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“Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata. "People get hung up that there's a targeted list of people," he said. "It's really like we're targeting a cell phone. We're not going after people – we're going after their phones, in the hopes that the person on the other end of that missile is the bad guy.”

-- Jeremy Scahill

News and Opinion

White House Finally Releases Its “Playbook” For Killing and Capturing Terror Suspects

The Obama administration has released its internal guidelines for how it decides to kill or capture alleged terrorists around the globe, three years after they came into effect. They provide a look at the drone war bureaucracy behind hundreds of strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere, a system President Obama will hand off to his successor.

The guidelines show the process is concentrated at the White House, specifically in the National Security Council. They also describe the process for approving so-called signature strikes, where the target of the strike is not a known “high value terrorist,” but rather some other “terrorist target,” which could be a group of people exhibiting suspect behavior, or a vehicle, building or other infrastructure.

Amid all these procedural details, however, the presidential policy guidance, or “playbook,” as it has been called, does not provide new insight into when, where, and under what authorities someone can be killed, or what kind of intelligence is necessary to make that decision. ...

“This document doesn’t tell us anything new about the substantive standards that they use to determine if someone can be targeted,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU. “We’d hope that they’d fill out what they mean by ‘continuing’ and ‘imminent,’ or ‘feasible’ or ‘unfeasible.’”

In a statement, the ACLU also questioned how the document’s “relatively stringent standards can be reconciled with the accounts of eye witnesses, journalists, and human rights researches who have documented large numbers of bystander casualties” from drone strikes.

Military Success in Syria Gives Putin Upper Hand in U.S. Proxy War

The Syrian military was foundering last year, with thousands of rebel fighters pushing into areas of the country long considered to be government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful tank-destroying missiles supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia.

Intelligence assessments circulated in Washington that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was losing his grip on power.

But then the Russians arrived, bludgeoning C.I.A.-backed rebel forces with an air campaign that has sent them into retreat. And now rebel commanders, clinging to besieged neighborhoods in the divided city of Aleppo, say their shipments of C.I.A.-provided antitank missiles are drying up.

For the first time since Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Russian military for the past year has been in direct combat with rebel forces trained and supplied by the C.I.A. The American-supplied Afghan fighters prevailed during that Cold War conflict. But this time the outcome — thus far — has been different.

“Russia has won the proxy war, at least for now,” said Michael Kofman, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Russia’s battlefield successes in Syria have given Moscow, isolated by the West after its annexation of Crimea and other incursions into Ukraine, new leverage in decisions about the future of the Middle East.

Seeing Syria as a Proxy War Against Russia, US Officials Fear They’re ‘Losing’

With both sides fighting ISIS, officials have previously sought talking points complaining that Russia was doing it wrong. Lately, however, the US narrative has shifted toward ousting the Syrian government, and since Russia isn’t doing that, it’s a “proxy war.” And since Syria’s government is in a less precarious position than they were a year ago, America is “losing.”

These over-simplistic goals and interpretations of an increasingly complex war quickly break down on further analysis. The primary targets of Russia and Syria have been al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and ISIS. Nusra hasn’t lost significant ground in the year since Russia began its involvement, and if anything has gained major territory in Aleppo at the expense of minor losses in Latakia and Homs. ISIS, on the other hand, has lost territory, including around Palymra, which was indisputably the major Syrian military gain in 2016. Syrian forces have also held off ISIS advances in Deir Ezzor, strengthening their position.

In the simplistic version, Assad is stronger and that’s bad, and the CIA wants to send more missiles to rebels to change that. In reality, however, Assad’s gains are coming predominantly against ISIS, meaning effectively the US is seeing ISIS’ losses as America’s losses in this proxy war.

Underpinning this preposterous shift in priorities is the ongoing discussion of joint US-Russia coordination against Nusra Front. It’s unsurprising, given their views, that so many intelligence officials oppose this coordination. After all, if they see anti-Assad forces like ISIS as de facto US proxies, the same inevitably applies to Nusra, which is a lot closer tied to directly US-armed factions.

