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This evening's music features Chicago blues singer and guitarist Eddie C. Campbell. Enjoy!

"Don't overestimate the decency of the human race."

-- H. L. Mencken

News and Opinion

Classified Files Could Exonerate Former Gitmo Detainee Now Imprisoned in Morocco

Two more prisoners have left Guantanamo Bay in the last week, a sign of the Obama administration’s piecemeal efforts to empty  the prison before the end of his presidency.

But one of those men, a  47-year-old named Younous Chekkouri, has not received a warm welcome in his native Morocco. On arrival he was detained by Moroccan authorities and now may face terrorism-related charges. Last night, Chekkouri’s lawyers learned he had been moved to Salé prison, a facility that has been singled out by human rights groups for torture of detainees. ...

In federal habeas corpus proceedings, the government ended up withdrawing many of its claims against Chekkouri, and in 2010, an interagency review recommended him for transfer out of Guantanamo. But much of the material from the habeas proceedings is still secret, under seal in the District Court in Washington D.C.

Cori Crider, Chekourri’s attorney from the human rights group Reprieve, says that those court filings contain information that would help prove his innocence.

“What my client is now potentially facing is some kind of Groundhog Day from hell,” said Crider. “He faces a ‘trial’ in Morocco on the basis of the selfsame allegations that, when tested in federal court in his Gitmo habeas case, collapsed.”

Reprieve began asking the U.S. government to declassify files from the habeas case in 2009, and in 2011, presented a “priority list” of thirteen documents for declassification. In the nearly four years since, the government has released only one of the requested files.

The public deserves to know what the CIA did in its name

In January, Barack Obama’s administration announced what seemed to be a major change in policy: Henceforth, former prisoners of the Central Intelligence Agency would be allowed to describe their life in custody. ... Attorneys for Majid Khan, a former CIA prisoner, promptly sought permission to disclose his description of his torture. Among other abuses, he was subjected to what the CIA euphemistically calls rectal infusions but what prosecutors all over the country call anal rape.

After some back and forth, the government allowed Khan’s lawyers to release his account to the public. Reuters published the account, and for the next 24 hours, the article was one of the most popular stories on Reuters’ 17 websites worldwide, which gives some indication of the public interest in this information.

And that was apparently the end of the administration’s very brief dalliance with transparency.

My colleagues and I represent Zain Abidin Mohammed Husain Abu Zubaydah, who was the first person subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. ... Abu Zubaydah’s treatment was considerably more brutal than Khan’s and went on for a substantially longer period. The public already knows he was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002 alone. In fact, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Abu Zubaydah’s torture was so appalling that when it began, seasoned CIA agents asked to be transferred rather than be forced to watch it take place. It was sufficiently grotesque that the CIA sought assurances that his treatment would never come to light and that he would be held incommunicado for the rest of his life.

And that is precisely why it should be known. Four people represent Abu Zubaydah. We are among the few people in the world who know what happened to him at the CIA black sites. And the facts of his treatment would make people sick. Literally physically sick. In response to the new rule, we submitted 136 pages of notes and drawings in 17 submissions — some written by us, most by our client. In these pages, Abu Zubaydah described in great detail the treatment and conditions he endured. ... The government authorized us to release a grand total of four pages.

The Pope Mutes Message in Congress Speech

Pope Decries “Shameful and Culpable Silence” on Arms Sales “Drenched in Innocent Blood”

Pope Francis on Thursday gently scolded Congress on a variety of issues, from immigration to foreign policy, but on one unexpected topic — the weapons sales that fuel armed conflicts around the world — he couldn’t have been much more blunt:

Here we have to ask ourselves: Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.

Those were fighting words, especially given where he spoke them. The U.S. is by far the largest arms supplier in the world, with domestic manufacturers selling more than $23.7 billion in weapons in 2014 to nearly 100 different countries. During the Obama administration, weapons sales have surged to record levels, in large part due to huge shipments to Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia.

