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"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves. "

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

News and Opinion

Republicans and Democrats Agree: CENTCOM Cooked ISIS War Intel

Senior officials at U.S. Central Command manipulated intelligence reports, press statements, and congressional testimony to present a more positive outlook on the war against the so-called Islamic State, a House Republican task force concluded in a damning report released Thursday. ...

House Democrats, who conducted their own separate investigation, reached a similar conclusion as their Republican colleagues, finding that CENTCOM “insufficiently accommodated dissenting views,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

The altering of intelligence reports, which included information that made its way into briefings to President Obama, was systematic, lawmakers found. ...

Lawmakers pinned the blame for the doctored reports—which prompted more than 50 analysts to complain to the Defense Department inspector general—on the top two leaders in CENTCOM’s intelligence directorate, Maj. Gen. Steven Grove, the head of the organization, and Gregory Ryckman, his civilian deputy. (Neither were mentioned by name in the report, but it makes clear that the problems coincided with their tenure and leadership.)

But for all the congressional report’s troubling findings, there is one important question that remains unanswered: Why did senior leaders alter the intelligence about ISIS? ... Rep. Mike Pompeo, who was part of the task force, said the group believes that there was an unspoken understanding within the administration of how the war against jihadists was going and that drove decision makers within CENTCOM.

“The most senior leaders in Central Command and the J2 had a deep understanding of the political narrative the administration was putting forth,” Pompeo said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “The culture was one where you were rewarded for embracing that political narrative.

ISIS Brags About Costs to US of Ongoing War

ISIS’ media outlet, al-Naba, is often looking for new talking points on the ongoing US-led war against them, and has most recently begun looking to data released by the US government itself, bragging that the US war has cost $8.5 billion over the past two years, roughly $12 million a day.

This figure is a direct extrapolation of the US data released on the cost. The US government statements on war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan were both dramatic underestimations, and there is ample reason to believe that the ISIS war estimates are similarly so.

Indeed, the US official data includes just a rough estimate of fuel costs, troop salaries, and the explosives dropped on ISIS around Iraq and Syria but excludes other significant factors, including substantial expenses upgrading facilities on the ground to use during the war, and replacing massive amounts of US military aid initially provided to the Iraqi government, looted by ISIS, and subsequently destroyed in the airstrikes.

Lopsided Peace Talks Collapse, Saudis Resume Bombing Yemen and U.S. Sells More Weapons

The Pentagon announced an additional $1.15 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia this week, even as a three-month cease-fire collapsed and the Saudi-led coalition resumed its brutal bombing campaign of the Yemen capital Sana.

The U.S. has already sold more than $20 billion in weapons to Saudi Arabia since the war began in March 2015, defying calls from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to cut off support. The Saudi-led coalition is responsible for the majority of the 7,000 deaths in the conflict, which has left more than 21 million people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. Saudi Arabia has been accused of intentionally targeting homes, factories, schools, markets, and hospitals.

On Tuesday, the coalition targeted and destroyed a potato chip factory, killing 14 people. ... Tuesday’s bombing comes after months of negotiations failed to reach a peace deal between Saudi Arabia, the Houthis, and Yemen’s exiled government. Both the Saudi regime and exiled Yemeni government were quick to place blame on the Houthi rebels, who rejected a U.N.-brokered peace deal.

But the deal was not an even-handed compromise. Middle East Eye reported that the deal was “broadly in line” with what Saudi Arabia wanted — it would return control of Yemen to Hadi, and require the Houthis to turn over their weapons and leave the capital.

The deal would have given Saudi Arabia what it wanted from the start: disarming the Houthis, removing them from power, and installing its preferred ruler. The Houthis rejected the deal, calling the proposal a “media stunt.”

War in Syria: Turkey calls on Russia for joint operations against the Islamic State Organization

As Erdogan cracks down on free press, journalists leave dire warning as they flee

A growing number of journalists and intellectuals are fleeing Turkey, following a major crackdown on the press in the aftermath of last month’s unsuccessful military coup that tried to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a climate of fear where those who decide to stay are bowing to self-censorship, they warn that the country now risks being bereft of any independent media sources to hold the increasingly autocratic AKP government to account. ...