The Danger of Excessive Trump Bashing

The widespread disdain for Donald Trump and the fear of what his presidency might mean have led to an abandonment of any sense of objectivity by many Trump opponents and, most notably, the mainstream U.S. news media. If Trump is for something, it must be bad and must be transformed into one more club to use for hobbling his candidacy.

While that attitude may be understandable given Trump’s frequently feckless and often offensive behavior – he seems not to know basic facts and insults large swaths of the world’s population – this Trump bashing also has dangerous implications because some of his ideas deserve serious debate rather than blanket dismissal.

Amid his incoherence and insults, Trump has raised valid points on several important questions, such as the risks involved in the voracious expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders and the wisdom of demonizing Russia and its internally popular President Vladimir Putin.

Over the past several years, Washington’s neocon-dominated foreign policy establishment has pushed a stunning policy of destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia in pursuit of a “regime change” in Moscow. This existentially risky strategy has taken shape with minimal substantive debate behind a “group think” driven by anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda. (All we hear is what’s wrong with Putin and Russia: He doesn’t wear a shirt! He’s the new Hitler! Putin and Trump have a bro-mance! Russian aggression! Their athletes cheat!) ...

This new mindlessness – now justified in part to block Trump’s path to the White House – could very well set the stage for a catastrophic escalation of big-power tensions under a Hillary Clinton presidency. Former Secretary of State Clinton has already surrounded herself with neocons and liberal hawks who favor expanding the war against Syria’s government, want to ratchet up tensions with Iran, and favor shipping arms to the right-wing and virulently anti-Russian regime in Ukraine, which came to power in a 2014 coup supported by U.S. policymakers and money.

By lumping Trump’s few reasonable points together with his nonsensical comments – and making anti-Russian propaganda the only basis for any public debate – Democrats and the anti-Trump press are pushing the United States toward a conflict with Russia.

Heavy fighting in Syria continues

Syrian Forces Lost Much of Aleppo Base to Nusra, Scramble to Redeploy Forces

While yesterday’s claims that the Nusra Front (recently rebranded as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham) had “broken” the siege of Aleppo were premature, the situation on the ground does appear to be shifting dramatically, with suggestions that the key artillery academy in Aleppo has been further compromised by Nusra forces, who now hold the bulk of the compound. ...

This appears to portend a dramatic escalation in the already heavy fighting for Aleppo, with heavy airstrikes reported against Nusra forces, with speculation that Russian planes are involved, and both sides promising substantial reinforcements in the near future. ...

Aleppo was Syria’s industrial and financial capital before the civil war, and when it first became contested, the factions involved predicted that the battle would ultimately decide the war. This has proven prescient, as Aleppo’s battle has remained unresolved, as has Syria’s overall war.

Erdogan says talks with Putin to open new page in relations

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan expects talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week to open "a new page" in bilateral relations, he told the Russian news agency TASS in an interview published on Sunday.

The talks, in the city of St Petersburg, are intended to end a period of high tension after Turkey downed a Russian fighter jet near the Syrian border last November. Russia imposed trade sanctions on Turkey and the number of Russian tourists visiting the country fell by 87 percent in the first half of 2016. ...

Erdogan and Putin will focus in their talks on Tuesday on the Syria conflict, trade, energy and the resumption of Russian charter flights to Turkey.

"Without Russia's participation it's impossible to find a solution to the Syrian problem. Only in partnership with Russia will we be able to settle the crisis in Syria," Erdogan said.

Erdogan calls for return of death penalty

Black activists slam Israel lobby attack on Movement for Black Lives

The Movement for Black Lives (MBL), a coalition of more than 50 Black-led organizations, provoked the wrath of the Israel lobby earlier this week following the release of its much anticipated policy platform, “A Vision for Black Lives.”