The weapons sales to Saudi Arabia include cluster bombs and other munitions being used to hit densely populated areas, schools, and even a camp for displaced people in Yemen.

And a healthy chunk of those arms sales — especially to Israel and Egypt — are heavily subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer.

Congress, which could have blocked any of this, went along happily — in no small part because of the approximately $150 million a year the defense industry spends on lobbying and direct campaign contributions.

Pope Francis Urges U.S. Congress to End Arms Trade & Open Doors to Immigrants

Yazidi Groups Plead With International Criminal Court to Prosecute ‘Genocide’ by Islamic State

Activists with Yazidi rights groups are urging the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the atrocities committed by Islamic State militants against the religious minority in Iraq as acts of genocide.

Members of Yazda International and Free Yazidi Foundation, backed by the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq (KRG), met with ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda today to present their new report outlining how IS fighters have slaughtered, enslaved, and raped thousands of Yazidis since it invaded their communities in the Nineveh province in northern Iraq last August. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls remain captive as sex slaves among IS militants.

These acts of violence committed by IS fighters against the Yazidis and other non-Muslim minorities in the region have been documented before. But Murad Ismael, co-founder of Yazda, told VICE News his group's report provides further evidence of abuses against Yazidis at the hands of foreign fighters. According to the report, there's an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 people from Australia, Jordan, Europe, and beyond fighting for IS. ...

"Foreign fighters have been heavily involved in the sex trade of Yazidi women and girls. And that means that the ICC and the rest of the international community should not ignore the ways they are subjecting the Yazidis to very inhuman and barbaric acts," Ismael said from The Hague. "This report provides new information and context for the role of foreign fighters, who hold high ranking positions within IS, and shows that the court should hold them accountable for their crimes." ...

The court's former prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, who helped the Yazidi activists with their submission and has launched high-profile ICC investigations, told Reuters earlier this month that the treatment of the Yazidis was clearly genocide. "It's difficult to predict who will be prosecuted because this is the beginning," he said. "It's up to us to provide information that allows the ICC to understand, yes, we have jurisdiction in this case in this way."

Saudis Seek to Fend Off U.N. Inquiry on Yemen

As Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies pressed their military offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen, Saudi diplomats were waging their own battle to fend off calls in the United Nations Human Rights Council for an international inquiry into abuses by all parties to the Yemeni conflict.

Those calls came in a council resolution submitted Thursday by the Netherlands, with support from a group of mainly Western countries, that requests the United Nations high commissioner for human rights send a mission to Yemen.

The Dutch resolution draws on deepening international alarm over the civilian toll inflicted by both sides in the conflict and the effect of a blockade imposed by the Saudi-led coalition that has delayed delivery of humanitarian aid, including medicine and the fuel needed to keep the dwindling number of hospitals operating.

At least 1,527 civilians were killed and an additional 3,548 injured between late March and the end of June, the human rights commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said last week when he presented a report that recommended an international inquiry into actions that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The report blamed both the Houthi rebels, who emerged from Yemen’s north and who last September seized the capital, Sana, and the Saudi-led coalition for indiscriminate attacks, but it pinned responsibility for most of the casualties on coalition airstrikes.

Other United Nations estimates put the toll even higher.

Syria Claims Tacit Deal Between US, Russia on Ending War

In an interview on Syrian state media today, top Syrian government adviser Bouthaina Shaaban claimed that there is a “tacit agreement” between the US and Russia on coming to some sort of agreeing on the ongoing civil war, and that some sort of negotiated settlement could happen soon.

The Russian government has been making claims to this effect for months, but the latest comments come just a day after State Department officials publicly disavowed the notion and condemned Russia, suggesting they oppose the Russian strategy of negotiated settlement unless it includes unilateral surrender of the Assad government. ...

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Pentagon officials are now talking up the idea that there are “overlaps” of interest between the US and Russia on Syria, suggesting the two sides could work together. They also, however, talked up the need for a “transition” to a new pro-US government.