In a seemingly unprecedented attempt to cleanse the media of journalists affiliated to “Hizmet” – the movement linked to Fethullah Gulen, the onetime ally of Erdogan but now living in exile in Pennsylvania – more than 130 media institutions have been shuttered; hundreds of press cards have been revoked; 89 arrest warrants have been issued against journalists, with 61 journalists detained.

“No wonder a massive brain drain is currently underway. I expect many more government critics and journalists to leave Turkey for Europe, and try to do their job from there for some time to come,” says a former editor of Zaman, which was Turkey’s first daily broadsheet but was formally closed by the state 12 days after the July 15 coup.

“The more critical voices leave, the more authoritarian Turkey becomes,” he says, adding, “Like the progressive intelligentsia that left Iran in 1979, I hope our intellectual diaspora will be able to enlighten the outside world on the true nature of the Erdogan regime.”

Russia and Ukraine step up security amid tension over Crimea

Russia and Ukraine stepped up security on the de facto border between Crimea and mainland Ukraine on Thursday, a day after Moscow accused Kiev of planning terror attacks on the peninsula. ...

The FSB statement on Wednesday was swiftly followed by tough remarks from Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who accused Ukraine of terrorism. “We obviously will not let such things slide by,” Putin said.

On Thursday, Putin met his security council, and the group discussed “additional measures for ensuring security for citizens and essential infrastructure in Crimea”, according to a Kremlin statement. The statement added: “Scenarios were carefully considered for anti-terrorist security measures at the land border, in the waters and in the airspace of Crimea.”

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, dismissed the allegations, calling them “a pretext for more military threats against Ukraine”. He put his troops in eastern Ukraine and on the border with Crimea on full combat alert. ...

Russia showed no sign of toning down the rhetoric on Thursday, and the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, suggested executing those who had been arrested. “With saboteurs I think we should act as farmers do with crows who spoil the crops. Kill them and hang their bodies at the border to put off others, and make them understand that Russia will not allow anyone to risk the lives of peaceful citizens or servicemen in Crimea,” Aksyonov told Russian state television. He also accused the US state department of being behind the alleged attacks.

Spokesman: Ukraine Has Enough Military Power to Defend Itself

Ukraine’s General Staff spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov today sought to downplay concerns about the situation on the border with the Crimean Peninsula, insisting that the Ukrainian military has all the resources and power necessary to defend itself from any situation that might unfold.

Ukraine has been building up its military along the Crimean border in the past few days, after Russia reported a weekend incident in which people from the Ukrainian side, who they identified as government spies, attempted to infiltrate the peninsula, killing a Russian soldier and an FSB member.

See if you can spot the fnords:

Hack of Democrats’ Accounts Was Wider Than Believed, Officials Say

A Russian cyberattack that targeted Democratic politicians was bigger than it first appeared and breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups, officials with knowledge of the case said Wednesday.

The widening scope of the attack has prompted the F.B.I. to broaden its investigation, and agents have begun notifying a long list of Democratic officials that the Russians may have breached their personal accounts. ...

Officials have acknowledged that the Russian hackers gained access to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is the fund-raising arm for House Democrats, and to the Democratic National Committee, including a D.N.C. voter analytics program used by Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But the hack now appears to have extended well beyond those groups, and organizations like the Democratic Governors’ Association may also have been affected, according to Democrats involved in the investigation. However, in a statement Thursday, the governors association said it “was informed that our analytics data was not compromised as part of the D.N.C. breach that affected the Clinton campaign.”

The group added that “we have no reason to believe that any D.G.A. emails were compromised by the D.N.C. breach.”

Democrats say they are bracing for the possibility that another batch of damaging or embarrassing internal material could become public before the November presidential election.

The F.B.I. says it has no direct evidence that Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was hacked by the Russians or anyone else. But in June, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that intruders had tried, and that any successful intruders were probably far too skilled to leave evidence of their intrusion behind. Law enforcement officials said he had the Russians in mind.

Oh my. We are all concerned when it appears that The Russians (ooooh scary Putin) might hack our precious voting machines that lack audit trails. I wonder where that concern was when it seemed quite likely that operatives for the Republicans were hacking elections.

A foreign power could hack the US election, experts fear

If the Democratic National Committee can be hacked, could US election results be next?

It's a question being asked all over the country in the wake of last month's cyberattack on the DNC by Russian hackers, which the New York Times reported this week was even more serious than originally thought. The US Intelligence Community has suggested the hack was an effort by Russia to influence the US election, and now the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and lawmakers are warning of the potential for a foreign government or independent operators to hack the election itself.