In response, voices from inside and outside the movement are pushing back without fear, signaling the shrinking effectiveness of Israel lobby groups in framing the narrative, particularly among the younger generation of social justice activists.

In a section titled “Invest/Divest,” the MBL platform accuses the US of complicity “in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” refers to Israel as “an apartheid state” and calls for ending US military and financial aid to Israel, arguing that it “diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs” in the US.

The backlash from pro-Israel groups and media outlets was swift, with the most scathing coming from the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) in Boston, a member of a national network of communal organizations that lobby for Israel, including by supporting anti-BDS laws in state legislatures around the country.

Pro-Israel Groups Smear the Movement for Black Lives for its Solidarity With Palestine

Pro-Israel media outlets and organizations are aggressively attacking the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) for releasing a bold policy platform declaring solidarity with Palestinians forced to endure a U.S.-backed occupation.

The MBL, which describes itself as “a collective of more than 50 organizations representing thousands of Black people from across the country,” was attacked just days after its release of 40 policy proposals. The new platform takes on a broad array of issues, including demands for reparations, economic justice and “a world where those of us most impacted in our communities control the laws, institutions and policies that are meant to serve us.” The MBL also tackles U.S. war and empire, calling for a cut in military expenditures, a halt to the militarization of Africa and a stop to the violence perpetrated by the War on Terror. ...

For many in the MBL network, this issue is personal, as movement leaders have organized numerous delegations in recent years to witness human rights abuses against Palestinians firsthand. “Traveling to Palestine, one of the biggest parallels I saw was the way that Palestinian people are criminalized for defending themselves against their oppressors, just like Black people fighting oppression in the U.S. are criminalized,” Rachel Gilmer, an organizer with the civil rights organization Dream Defenders, which helped create the MBL platform, told AlterNet. “The way Palestinians are labeled as ‘terrorists,’ Black people are labeled as ‘thugs.’”

The world's best cyber army doesn’t belong to Russia

National attention is focused on Russian eavesdroppers’ possible targeting of U.S. presidential candidates and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Yet, leaked top-secret National Security Agency documents show that the Obama administration has long been involved in major bugging operations against the election campaigns -- and the presidents -- of even its closest allies.

The United States is, by far, the world’s most aggressive nation when it comes to cyberspying and cyberwarfare. The National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on foreign cities, politicians, elections and entire countries since it first turned on its receivers in 1952. Just as other countries, including Russia, attempt to do to the United States. What is new is a country leaking the intercepts back to the public of the target nation through a middleperson.

There is a strange irony in this. Russia, if it is actually involved in the hacking of the computers of the Democratic National Committee, could be attempting to influence a U.S. election by leaking to the American public the falsehoods of its leaders. This is a tactic Washington used against the Soviet Union and other countries during the Cold War.

In the 1950s, for example, President Harry S Truman created the Campaign of Truth to reveal to the Russian people the “Big Lies” of their government. Washington had often discovered these lies through eavesdropping and other espionage.

Today, the United States has morphed from a Cold War, and in some cases a hot war, into a cyberwar, with computer coding replacing bullets and bombs. Yet the American public manages to be “shocked, shocked” that a foreign country would attempt to conduct cyberespionage on the United States.

Google in the White House? Assange Warns of Close Ties Between Hillary Clinton & Internet Giant

What Julian Assange’s War on Hillary Clinton Says About WikiLeaks

In recent months, the WikiLeaks Twitter feed has started to look more like the stream of an opposition research firm working mainly to undermine Hillary Clinton than the updates of a non-partisan platform for whistleblowers.

Clinton celebrates her role in killing #Libya's head of state which led to ISIS takeover https://t.co/E2oAtKJ4ei pic.twitter.com/6ESnLhsQtV

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 1, 2016

This has puzzled some of the group’s supporters, and led to speculation that the site’s Australian founder, Julian Assange, had timed the release of emails hacked from the servers of the Democratic National Committee to drive a wedge between supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. ...