Netanyahu Meets Putin Looking for Existential Threat to Israel

West, Turkey Warm to the Idea of Talks With Syria’s Assad

The latest round of comments from Western officials could be summed up as “Bashar Assad has to go, but,” with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former Assad ally turned outspoken Assad opponent, saying that the “process” by which Assad is eventually removed from power could give Assad a role, even though “nobody envisages a future” where he isn’t gone eventually.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel similarly insisted any talks about Syria should realistically include Assad, saying the West has to speak with all actors in the region if they want to accomplish anything. That Merkel didn’t include the requisite number of “Assad must go” comments in her speech sparked some backlash, with suggestions that any talks involving Assad would mean no rebels would participate. Which is true primarily because the Western nations that have been backing those rebels keep telling them not to participate.

Obama is in the lead in the contest to determine which world leader is the biggest dick-waving idiot.

White House: Next Week’s Planned Meeting Proves Putin ‘Desperate’

US, Russia Both Insist Talks Were the Other Side's Idea

With US-Russia relations struggling, the fact that the meeting is happening at all is a matter of a lot of dispute, with both sides insisting that the meeting was the idea of the other nation, and that their respective leader could really care less if they met at all.

The White House went so far in their narrative to claim that Putin’s offer of talks wafts of “desperation” and that it took several requests to get Obama to agree, something he only did on the notion that US interests could be “advanced” in some way by the meeting.

The two sides don’t really agree on what they’re going to be talking about, either, with the Russian government suggesting the focus would be on the huge war going on in Syria and the growing amount of territory ISIS controls there, while the White House insists that they just want to talk about Ukraine, even though the war there has been in a ceasefire for over half a year.

Live from New York, It’s ‘Putin the Great’

It’s the ultimate geopolitical cliffhanger of the season: will US President Barack Obama finally decide to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, either this Friday or during the UN General Assembly next week in New York? ...

Putin is bound to deliver a showstopper at the UN. Spare a thought for the Obama administration’s foreign policy ‘muppets’, including the neocon cell at the State Department. Putin, under the glare of global public opinion, will frame the absolute defeat of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh as the key geopolitical issue of these times; he will commit Russia to it; and he will propose for the “West” to join in.

Scenario 1: Washington and its EU minions decide to support the Russian drive, or at least have the US-led coalition of dodgy opportunists work side-by-side with Russia – and Iran. This means helping Damascus to win a real war against (“Caliphate”) terror. “Assad must go” may even go afterwards. But he’ll go as a winner. The Obama administration – as well as Sultan Erdogan, Qatar, the House of Saud – will be held responsible all across the world for prolonging a tragedy that could have been resolved in 2012. And Russia will be recognized as the ultimate defender of civilization against barbarism.

Scenario 2: Washington and the EU minions refuse to act side-by-side with Russia, and continue relying on the appalling performance of the coalition of the dodgy opportunists – for instance, as in Erdogan bombing Kurds and not ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, and the French staging puny airstrikes invoking “self-defense” (I’m not making this up; it’s the official Elysée Palace version.) The whole world will interpret it for what it is; the NATO-GCC combo is not really interested in smashing the Salafi-jihadis. Imagine the cataclysmic diplomatic/geopolitical fallout of five years of NATO-GCC enabling hardcore jihadis.

And there’s of course the coda; if the Syrian Arab Army/Russian military push against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh works, guess who’ll take the credit.

So Putin wins on both scenarios. Forget about the relentless demonization, the new Hitler-Stalin memes. ‘Putin The Great’ will be no less than a Slavic Perseus – the slayer of the jihadi Medusa.

'Strategy on taking ISIS is flawed, no progress after year of bombing'

Giving Up the Global-Cop Badge

World War II left no power standing other than the United States. Washington was in a unique position to lead “the free world” against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. But after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the U.S. found its true moment in the sun, perceiving its new emergence as the “sole global superpower.”