There are three main vulnerabilities: the election management systems that county and local officials rely on to organize (and sometimes tally) the vote, online voter registration data, and electronic voting machines. Most at risk are states and counties that use electronic voting but do not require paper ballot backups.

Those states include Texas and the swing states of Pennsylvania and Virginia. ...

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson last Thursday said he that would consider classifying voting as so-called "critical infrastructure" due to the "vital national interest in our electoral process." ...

But elections pose a particular problem because the federal government has little authority over them. Since the founding of the republic, voting laws have largely been left up to state, county, and local governments. ... DHS is "not a regulatory agency in this area," DHS spokesperson Scott McConnell said. In other words, it doesn't have any power over elections — at least not yet.

Venezuela and Colombia are going to reopen their border

The presidents of Venezuela and Colombia have announced that they are going to gradually reopen the border between their two countries beginning this weekend.

The frontier was closed by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro nearly a year ago. At the time he said the measure was necessary in order to control the smuggling of subsidized food out of Venezuela. Now, with subsidized goods in very short supply in the crisis-ridden country, new tensions have arisen precisely because the border is closed.

A temporary relaxation of one crossing point during one weekend last month brought frantic scenes as over 100,000 Venezuelans flooded into the Colombian city of Cúcuta desperate to buy the basic goods they can no longer find at home. The talks on how to restore transit in a more ordered way began days later.

Maduro and his Colombian counterpart, President Juan Manuel Santos, made the announcement of the imminent reopening on Thursday evening after talks held in the Venezuelan city of Puerto Ordaz.

At Swanky Federal Reserve Retreat, “Computer Glitch” Cancels Minority Protesters’ Hotel Reservations

The Kansas City Federal Reserve’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, attracts central bankers, economists and the global elite. The past two years, some new faces came to Jackson Hole: low-wage workers who object to the Fed raising interest rates when too many at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder still struggle.

This year, somebody appears to be ensuring that ordinary people won’t disrupt the party.

The Fed Up campaign, a coalition that brought the workers to Jackson Hole in 2014 and 2015, has filed a formal complaint with the departments of Justice and the Interior, along with the National Park Service, because their hotel reservations for this year’s conference were mysteriously canceled.

Despite paying in advance for spots at the 385-room Jackson Lake Lodge, the Grand Teton Lodge Company told the campaign July 26 that their reservations would not be honored, citing a “computer glitch.” Grand Teton operates the lodge, a publicly owned facility, under a contract with the National Park Service.

Thirty-nine members of the coalition planned to attend this year, but the lodge said computer glitch resulted in overbooking its rooms by 18. Instead of spacing that out among all Jackson Lake lodge guests, the company cancelled all 13 of the Fed Up campaign’s rooms. So nearly three-quarters of the cancelled reservations belonged to the Fed Up group, even though they were told when they booked that 100 rooms were still available at the lodge.

Private federal prisons more dangerous, damning DoJ investigation reveals

Privately operated government prisons, which mostly detain migrants convicted of immigration offenses, are drastically more unsafe and punitive than other prisons in the federal system, a stinging investigation by the US Department of Justice’s inspector general has found.

Inmates at these 14 contract prisons, the only centers in the federal prison system that are privately operated, were nine times more likely to be placed on lockdown than inmates at other federal prisons and were frequently subjected to arbitrary solitary confinement. In two of the three contract prisons investigators routinely visited, new inmates were automatically placed in solitary confinement as a way of combating overcrowding, rather than for disciplinary issues.

The review also found that contract prison inmates were more likely to complain about medical care, treatment by prison staff and about the quality of food.

Contract prisons almost exclusively incarcerate low-risk inmates convicted of immigration offenses. These facilities house around 22,000 individuals, mostly deemed “low risk”, at an annual cost of $600m. They are operated by three private companies: Geo Group, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and Management and Training Corporation (MTC).

President Obama may eliminate the 2015 ban on military grade weapon transfers to local police departments

Critics denounce Black Lives Matter platform accusing Israel of 'genocide'

A war of words has erupted between groups affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement and pro-Israel commentators over the characterization of Israel in their policy document released last week.