But it should come as no surprise to anyone who looks back at the founding principles of WikiLeaks that Assange — who has clearly stated his distaste for the idea of the former secretary of state becoming president — would make aggressive use of leaked documents to try to undermine her. ...

Assange’s project has been from the start more like opposition research than dispassionate reporting. His goal is to find dirt in the servers of powerful individuals or organizations he sees as corrupt or dangerous, and bring them down by exposing it. As he memorably told Der Spiegel in 2010, “I enjoy crushing bastards.” ...

To better understand Assange’s recent intervention in the U.S. election, it helps to look more closely at a sort of manifesto he wrote as he was creating WikiLeaks. The same month that WikiLeaks.org went live, in December of 2006, Assange posted an essay on his blog, “Conspiracy as Governance,” in which he explained his theory that authoritarian regimes — and western political parties — maintain power by conspiring to keep the public in the dark, through “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” In order for the people to regain control of the political system, Assange argued, it is necessary to find ways of “throttling the conspiracy,” like disrupting the ability of the conspirators to communicate secretly.

Billionaire Bonanza as Wealth Surges Among One Percent

There is little doubt that the global one percent is winning. In fact, a new study has found that the number of billionaires reached an all-time high in 2015 at the same time that their portfolios and piggy banks also continued to grow to record proportions.

According to the 2015-2016 Billionaire Census by international market research firm Wealth-X, which bills itself as "the global authority on wealth intelligence," the billionaire population grew by 6.4 percent last year and now totals 2,473 people worldwide. The combined wealth of those individuals also increased by 5.4 percent, amounting to $7.7 trillion—which is more than every country's gross domestic product (GDP), except the United States ($17.9 tr) and China ($11 tr).  ...

Wealth-X attributes the overall billionaire population growth largely to inherited wealth. According to the report, "billionaires with partially inherited wealth continue to be the fastest growing segment of this population, up 29.9% year on year, while responsible for nearly two thirds of total billionaire additions." ...

The billionaire surge is not surprising as it comes at the same time that global wealth inequality has also reached record levels. A report (pdf) issued earlier this year by the international aid organization Oxfam found that the richest one percent now hold more wealth than the rest of the world combined.

"It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the world's population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus," Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said at the time. "The richest can no longer pretend their wealth benefits everyone—their extreme wealth in fact shows an ailing global economy. The recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the majority and particularly the poorest people."

Spying's New Frontier: Private Firm Collects Data on 'Every American Adult'

The fight for internet privacy has focused much of its attention on government surveillance, but mass data collection is done by private companies as well—and one such firm has "centralized and weaponized" all that information for its customers, Bloomberg reports on Friday.

In fact, it has already built a profile on "every American adult," Bloomberg writes.

For more than a decade, professional snoops have been able to search troves of public and nonpublic records—known addresses, DMV records, photographs of a person’s car—and condense them into comprehensive reports costing as little as $10.

[....] IDI, a year-old company in the so-called data-fusion business, is the first to centralize and weaponize all that information for its customers. The Boca Raton, Fla., company's database service, idiCORE, combines public records with purchasing, demographic, and behavioral data.

The company's CEO Derek Dubner told Herbert that IDI's profiles even extend to young adults who wouldn't be found in conventional databases.

"We have data on that 21-year-old who's living at home with mom and dad," Dubner said

The profiles reportedly include "all known addresses, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses; every piece of property ever bought or sold, plus related mortgages; past and present vehicles owned; criminal citations, from speeding tickets on up; voter registration; hunting permits; and names and phone numbers of neighbors."

"Besides pitching its databases to big-name P.I.s (Kroll, Control Risks), law firms, debt collectors, and government agencies, IDI says it's also targeting consumer marketers," Herbert writes.

Marco Rubio is still a moron.