Prestige, respect, economic and cultural “soft power” had all been originally vital complements to American military superpowermanship. But 9/11 eclipsed all that. In today’s world the U.S. has increasingly diverted its true national and international voice into the field of national security, where military means become the prime instrument of statesmanship and diplomacy. The State Department is now largely overwhelmed by the Pentagon in the formulation of foreign policy. ...

This souped-up security role is likewise the chosen instrument for explicit assertion of American global dominance, or “global leadership” — nominally giving us the dominant voice in determining the “architecture of the global order.” Those whose actions defy that architecture have been labeled “rogue.”

And this global security burden accordingly led us into extravagant expenditure of our own treasure and the spilling of blood of upwards of a million people directly or indirectly in recent military arenas — nearly all Muslim.

But where do these costs come up in what passes for national debate on foreign policy? Are we perhaps still jealously guarding a role in which there are no other willing competitors? In a situation where other nations prefer to seek their global prestige in other terms? And, as we focus on preserving our national security power, are others perhaps starting to eat our lunch in other arenas? ...

It would be sad if American talents have now become primarily relegated to the security and military field. Such goals are eating up our country, raising our opportunity costs, stifling it in crushing and muscle-bound national security institutions whose growing weight, cost and power dominate the foreign policy field. ... Is it naïve to suggest maybe we should be cooperating internationally in helping build a new global economic infrastructure? Roads, hospitals, schools, clinics, industries — as the best security investment for the present trillions now spent on military and security-related institutions and projects — especially in the face of the gathering global refugee tsunami? Otherwise we are opening the field to the Chinese and even Russians who are not even seeking to compete in our chosen policeman tasks, confident that we are likely making their quest for influence all the easier.

"Peace is bad for business"

Egypt Just Agreed To Buy Two Giant French Warships Originally Promised To Russia

Two warships built in France and initially promised to Russia will be sold to Egypt, French President François Hollande announced Wednesday.

After agreeing to the purchase of 24 French-made Rafale fighter jets back in February, Egypt is fast becoming one of the French defense industry's top clients. The contract with Egypt will also help soften the blow of the failed deal with Russia, which was called off earlier this year at the end of a long-running diplomatic saga.

"I agreed the price and conditions of this sale with [Egyptian] President [Abdel Fattah] Al-Sisi," said Hollande. "France will ensure the delivery of these ships without losing anything and will make sure Egypt is protected."

The two Mistral warships are scheduled to be delivered to Egypt in March 2016. French and Egyptian officials have negotiated a 950 million euro ($1.06 billion) price tag — the amount France agreed to reimburse to Russia after it pulled the plug on the deal this year.

Catalonia goes to the polls in an 'incredible moment for democracy'

Long before the spectre of Catalan independence began to dominate Spain’s political discourse, the small hamlet of Gallifa, population 215, had already broken away from the motherland. ... On Sunday, Spain will get a glimpse of how far the movement that first took root in small villages such as Gallifa has spread, as Catalans cast their votes in a regional election billed as a quasi-referendum on independence.

The results could launch Spain into uncharted territory and plunge the country into one of its deepest political crises of recent years, as Madrid squares off against an openly secessionist government of a region that accounts for 16% of Spain’s population and a fifth of its economic output.

With polls suggesting pro-independence parties could gain a slim majority on Sunday, a barrage of warnings was unleashed this week by those opposed to independence.

Spain’s central bank said secession would risk exclusion from the eurozone, while the country’s main banks – including two based in the region – cautioned that independence could undermine financial stability just as the country was beginning to shake off the lingering effects of the economic crisis. ...

“Catalans aren’t being told the real consequences of independence,” the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, told Onda Cero radio station on Tuesday. “It would leave the EU. What would happen with pensions? There are many more pensioners than contributors. What would happen with financial institutions, with bank deposits, to the currency?”

In recent years, his conservative People’s party (PP) has repeatedly blocked demands by Catalonia to hold a referendum on independence, insisting that Spain’s constitution precludes regions from unilaterally making decisions on sovereignty.