The policy platform titled A Vision for Black Lives, is a wide-spanning document that was drafted by more than 50 organizations known as the Movement for Black Lives. It goes beyond criminal justice and touches on many issues including education and economics.

In the Invest/Divest section of the platform, the group criticizes the US government for providing military aid to Israel.

“The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people,” the platform says. “Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people.”

This characterization drew ire from pro-Israel commentators, and in the week since its release many have penned op-eds and statements condemning the movement.

Dream Defenders, one of the groups that wrote the Invest/Divest section, wrote a rebuttal to some of the criticism in which they stood by the platform. Several other pro-Palestinian groups have also come out in support.

LGBTQ Youths Face 'Heartbreaking,' 'Unacceptable' Violence: Study

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday released a "heartbreaking" new study which found that LGBTQ youths face significantly higher levels of violence than their heterosexual peers.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning teenagers are far more likely to experience violence and bullying, as well as depression and suicide, the CDC found in the first national study to address the health risks of sexual-minority youths.

Roughly 30 percent had been raped, and about 41 percent had been physically abused by a partner. At least a third said they had been bullied on school grounds, and respondents were twice as likely to have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property—which in turn increased the number of times they skipped class because of safety concerns.

More than 40 percent said they had seriously considered suicide, and 29 percent said they had tried. Six percent said they had used heroin, compared to 1.3 percent of their straight peers.

"Anti-LGBTQ bullying and harassment have serious and heartbreaking consequences for young people and these numbers make that more clear than ever," said Mary Beth Maxwell, senior vice president for research, training, and programs at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Trump Taj Mahal bankruptcy pits Carl Icahn's casino against striking workers

Most people lose money at the Trump Taj Mahal – that’s the way casinos work. But if you’re investor Carl Icahn, billionaire owner of Atlantic City’s decaying but still opulent, elephant-fronted Taj, you have some odds in your favor.

Icahn bought Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s troubled New Jersey casino operations out of bankruptcy in March. Now he says striking workers have made it impossible to turn around a property that has lost him $100m and he will close the casino after the Labor day holiday on 5 September. Regulatory filings show he is unlikely to leave the casino out of pocket.

Icahn has made most of his money fighting battles with management as an activist shareholder. This time, as the owner of Trump Entertainment, he is fighting its employees, mainly members of the local branch of hotels and casino union UniteHere.

Icahn, who did not respond to calls or messages for this article, accuses the union of forcing management into expensive healthcare and retirement plans that pad the union’s coffers. The union says Icahn is a raider who used expensive loans to squeeze the Trump Taj Mahal into bankruptcy and then used the legal proceeding to shaft the workers. The union also points to another Icahn casino – The Tropicana – which earlier this summer agreed to the union’s full benefits package, as did three other Atlantic City casinos that are controlled by rival Caesars Entertainment.

Oops!

While in the White House, Economist Received Personal Loans From Top Washington Lawyer

In 2011, Gene Sperling had a problem. He was working as President Obama’s chief economic advisor but his government salary did not cover his expenses. He and his wife lived in a Georgetown townhouse valued today at around $2 million, but did not have enough equity to qualify for a second mortgage or credit line. He didn’t want to sell the house and he wanted to keep working at a prestigious but relatively low-paid public service job.

And so Sperling turned to a close friend from law school: Howard Shapiro. A top partner at the Washington powerhouse law firm WilmerHale, Shapiro had loaned Sperling money before and was willing to do so again. Sperling asked the White House Counsel’s office and the Office of Government Ethics for permission to borrow from Shapiro, whose firm frequently negotiates with the government on behalf of some of the nation’s leading corporations. Officials approved the transactions.

So in 2011, Sperling borrowed between $100,000 and $250,000 from Shapiro at 5 percent, a rate that appears to be well below the interest banks charged at the time for comparable loans. Sperling listed his borrowing on his financial disclosure forms.

In each of the next two years, Sperling went to Shapiro again, taking out two more loans that brought his debt to a total of between $300,000 and $600,000. (The forms require disclosure of a range, not specific figures.) The loans are unsecured. Sperling consolidated earlier loans from Shapiro, one made in 2006 and the 2011 loan, into the later ones. ...

Experts questioned whether an ordinary person could obtain hundreds of thousands of dollars in unsecured loans from a bank or other lender. Personal loans exist, but typically max out at around $40,000 or $50,000 and carry higher interest rates than what Shapiro charged his friend.

