wikileaks up to 70 total.

According to one of the companion analyses by Wikileaks released alongside the TISA chapters, the current deal, if finalized, "would heighten risks of financial instability and handcuff governments’ ability to respond to a domestic or global financial crisis at a time when everyone (except the finance industry and its political allies) agree that we need more financial regulation, not less."

In response to the latest leaks on Friday, the leaders of organized labor unions said it was more clear than ever that TISA "is no more than a corporate power grab and that negotiations must be stopped."

Assange Offline: Wikileaks chief internet ‘shut’ down sparks conspiracy theories

WikiLeaks says Assange's Internet link was severed by 'state party'

WikiLeaks said Monday that its founder Julian Assange’s Internet link was severed by a “state party” and that “appropriate contingency plans” had been activated.

Julian Assange's internet link has been intentionally severed by a state party. We have activated the appropriate contingency plans.

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 17, 2016

WikiLeaks hasn’t tweeted anything else about Assange’s Internet access or how it may have been “severed.”

Various U.S. officials and pundits have made threatening statements directed at Assange in the past. WikiLeaks tweeted in early October an alleged 2010 quote from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking if Assange could be killed in a drone strike, and, that same year, former Democrat strategist Bob Beckel said on Fox News Channel that "a dead man can't leak stuff." This month, "specific information" prompted Assange to scrap a dramatic London balcony address to celebrate WikiLeaks' 10th anniversary.

[See also: As WikiLeaks Access to Internet is Severed, New Clinton Email Bombshell Emerges - js]

CNN Host Claims It’s ILLEGAL For Public To View WikiLeaks Emails

CNN’s Chris Cuomo told viewers it is illegal for them to possess emails leaked by the website WikiLeaks, and as a result they could not read them and had to rely entirely on the media to learn about their content.

In the clip, Cuomo opens a segment on leaked emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s inbox by warning viewers they have to get all their information about the emails from the media, and nowhere else. If they try to check out the emails themselves, Cuomo warns, they’re breaking the law.

Aide Planted Anti-Bank Comments in One Paid Clinton Speech to Throw Reporters Off the Scent

A top aide calculatingly inserted a passage critical of the financial industry into one of Hillary Clinton’s many highly-paid speeches to big banks, “precisely for the purpose of having something we could show people if ever asked what she was saying behind closed doors for two years to all those fat cats,” he wrote in an email  posted by Wikileaks.

In late November 2015, campaign speechwriter Dan Schwerin wrote an email to other top aides floating the idea of leaking that passage, which had come in a speech Clinton gave to Deutsche Bank in October 2014 in return for $260,000.

“I wrote her a long riff about economic fairness and how the financial industry has lost its way,” for that purpose, Schwerin wrote. “Perhaps at some point there will be value in sharing this with a reporter and getting a story written. Upside would be that when people say she’s too close to Wall Street and has taken too much money from bankers, we can point to evidence that she wasn’t afraid to speak truth to power.” ...

The leak never happened, and the speech remained secret until one hacked Podesta email turned out to include an 80-page list of what the campaign viewed as potentially damaging excerpts from Clinton’s paid speeches.

Brazil's Social Movements Planning General Strike for November

Striking Harvard dining hall workers arrested amid protest over pay

Four hundred people gathered in Harvard Square on Friday, cheering as 11 protesting dining hall workers and union officials were arrested for allegedly blocking traffic.

Seven hundred and fifty members of the Unite Here Local 26 union began their strike after four months of negotiations over wages and healthcare. More protests are planned for Monday. Students plan a class walk-out.

Harvard has an endowment of $37.6bn, the largest in the US. Last week, the school announced a $10m study, funded by a family foundation, which will in part go toward researching poverty.

Most of the striking employees work eight months of the year because of student recesses, making an average hourly wage of $21.89, or $33,839 a year, according to the university. The union says workers are paid closer to $20 per hour, and that employees who work all year should receive $35,000.

The irony of the situation is not lost. More than a thousand alumni have signed a pledge that “until workers settle a fair contract, we withhold all gifts to Harvard University and affiliates”.

Food delivery worker Any Montoya was one of the 11 protesters arrested. She said she acted for “the healthcare. It will affect me on everything.” Kecia Pugh, a general service worker who has spent 14 years at Harvard and suffers from chronic diabetes, said: “We’re fighting for our healthcare to be left alone.”