The Catalan leader Artur Mas, who has vowed to begin the process of breaking off from Spain if his Junts pel Sí (Together for Yes) party wins a majority of seats on Sunday, lashed out at the “strategy of fear” being used to counter the push for independence. “It is irresponsible and indecent to issue threats that nobody in a democratic country would dare voice,” he said. “They do it because they have no other arguments.”

Janet Yellen expects Federal Reserve to raise interest rates by end of year

Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen has made clear that she expects US interest rates to be raised from their current record low before the end of the year.

In an extensive 40-page speech Yellen set out the case for raising rates – for the first since 2006 – as she expects inflation will gradually move up to the Fed’s target rate of 2% as the unusually low oil price rises and strong dollar weakens.

“I anticipate that it will likely be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate sometime later this year and to continue boosting short-term rates at a gradual pace thereafter as the labor market improves further and inflation moves back to our 2% objective,” she said during a speech in Amherst, Massachusetts, on Thursday.

Her comments come just a week after Fed policymakers voted to keep interest rates at near-zero – where they have been since the 2008 financial crisis – and she warned that the US economy was not yet strong enough to withstand “recent global economic and financial developments” following a worldwide markets slump due to concerns about the health of the Chinese economy.

On Thursday Yellen suggested that the current global economic weakness will not be “significant” enough to alter the Fed’s plans to raise its key short-term rate from zero by December.

Markets Gone Mad

Until recently, stocks had been on a tear that pushed valuations into the stratosphere. Volatility stayed low because Bernanke’s easy money and QE made investors more placid, serene and mellow. They ventured further out on the risk curve and took more chances because they were convinced that the Fed “had their back” and that there was nothing to worry about.

Then things began to fall apart. The Fed ended its asset purchase program and started talking about “normalization”, an opaque term the Fed uses to avoid the harsher sounding “rate hikes.” This is what began to rouse investors from their drug-induced trance. The era of cheap money was coming to an end. The punch bowl was being taken away.

Then– just as the Fed’s surging liquidity had calmed the markets for six years– the absence of liquidity and high-frequency trading sent stocks gyrating wildly for months on end. The markets became unpredictable, convulsive, topsy-turvy. And while rates remained fixed at zero throughout, the mere anticipation of higher rates was enough to ignite a sustained period of extreme volatility unlike anything traders had ever seen before. By taking its foot off the gas pedal and trying to restore traditional market dynamics, the Fed had slammed the vehicle into reverse unleashing pandemonium across global markets.

Naturally, the pundits tried to blame the mayhem on China or emerging markets or droopy commodities prices or even deflation. But it’s all baloney. The source of the problem is the Fed’s easy money policies, that’s what created the disconnect between valuations and fundamentals, that’s what sent stock prices to the moon, and that’s what inflated this ginormous stock-and-bond bubble that is just now beginning to unwind. China might have been the trigger, but it’s certainly not the cause. ...

The Fed knows what’s going on but just looks the other way. They know their easy money isn’t building a strong, sustainable recovery. They know it’s being used to beef up leverage on risky bets so dodgy speculators can make a killing. They know it all, but they don’t give a rip. They just want to keep the game going a little bit longer, that’s all that matters to them. Heck, maybe Yellen has convinced herself that she can pull a rabbit out of her hat at the last minute and save us all from disaster? It’s possible, but I doubt it. I think she knows we’re goners. The economy is soft, the markets are zig-zagging wildly, and the whole bloody contraption looks like it’s ready to blow. She must know that the game is just about over.

House speaker John Boehner to resign from Congress in October

John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives and a congressman from Ohio for three decades, has announced he will resign from his seat next month.

The Republican leader announced his resignation to a party meeting on Friday morning, where he told his members he didn’t want to become “the issue” amid reports of conservative infighting.

Boehner has been under intense pressure from House conservatives, who have repeatedly threatened to stage a coup against the speaker and expressed dissatisfaction with his leadership in high-profile fights on Capitol Hill.