Marco Rubio: women with Zika should not be allowed abortions

Florida senator Marco Rubio has said women infected with the Zika virus should not be allowed to have abortions, even if their babies have microcephaly, the severe developmental disorder than can result from infection with the disease.

“If I’m going to err, I’m going to err on the side of life,” the Republican told Politico. Rubio, who has championed Zika funding bills in the Senate, also blamed Democrats for the failure to pass such federal aid.

John Oliver examines journalism's many problems: the blame is on us

Comedian John Oliver took aim at his latest target on Sunday: the state of journalism.

Describing the industry’s “dire straits”, Oliver devoted the latest episode of his HBO show Last Week Tonight to analysing the depressing financial state of journalism in 2016 and the subsequent tendency for news outlets to focus on stories that get the most traffic.

But the comedian stressed the importance of traditional reporting by citing the number of times newspapers are quoted by television news channels.

Oliver noted one of the main problems at the lower end of his food chain: the drop in newspaper advertising revenue. He pointed out the decline in print advertising revenue and how digital advertising has failed to make up the difference.

“A big part of the blame for this industry’s dire straits is on us and our unwillingness to pay for the work journalists produce,” Oliver said.

“We’ve just grown accustomed to getting our news for free and the longer that we get something for free, the less willing we are to pay for it.”

Democracy Debatable as Judge Rejects Third-Party Bid to Share Stage

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by the Green and Libertarian parties seeking a space on the debate stage alongside the Democrat/Republican "duopoly."

The complaint, launched last fall, presented an anti-trust argument against the Commission on Presidential Debates, saying that a "cognizable political campaign market" is being corrupted by the commission's rules, which bar a candidate from debating unless they are polling at 15 percent or higher.

And while observers were not surprised that the court dismissed the challenge, the judge's rationale raised some questions about the role that the media plays in crafting the current two-party system.

"Plaintiffs in this case have not alleged a non-speculative injury traceable to the Commission," wrote (pdf) U.S District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer, an appointee of former President George W. Bush.

"Plaintiffs’ alleged injuries are wholly speculative and are dependent entirely on media coverage decisions," Collyer continued. "The alleged injuries—failure to receive media coverage and to garner votes, federal matching funds, and campaign contributions—were caused by the lack of popular support of the candidates and their parties sufficient to attract media attention."

In response to the ruling, presumptive Green Party nominee Dr. Jill Stein, who was arrested in 2012 for trying to attend one of the debates, said: "We always expected that the courts were likely to side with the two corporate parties in trying to limit inclusion in the debates. Ultimately this will be decided in the court of public opinion. The public needs to demand that Clinton and Trump agree to debate all the candidates that are on the ballot in enough states to win the election."

Green Party Nominee Jill Stein: "We Are Saying No to the 'Lesser Evil' and Yes to the Greater Good"

'Jill not Hill': can Green candidate woo Sanders fans not settling for Clinton?

As Stein took the stage on Saturday, a chant rang out from party members that encompassed both positions. “Jill not Hill! Jill not Hill!” they sang as she made a brief speech before her nomination as the presidential candidate was formally confirmed.

The Green party’s fervent hope is that “Jill Not Hill” will be a worthy successor to another catchy three-word phrase often heard on the left over the past year: “Feel the Bern”. Some in the room had gravitated to the Greens after Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination to Clinton and, to the dismay of many of his supporters, endorsed her.

...

“Politics as we know it is melting down in front of our very eyes, voters are in revolt, are rejecting the Democratic and Republican candidates at record numbers,” Stein said. “Hillary and Donald [Trump] are the most disliked and untrusted candidates for president in US history and even their supporters don’t really support them, they just don’t like the other candidate. People are clamoring for more choices. We are that other choice.”

When the Republican party hosted a debate at the University of Houston in February, a vast security and media presence seemed to put half the campus on lockdown. In contrast, the Green convention was barely visible to passers-by in the student building where it took place, let alone the wider world.