D.C. Hivemind Mulls How Clinton Can Pass Huge Corporate Tax Cut

Treating the whole voting thing as a formality, serious political players are now pondering how exactly President Hillary Clinton can pass what Sen. Elizabeth Warren has called “a giant wet kiss for tax dodgers.” ...

Peter Orszag, a top Obama economic official before he left to cash in with Citigroup, just wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times on how to make the wet kiss happen. ...

Unfortunately, writes Orszag, there are “misguided” Democrats “on the left” who could thwart her. So, he says, she should quiet down the troublesome Warren wing of the party by giving them a little of what they want — and not appoint Wall Street and corporate executives to oversee their own industries. Orszag believes this will give Clinton space to maneuver on actual policy.

And what is that policy that Orszag wants?

American multinational corporations are currently holding $2.4 trillion in profits overseas. ...

First, they want a special tax rate for the $2.4 trillion when it’s brought back to the U.S. As Orszag puts it, there is “bipartisan agreement” that it should be “well below the statutory 35 per cent.” ... Second, they want to create a new, permanent tax rate for overseas profits that’s as close to zero as possible. ... Third, they want to slash the 35 percent corporate tax rate on their domestic profits.

[See article for gory details of how the 1%er fixers like Orszag propose to trade a little funding for Clinton's infrastructure proposals for a permanent tax holiday for any money that they can define as foreign-earned. - js]

Media to Voters: Drop Dead, We're Getting Hillary Elected

Everybody knew it, and now it's being confirmed by the emails that are being dumped: The media are a wing of the Democratic Party and are doing all they can to rig the election for Hillary Clinton.

A profession that at one time prided itself on the pursuit of evenhanded truth took a turn some time ago. Eventually, the media's mask of objectivity and balance began to slip. Now it's completely off, revealing one ugly mug of bias.

Let's start with the New York Times, that Gray Lady with a heart black with dishonesty. Emails released by WikiLeaks show that Times reporter Mark Leibovich allowed the Clinton campaign to decide which quotations from Clinton that he could and couldn't use in his Times-published work. ...

Then there's John Harwood, the Times contributor and CNBC correspondent who moderated the Republican presidential debate one year ago. He provided the Clinton camp with tips and bragged about how good it felt to provoke Donald Trump during the debate.

[There are plenty more details in the article. - js]

I am shocked, shocked I tell you...

Hacked emails raise possibility of Clinton Foundation ethics breach

Hacked emails published by Wikileaks this week appear to show Qatar pledging to donate $1 million to Hillary Clinton's family's charitable foundation, despite her promise to curb new donations by foreign governments while U.S. secretary of state.

In an email from 2012, a senior official from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation informs colleagues that a planned donation by Qatar's government to mark Bill Clinton's birthday came up in a meeting he had with the Gulf state's ambassador in Washington.

The ambassador said that he asked "to see WJC 'for five minutes' in NYC, to present $1 million check that Qatar promised for WJC's birthday in 2011," Amitabh Desai, the foundation official, writes in his email, using the former U.S. president's initials.

Hillary Clinton, who is the Democratic nominee for the Nov. 8 presidential election, served as secretary of state from 2009 until 2013. ...

The emails released by Wikileaks do not appear to confirm whether Qatar gave the promised $1 million, although the foundation's website lists the State of Qatar as having given at least that amount. There is no date listed for the donation. A spokesman for the foundation declined to confirm the donation.

Reuters could not rule out the possibility the $1 million was intended as a birthday present for Clinton personally, not for the foundation. His spokesman did not respond to questions.

Pfffttt!!!

Trump calls for pre-debate drug tests, says Clinton enhanced her performance

If Hillary Clinton seemed energetic at the start of the last presidential debate, that’s probably because she’s taking performance-enhancing drugs, according to her Republican opponent Donald Trump, who called for drug tests before Wednesday’s presidential debate in Las Vegas.

“I think she’s actually getting pumped, you want to know the truth? She’s getting pumped up,” Trump said, speaking at a campaign event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Saturday.

Trump surrogate Roger Stone says Julian Assange isn't done with the Democrats yet.