A shadowproof government

Sanders Takes Biden-Proof Lead over Clinton in New Hampshire

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders now boasts the support of nearly half of those who say they plan to vote in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation Democratic primary next year, and his lead over national front-runner Hillary Clinton has widened to 16 points, according to a new poll from CNN/WMUR-New Hampshire.

Forty-six percent of poll (pdf) respondents said that if the primary were held today, they would support Vermont Sen. Sanders, while just 30 percent said they back former Secretary of State Clinton. Another 14 percent say they would support Vice President Joe Biden, 2 percent like former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, 1 percent go for former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, and less than half of 1 percent back former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee or Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig. ...

What's more, CNN explains, Sanders maintains a solid advantage even if Biden decides not to run:

In most recent national polling, assessments of the Democratic race without Biden have boosted Clinton's standing well above that of Sanders, but in New Hampshire, Biden's backers aren't enough to push Clinton back to the top of the field. Though Clinton picks up more of Biden's supporters than Sanders when they are reallocated to their second choice, Sanders maintains control of the race, holding 49% to Clinton's 36%.

NSA head: Clinton server a 'priority' target for foreign agencies

The head of the National Security Agency told a Senate Committee on Thursday that Hillary Clinton’s former email setup would be an “opportunity” for the U.S. if it had been used by a top foreign diplomat.

“From a foreign intelligence perspective, that would represent opportunity,” Adm. Michael Rogers testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The server would be a “top priority for foreign intelligence services,” Rogers agreed in response to a question from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

The comments are only likely to deepen the political trouble for Clinton, the former secretary of State whose “home-brew” email setup has threatened to engulf her campaign for the White House.

Legislator Says Gift Ban Violates His Freedom of Speech

The Supreme Court, in its Citizens United decision, ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts in elections. Now politicians in Kentucky are claiming they have a Constitutional right to receive gifts from lobbyists.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Republican Kentucky state Sen. John Schickel, along with two Libertarian political candidates, are suing to overturn state ethics laws, claiming that the campaign contribution limit of $1,000 and a ban on gifts from lobbyists and their employers are a violation of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The lawsuit notes that lobbyists and the employers of lobbyists are prohibited by Kentucky law from inviting legislators to parties, offering gifts, or paying for food for legislators. “This infringes on the legislator’s, lobbyist’s, and employer of lobbyist’s right to freedom of association, and freedom of speech,” Schickel claims in the suit.

Pope Francis at UN: pontiff declares 'right of the environment'

Pope Francis now forcefully declares that “a true ‘right of the environment’ does exist for two reasons” – in part because humans themselves are a part of the nature and thus must respect it.

First, because we human beings are part of the environment. We live in communion with it, since the environment itself entails ethical limits which human actions must acknowledge and respect.

Man, for all his remarkable gifts, which ‘are signs of a uniqueness which transcends the spheres of physics and biology’, is at the same time a portion of these spheres. He possesses a body shaped by physical, chemical and biological elements, and can only survive and develop if the ecological environment is favorable. Any harm done to the environment, therefore, is harm done to humanity.

He then argues that all life has value and connections with other life, and that people of faith have a particular duty to respect the environment.

Second, because every creature, particularly a living creature, has an inherent value, in its existence, its life, its beauty and its interdependence with other creatures.

We Christians, together with the other monotheistic religions, believe that the universe is the fruit of a loving decision by the Creator, who permits man respectfully to use creation for the good of his fellow men and for the glory of the Creator; he is not authorized to abuse it, much less to destroy it. In all religions, the environment is a fundamental good.

The audience applauds.

Well here you have it. In the world of pop culture, the pope has gone from smoking dope, to being a dope to just being dope in just a few short decades:

The pope is dope

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) September 24, 2015

Rallying with Pope, Climate Justice Campaigners Hail 'Shovel-Ready Solution'

An hour after Pope Francis spoke to Congress and issued "a call for a courageous and responsible effort [...] to avert the most serious effects of the environmental deterioration caused by human activity," a rally on the National Mall highlighted a "shovel-ready solution" to the climate crisis.