The party, though, is hoping for a major boost from Sanders followers who refuse to heed his call to back Clinton in November. A spokesman said the attendance of roughly 500 was the biggest in the party’s history, with about half having registered in the past month, in the wake of Sanders’ decision to endorse Clinton. ...

The slogan on her Twitter feed is a direct repudiation of Democratic arguments that failing to vote for Clinton would help Trump: “Time To Reject The Lesser Evil For The Greater Good”.

Julian Assange: Leaked DNC Emails Shows Democrats Waged "Propaganda" Campaign Against Sanders

More than 100 Americans Are Rich Enough to Buy the Presidential Election Outright

Two billion dollars, the estimated cost of this year’s presidential election, is big money, but it is not huge money. Two billion is one-tenth of NASA’s annual budget, one-twentieth of the Harvard endowment, one-thirtieth of the personal wealth of Warren Buffett. Buffett is number two on the 2015 Forbes list of 106 Americans who hold personal fortunes of $5 billion or more, the Club of 106. These billionaires are rich enough to pay for the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and still have $3 billion left over. ...

For the Club of 106, elections are a game they can easily afford to play. One vehicle of choice is the Super PAC. In the 2012 election cycle, the top 100 Super PAC donors accounted for 3.7 percent of the donor population but gave 80 percent percent of the money, a structure that roughly mirrors the makeup of U.S. society as a whole, where one percent of the population holds half of the total wealth. The ratio will likely tilt even further toward the Club of 106 during the 2016 cycle, thanks to two recent court decisions — McCutcheon and Citizens United — that loosened limits on individual donors and opened the door for Super PACs to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. ...

The system is rigged. The Democrats are corrupt. So are the Republicans. Jane Mayer’s exposé of the Koch Brothers, Dark Money, describes exactly how pools of private money shape policy on the Republican side. A New Republic story on the fundraising prowess of Tim Kaine, Clinton’s vice presidential pick, shows how deep donor influence runs in the Democratic Party’s current leadership. Judging by their track records and public statements, neither Clinton nor Trump is up to the task of breaking the hold of money over U.S. politics, which means that anyone looking to make a White House run in 2020 or 2024 had better make nice with the Club of 106. ...

When a small number of donors wield such disproportionate influence over the outcomes of elections, any politician who cannot finance his or her own campaign is obligated to put to the interests of the wealthy few above the majority of the U.S. electorate. The electorate is waking up to this, and they are angry. Trump is, in part, the embodiment of that anger. Trump’s pitch, “I will be your voice,” is disingenuous but savvy. It tunes in the frustrations of millions for whom eight years of enlightened Democratic rule have done little. Real hourly wages have remained flat, as they have for decades. Despite gains in output, productivity, and CEO pay, wage growth has been especially slow for lower-level workers, failing to keep pace with the rising costs of education, health care, and housing. These are the conditions that enabled Trump’s rise. The next demagogue to take advantage of them will likely be a more convincing and competent one. Unless we find a way to curb the power of the Club of 106, we may soon wind up with the Club of One.

Donald Trump Admits He Gets Confused and Makes Things Up After Watching Fox News

Donald Trump admitted on Friday that a story he has been telling audiences at rallies on Wednesday and Thursday — that he had seen a video shot and distributed by the Iranian government showing the world a “top-secret” American shipment of cash arriving in Iran — is completely false.

In other words, he mistakenly thought grainy video images shown over and over on Fox News this week — of three Americans of Iranian descent getting off a plane in Geneva in January, after being freed from jail in a prisoner swap with the United States — showed money the United States has owed to Iran since 1979 being delivered the same night.

State Dept spox says $400 million cash transfer to Iran was "not ransom" for US hostages. https://t.co/bu2XpogdY5 pic.twitter.com/GpTlXzwlg9

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 3, 2016

By Thursday morning, the Washington Post had asked Trump’s staff to explain what he was talking about, and spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded that it was in fact “merely the b-roll footage included in every broadcast” on Fox News, showing the hostages, not the cash.