Veteran Republican strategist and Donald Trump surrogate Roger Stone claims he has “backchannel” communications with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, and that the most “devastating” bombshells in a series of leaks from the site are yet to come.

Speaking at a conference for John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists on Sunday in Kenner, Louisiana, Stone indicated that Media Matters for America, a politically progressive media watchdog group, would be exposed next, along with the group’s founder, David Brock, and political commentator Brit Hume. “More about them next week because some of their internal workings are going to be exposed,” Stone said.

He also said that last week’s email dump containing hacked correspondence from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, was “small potatoes” compared to what’s to come.

“I don’t know exactly what [Assange] has. I don’t know when he intends to drop it,” Stone said. “But what I do know is that it’s devastating.”

Filmmaker Arrested At Pipeline Protest Facing 45 Years In Felony Charges

A documentarian arrested while filming an oil pipeline protest on Tuesday has been charged with three felony conspiracy charges ― and could face decades in prison if convicted.

Deia Schlosberg, the producer of the upcoming documentary “How to Let Go of the World and Love All Things Climate Can’t Change,” was detained while filming a protest against TransCanada’s Keystone Pipeline in Walhalla, North Dakota. Activists at the event, associated with the group Climate Direct Action, shut down the pipeline, which carries oil from Canadian tar sands to the U.S, for about seven hours.

Two of the protestors, Michael Foster and Samuel Jessup, were also charged and Schlosberg’s equipment and footage from the event was confiscated. Schlosberg said shortly after being released on bond that she couldn’t comment on her arrest until she spoke to a lawyer.

She has been charged with three felonies: conspiracy to theft of property, conspiracy to theft of services and conspiracy to tampering with or damaging a public service. Together, the charges carry 45 years in maximum prison sentences.

Josh Fox, the director of the film and two others related to fossil fuels, including the Academy Award-nominated “Gasland,” said Schlosberg wasn’t participating in the protest herself but acting as filmmaker to document the event. Her arrest appears to reflect a “deliberate” targeting of reporters, he said.

Winona LaDuke & Tara Houska on the Indigenous Resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline

Petroleum Disaster in the Great Bear Rainforest

Outrage is the only word for what people are feeling after a tug and fuel barge, owned by Texas-based Kirby Offshore Marine, crashed on rocks in the heart of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest on October 13. It’s been leaking 200,000 litres (59, 024 gallons) of diesel fuel into the sensitive marine ecosystem ever since.

The 30-metre Nathan E. Stewart tug was pushing the empty fuel barge DBL 55 south from Alaska where it had dropped off its petroleum cargo of 52,000 barrels of oil. It was operating without a local pilot in the complicated waters of the spectacular Inside Passage.

Only three weeks ago, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William and Kate Middleton, had visited the Great Bear Rainforest near Bella Bella, B.C. and were hosted there by the Heiltsuk First Nation, who have extensive clam, herring, salmon and other fisheries in the region now threatened by the sunken tug’s oil slick.

The Great Bear Rainforest is the largest remaining tract of intact temperate rainforest in the world. It is home to Sandhill cranes, grizzly bears, grey wolves, humpback and orca whales, giant conifers, every species of wild salmon, and many other wild species.

Ingmar Lee, an environmental activist who owns a popular eco-tourism business called C’idawai Point Cabins near Bella Bella, told me by email on Oct. 16 that there is “a veritable holocaust of helicopters flying over our house here at first light this morning. Texas personnel are out there shovelling money in any direction they can.”

Meanwhile, “there are a large number of huge vessels languishing around on-scene, trying desperately to look busy, as though they’re doing something, anything,” and a dozen people are deploying pads and stringing booms “which are utterly useless in containing the damage.”

Nearly 200 nations have agreed on a crucial deal to limit a potent greenhouse gas

Nearly 200 countries agreed Saturday to the early phase-out of a potent greenhouse gas that is projected to warm the planet 0.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

At a UN conference in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, negotiators reached a deal to amend the nearly 30-year-old Montreal Protocol to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are synthetic chemicals used in fridges and air conditioners. HFCs weren’t included in the sweeping Paris climate agreement signed earlier this year.

Unlike the Paris deal which included broad pledges to cut emissions and are voluntary, the Rwanda deal covers a single pollutant and is legally binding. ...