Speaking at the Moral Action on Climate Justice demonstratoin Thursday, Larry Kopald, co-founder and president of organization The Carbon Underground, said it's "a solution that will put carbon back in the ground, a solution that will feed us better, make us healthier, create jobs, and even boost our economy."

"What is this magic solution?" he asked. "You're standing on it [...] It's the soil." ...

Kopald explained the problem with the dominant method of food production, saying, "Industrial agriculture techniques have destroyed most of the soil. Seventy percent of the soil on earth is dead or dying, and all of that carbon that should be in the soil is now stuck in the atmosphere causing climate change." ...

The current system in which "subsidies [are given to ] to farmers using chemicals destroying our soil and causing climate change," needs to stop, Kopald continued, with the subsidies instead going "to farmers who are willing to restore our soil, and feed us better food, and help reverse climate change."

China to Implement a Cap-and-Trade System to Fight Climate Change — Is It Enough?

#FreeKaren: The Hysterical Campaign to Free Australia's Hypothetical Eco-Terrorist

The Australian government's controversial new "radicalization awareness kit" for schools, which links climate activism and alternative music with terrorism, has prompted a growing outcry by teachers and environmentalists—as well as a fitting social media response—since the booklet's publication earlier this week. ...

Among the case studies in the kit, which was distributed to teachers by the county's Ministry for Counter-Terrorism, is a hypothetical which sees a girl named Karen become involved in the "alternative music scene, student politics and left-wing activism," which leads to her becoming cut off from her family, arrested on multiple occasions, and "sabotaging logging machinery." ...

The Government Just Created A Fictional, Alternative-Music Loving Terrorist: http://t.co/3Lv45vuWAZ #FreeKaren pic.twitter.com/EClF3rLAx6

— BuzzFeedOz Politics (@BuzzFeedOzPol) September 25, 2015

Counter-Terrorism Minister Michael Keenan said the booklet was intended to combat the indoctrination of youth by extremist groups like the Islamic State (ISIS) and help teachers understand the "radicalization process"—but just as the environmental example spurred outrage among climate activists, Keenan's other argument didn't sit well with educators.

"I think it's a fairly cynical move by the Federal Government not to make anyone feel safer but to engender fear and intolerance," Maurie Mulheron, president of the New South Wales Teachers' Federation, told ABC Australia. The federal government has "a track record now of trying to engender division within the community on these issues and I don't think that what they're proposing will make one iota of difference." ...

Along with blowback from teachers and activists, the kit's outlandish scenarios also prompted a social media campaign on behalf of the hypothetical girl whose environmentalism, the government says, led her to a life of crime, with Twitter users posting humorous messages under the hashtag #FreeKaren.

Young neighbour spending a lot of time sorting recyclables into bins. As we know now, next he'll be smuggling nukes for ISIS #FreeKaren

— The Daily Rupert (@TheMurdochTimes) September 25, 2015

Also of Interest

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

Who hates Muslims most?

We should stop saying that Europe is facing a refugee crisis

The War to End Slavery Didn’t

Among the best journalists working today and the founder of a really great news organization promoting good work, Robert Parry is to receive an I.F. Stone award.

Parry to Receive I.F. Stone Award

A Little Night Music

Eddie C. Campbell - That's when I know

Eddie C. Campbell - Devil's Walk

Eddie Campbell - Voodoo

Eddie C. Campbell & Lurrie Bell - All My Life

Eddie Campbell - All your love

Eddie C. Campbell - King of the Jungle

Eddie C. Campbell - Still a Fool

Eddie C. Campbell - The Blues Is All Right

Eddie C. Campbell - I Do

Eddie C Campbell - The Things That I Used To Do

Eddie C. Campbell - The Way You Do The Things You Do

Eddie C. Campbell - The Twist

Eddie C. Campbell - Five And A Half

Eddie C. Campbell - Busted

Eddie C. Campbell - Love Me with a Feeling