Fox News repeatedly used the video of the prisoners arriving in Geneva to illustrate its discussion of the growing outrage on the right over the cash payment to Iran. So it is not hard to see how someone casually watching the channel, particularly with the sound off, might have assumed the footage was, in fact, of the money arriving in Tehran. This allows the possibility that he was ignorant and reckless, rather than outright delusional.

Humanity Just Ate Through Planet's Annual Resource Budget Faster Than Ever

Earth Overshoot Day—the day on which people worldwide have officially used up more natural resources like air, food, and water than the planet can regenerate in a year—has come early.

The 2016 threshold was hit on Monday, making it the fastest pace yet, according to a new report by the Global Footprint Network, which measures the dubious milestone every year.

That's five days earlier than last year, about five weeks earlier than in 2003, and months earlier than it was in 1987, when it fell on December 19. In 1961, the global population didn't even use up 100 percent of the world's natural resources, according to the network. But the next decade propelled the planet into an era of overconsumption, the group said.

"This is possible because we emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than our oceans and forests can absorb, and we deplete fisheries and harvest forests more quickly than they can reproduce and regrow," Global Footprint Network said in a statement.

Environment: due to the human activity, planet Earth reaches overshoot point and now lives on credit

California recycling centers vanish

The streets in California may not be paved with gold, but the trash cans that line them are full of money. Industrious scavengers can redeem aluminum cans, plastic containers, and glass bottles for hard cash (5 or 10 cents apiece), thanks to the state’s 30-year-old container deposit program. ...

Over the past 18 months, hundreds of recycling centers in California have closed – about 20% of the total – reducing the ability of people across the state to access their refunds. The greatest blow came on 31 January, when a single company announced the closure of 191 centers across the state.

For the average consumer, recycling can seem as simple and as virtuous as dropping the correct items into the correctly colored bins. But the actual process of recycling massive amounts of material – Californians recycled more than 18bn beverage containers in 2015 – is reliant on global commodities prices, the energy market, and government subsidies.

Recycling centers, which are privately run, buy beverage containers from individuals for the state-guaranteed redemption value, then sell the materials to processors. (Companies that pick up curbside recycling also sell the materials to processors, and pocket the redemption value themselves.)

“The nickel or dime [redemption value] is basically a wash. No one is making money on that,” explained Mark Oldfield of CalRecycle, the state agency that oversees the program. “The money is made on the scrap value of those materials.”

The problem is, he said, the market for those materials has just gone “down, down, down”, plummeting around 40-50% over the past three years.

Recycled materials compete for buyers with “virgin” materials, and when those “virgin” materials are cheap, the bottom drops out of the market.

“Energy is so cheap right now that it’s much easier for manufacturers of anything –aluminum cans or plastic bottles – to be using virgin material instead of recycled material,” said Mark Murray of Californians Against Waste.

Also of Interest

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

New Ties Emerge Between Clinton And Turkish Gulen Movement

Stalling Obama’s Overtures to Russia so the New Cold War Can Proceed Under Hillary Clinton

How America Rising Ties the GOP to the Stalkers Harassing Bill McKibben and Tom Steyer

The NYT’s Out-of-Control Bias

The U.S. Government Accused a Salvadorian Human Rights Activist of Gang Activity – Now He’s In Jail

Does Israel investigate police shootings of Palestinian assailants?

I could only afford to live in a truck. But I still wasn't eligible for food stamps

The Intercept’s Olympics Guide for Identifying Brazil’s New Leaders

A Little Night Music

Peetie Wheatstraw - Gangster's Blues

Peetie Wheatstraw - Poor Millionaire Blues

Peetie Wheatstraw - A Working Man's Blues

Peetie Wheatstraw - Crazy With The Blues

Peetie Wheatstraw - Police Station Blues

Peetie Wheatstraw - I Want Some Sea Food

Peetie Wheatstraw - Chicago Mill Blues