In an illustration of the typical rate for unsecured consumer loans, Sperling reported on those same forms that he had received a consumer loan in 2011 for dental care from Care Credit that carried an interest rate of 14.9 percent. That same year, he was paying 13.15 percent interest on credit card debt of between $15,000 and $50,000.

Craig Holman, a government ethics specialist of Public Citizen, said that the transactions appear to be at odds with federal ethics rules. Because the loans were at below-market rates, Holman said, Sperling received a financial benefit akin to a gift. Federal rules bar executive branch employees from accepting gifts from “prohibited sources,’’ defined as anyone with business before the federal government. There can be exemptions for personal friendship, but Holman said such gifts should be barred because of the conflicts of interest they pose.

“I have a hard time seeing how such a major law firm would not have any business pending before White House,’’ Holman said. “This would appear to me to violate ethics rules. I don’t see any way around it,” he says.

FEC Commissioner, Citing The Intercept, Calls for Ban on Foreign Money in Politics

Federal Election Commission member Ann Ravel on Tuesday proposed a ban on political contributions by domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations.

Ravel’s proposal cites The Intercept series last week reporting that American Pacific International Capital, a California corporation owned by two Chinese nationals, donated $1.3 million to Right to Rise USA, the main Super PAC supporting Jeb Bush’s presidential run.

Ravel wrote that as a result of Citizens United and subsequent Supreme Court decisions, “our campaign finance system is vulnerable to influence from foreign nationals and foreign corporations through Domestic subsidiaries and affiliates in ways unimaginable a decade ago.”

The 2010 Citizens United decision struck down the prohibition on corporations spending their own money on “independent expenditures,” thereby opening the possibility that foreign money could flow into elections that way.

Ravel, noting The Intercept’s stories, wrote that this was no longer “a hypothetical concern.”

#PayToPlay: Clinton faces corruption scandal after links between donors & State Dept exposed

'Strongest Words Yet,' But Clinton Still Refuses to Push Obama on TPP

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Thursday offered her "strongest words yet against the TPP," according to one progressive organization—but whether it will be enough to convince skeptics remains to be seen.

In an economic policy speech delivered in Warren, Michigan, Clinton said her "message to every worker in Michigan and across America is this: I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages—including the Trans Pacific Partnership. I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as President."

Ahead of the address, progressive groups and establishment insiders alike urged Clinton to come out forcefully against the 12-nation trade deal and "make a public statement urging the White House and Democratic congressional leadership to oppose any vote on the TPP, especially during the post-election lame duck session of Congress," as CREDO and Democracy for America (DFA) said on Wednesday. 

She did not do that, nor did she—as Campaign for America's Future blogger Dave Johnson had suggested—"loudly call on President Obama to withdraw TPP now."

Hillary Clinton's Magical Economy

Donald Trump Talks Tough About Military Contractors, But Quietly Signals Friendship

Donald Trump, who has railed against the political influence of military contractors, denounced wasteful Pentagon spending, and promised a less interventionist foreign policy has nevertheless added to his transition team the leader of a group of defense contractors who advocate greater American militarism.

Michael Rogers, the hawkish former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, will be advising the Trump transition team on national security, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

After leaving Congress, Rogers founded a pressure group called Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, intended to “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.”

As Lee Fang reported for The Intercept last year, the business executives helping APPS included several defense contractors who stand to gain financially from continued militarism.

EPA's Fracking Finding Misled on Threat to Drinking Water, Scientists Conclude

A group of independent scientists says the controversial study did not support the EPA's conclusion that fracking did not pose a widespread threat to drinking water.

An Environmental Protection Agency panel of independent scientists has recommended the agency revise its conclusions in a major study released last year that minimized the potential hazards hydraulic fracturing poses to drinking water.

The panel, known as the Science Advisory Board (SAB), issued on Thursday its nearly yearlong analysis of a June 2015 draft EPA report on fracking and water. In a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy that accompanied the analysis, the panel said the report's core findings "that seek to draw national-level conclusions regarding the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources" were "inconsistent with the observations, data and levels of uncertainty" detailed in the study.

"Of particular concern," the panel stated was the 2015 report's overarching conclusion that fracking has not led to "widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States." The panel said that the EPA did not provide quantitative evidence to support the conclusion.