The United States and European Union nations will freeze production and consumption of HFCs by 2018, while China, Brazil and all of Africa will freeze their HFC use by 2024. A group of the world’s hottest countries including India, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, will have the most lenient schedule, freezing HFC use by 2028.

[For more on this story, see: Greenhouse Gas Deal a Good Step, But Not Nearly Enough: Scientists - js]

Antarctic marine reserves deal within reach as Russia thaws environmental stance

An international agreement to protect some of Antarctica’s unique and pristine marine ecosystems could be reached within a fortnight, with scientists and conservationists hopeful of a breakthrough after five years of failed negotiations.

If an agreement is reached, it would represent the first time a marine protected area was established in international waters by consensus. Russia has consistently blocked the agreement, with China also scuppering the deal each year until 2015.

This year there are signs Russia, which is chairing the meeting for the second year in a row, is prepared to make a deal to protect the Ross Sea and possibly East Antarctica.

“There has been a lot of movement within Russia for more environmental awareness – coming from high up in the Putin government,” said Andrea Kavanagh, director of Antarctic and Southern Ocean work at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

In the past year, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s former chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, has been appointed special presidential representative for environmental protection, ecology and transport, and Ivanov has increased protection to waters around the Arctic.

Florida faces worst orange harvest crisis in a century

[Florida's] orange trees, which are mostly used to produce juice, have been devastated by disease and hurricanes, causing harvest totals to fall for five successive seasons. The US Department of Agriculture this week predicted that the 2016 harvest would amount to just 70m boxes of oranges, a 14% drop on last year and a huge decline from bountiful days at the turn of this century when more than 230m boxes, each containing 90lb of fruit, were produced each year.

The orange crop devastation began in 2005 when a bacterium that causes huanglongbing – better known as citrus greening or HLB disease – was found in southern Florida. Since then, the Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny flying insect which transmits the disease, has been blown across Florida by various hurricanes, which also brought down orange trees.

Farmers have spent more than $100m on research into ways to combat the disease, but so far scientists are stumped.

“Farmers are giving up on oranges altogether,” said Judith Ganes, president of the commodities research firm J Ganes Consulting. “Normally after a freeze or a hurricane [which both kill lots of trees], the growers would replant 100% of their plants.

“But the disease has been spread all over by hurricanes, and made it totally uncontrollable. Farmers are giving up and turning to other crops or turning land over to housing.”

Climate change could drive 122m more people into extreme poverty by 2030

Up to 122 million more people worldwide could be living in extreme poverty by 2030 as a result of climate change and its impacts on small-scale farmers’ incomes, a major UN report warned on Monday.

Climate change is “a major and growing threat to global food security”, said the report, warning that it could increase the global population living in extreme poverty by between 35 and 122 million by 2030, with farming communities in sub-Saharan Africa among the hardest hit.

The 2016 State of Food and Agriculture report, published by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), calls for “deep transformations in agriculture and food systems” and for the world’s half-billion small-scale farms to receive particular support.

The report warns that without “widespread adoption of sustainable land, water, fisheries and forestry practices, global poverty cannot be eradicated”.

It adds that action must also be taken to reduce farming’s own contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Putin’s Response Options To U.S. Cyber Attack

New technology may soon resurrect the sharing economy in a very radical form

Chris Hedges: Donald Trump, The Dress Rehearsal for Fascism

'People are sick of politics': how the US election left Reno divided and silenced

Hillary Clinton’s Encryption Proposal Was “Impossible,” Said Top Adviser

'I'm no threat' – will Obama pardon one of the world's longest-serving political prisoners?

Environmental Official Shot Dead in Brazil as Attacks on Land Defenders Rise in Latin America

Barrett Brown: I Am Fully Capable of Entertaining Myself in Prison for Decades If Need Be

A Little Night Music

Elmore James - Standing At The Crossroads

Elmore James - It hurts me too

Elmore James - Shake Your Moneymaker

Elmore James - One Way Out

Elmore James - Something Inside of Me

Elmore James - Got to Move

Elmore James - Done Somebody Wrong

Elmore James and the Broomdusters - Please Find My Baby

Elmore James - Fine Little Mama