"The SAB recommends that the EPA revise the major statements of findings in the Executive Summary and elsewhere in the final Assessment Report to clearly link these statements to evidence provided in the body of the final Assessment Report," the panel wrote to McCarthy.

When the draft water study was issued last year, the oil and gas industry seized upon the conclusion to back its contention that fracking does not pose a threat to water.

FOIA Request Probes Extent of Government Spying on Climate Protesters

Citing an investigation that revealed federal agents went undercover to spy on environmental activists, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) on Thursday filed nine Freedom of Information Act requests seeking information on surveillance of peaceful protests at federal fossil fuel auctions.

As they wrote at The Intercept in July, journalists Lee Fang and Steve Horn obtained emails showing that in May, local law enforcement and federal agents monitored and infiltrated a "Keep it in the Ground" protest at a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) auction in Lakewood, Colorado. ...

Now, CBD wants to know not only what happened at the Lakewood protest, but whether similar surveillance strategies have been pursued at other fossil fuel auction protests. 

"Every oil and gas lease sale on public lands since September 2015 has faced climate protests as part of the 'Keep it in the Ground' movement that is calling on President Obama to end all new fossil fuel leasing on public lands," a CBD press statement reads, noting that such protests "have halted several BLM fossil fuel auctions, and spurred BLM and [Bureau of Ocean Energy Management] to begin conducting fossil fuel auctions online to avoid public controversy."

In turn, Thursday's filings (pdf) apply to all federal fossil fuel auctions conducted by BLM and BOEM since August 2015, including 14 fossil fuel auctions that faced public "Keep it in the Ground" protests.

"There's a large and growing movement of peaceful protesters calling on their government to make a moral choice to save our climate and end new fossil fuel leasing on public lands," said Taylor McKinnon of CBD. "The public has a right to know whether the government has launched a surveillance program targeting climate activists who are courageously speaking up for what's right."

Washington County Shocks Big Oil With Ban on Fossil Fuel Exports

In an unprecedented gesture hailed by environmentalists, Washington's Whatcom County enacted an emergency 60-day moratorium on fossil fuel exports late Wednesday. ...

"The moratorium applies to 'all forms of crude oil whether stabilized or not, raw bitumen, diluted bitumen and syncrude; coal; methane, propane, butane and other 'natural gas' in liquid or gaseous form,'" reports seattlepi.com. ...

The stretch of coastline north of Bellingham has become "ground zero" for fossil fuel exports in the U.S. Northwest, Weimer told The Stranger. ...

"Now that Congress has lifted its 40 year ban on crude oil exports," The Stranger observes, "Whatcom County residents are anticipating even more fossil fuel shipments moving through their backyards. Which is why, last night, Whatcom County's seven-person council took the unusual and surprising step of banning all unrefined fossil fuel export permits for 60 days."

Conservation group Stand, formerly ForestEthics, wrote in a statement that the move "temporarily prevents permitting for new projects that would allow the shipment or export of crude oil, coal, or liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Cherry Point. The emergency moratorium was put into place while the county finalizes a Comprehensive Plan update that will inform future zoning regulation changes that could prevent permits for new projects facilitating the export of crude oil, coal, or fracked gases."

"The oil and gas industry have targeted Cherry Point and Whatcom County as a sacrifice zone in their plans to export unrefined extreme oil, dirty coal and gas overseas," said Matt Krogh, Stand's extreme oil campaign director and local resident.

Europe wildfires: blazes tamed in France, Portugal but new fires feared

Also of Interest

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

Elephants are the end of a 60m-year lineage – last of the megaherbivores

The Pentagon’s Timeline of Its Latest Libya Intervention Just Doesn’t Line Up

Revealed: How a weather forecast in 1967 stopped nuclear war

The Day After Election Day

U.S. Government Using Gang Databases to Deport Undocumented Immigrants

A Little Night Music

Carla Thomas - Gee Whiz

Carla Thomas - Comfort Me

Carla Thomas - I'll Bring It On Home To You

Carla Thomas - Pick up the pieces

Carla Thomas - That beat keeps disturbing my sleep

Carla Thomas - I've Got No Time To Lose

Carla & Rufus Thomas - 'Cause I Love You

Carla Thomas - A Woman's Love

Otis Redding & Carla Thomas - Tramp

Otis Redding & Carla Thomas - Lovey Dovey