Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features rock and r&b singer and songwriter Van Morrison. Enjoy!

“The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear.”

-- Smedley D. Butler

News and Opinion

U.S. Defense Contractors Tell Investors Russian Threat Is Great for Business

The escalating anti-Russian rhetoric in the U.S. presidential campaign comes in the midst of a major push by military contractors to position Moscow as a potent enemy that must be countered with a drastic increase in military spending by NATO countries.

Weapon makers have told investors that they are relying on tensions with Russia to fuel new business in the wake of Russian’s annexation of Crimea and modest increases in its military budget.

In particular, the arms industry — both directly and through its arsenal of hired-gun, think-tank experts and lobbyists – is actively pressuring NATO member nations to hike defense spending in line with the NATO goal for member states to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. ...

“Companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have pledged to increase the share of exports in their overall revenues, and they have been seeking major deals in East and Central Europe since the 1990s, when NATO expansion began,” said William Hartung, director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International Policy. Hartung noted that as some nations ramp up spending, U.S. firms will be “knocking at the door, looking to sell everything from fighter planes to missile defense systems.”

“Russian saber-rattling has additional benefits for weapons makers because it has become a standard part of the argument for higher Pentagon spending — even though the Pentagon already has more than enough money to address any actual threat to the United States,” he said.

Clinton campaign manager calls Trump a Kremlin puppet (again)

The campaign manager for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, Robby Mook, faced tough questions on Sunday about the Clinton Foundation’s decision to stop taking corporate and foreign donations if Clinton wins the White House.

Mook’s response: Dodge the questions and go on offense, accusing Republican rival Donald Trump of being a Kremlin puppet.

On ABC’s "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," the host pressed Mook on why it was OK for the Clinton Foundation to accept corporate and foreign donations when she was secretary of state but not if she becomes president.

Mook provided no clear answer and instead raised questions about Trump’s own financial dealings. ...

Earlier on the show, he said there were “real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race.”

US Commander Threatens Russia, Syria

In a telephone interview from Baghdad, new Iraq-Syria War Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend tried to echo the boundless optimism of every other US commander when put in charge of one of the nation’s various open-ended wars, vowing to see all of ISIS dead, and virtually ousted from both countries within a year.

The real story of his comments, however, was less the war he’s fighting now than the wars he’s threatening to fight along the way, as Lt. Gen. Townsend pointedly threatened both Russia and Syria over recent flights and airstrikes around the northeastern city of Hasakeh. ...

Syrian warplanes are still flying over the area, despite US threats, while Russia is trying to get the military and the Kurds to stop fighting one another. ... US officials, on the other hand, seem to see this as a great opportunity to transition from the war against ISIS, which despite all their rhetoric isn’t accomplishing much, and into a war against Syria’s government, which they see as a more straightforward, and potentially more winnable, battle. ...

That said, attacking Syrian warplanes over Syria is almost certain to quickly bring the Russians into the war as well, which is why it has in practice been unthinkable to do so. Despite that obvious problem looming just over the horizon, however, US officials are still eagerly rushing forward on a confrontation.

Kurdish militias fight against Syrian forces in north-east city of Hasaka

US-backed Kurdish forces have fought against the Syrian army and militias in the north-east of the country for a fifth consecutive day, threatening to open a new front in the five-year war.

The clashes left at least two dozen civilians dead and caused people to flee to the surrounding countryside, days after the Syrian army began using planes and artillery to attack Kurdish areas in Hasaka. ...

As regional dynamics and alliances shift, the fighting in this previously obscure city could undermine a the Obama administration’s campaign – of which the Kurds are a key component - to degrade and destroy Islamic State. ...

The US scrambled planes over Hasaka last week after Syrian jets attacked Kurdish positions near the city, warning that it would not tolerate any threat to the 300-plus special forces stationed in north-east Syria. Speaking to CNN, Lt Gen Stephen Townsend, the US commander for Syria and Iraq, said: “We will defend ourselves if we feel threatened.”

An official within the Democratic Union party (PYD), one of the dominant Kurdish parties in Syria, said the warning did not go far enough. “The Pentagon took a stand earlier on, but we need more,” Gharib Hasso told the Guardian. “The silence of the international coalition is not good. The war is expanding.”

Syrian Rebels Prepare to Attack ISIS City of Jarabulus, From Turkey

A coalition of US-backed Syria rebels and Islamist groups like Ahrar al-Sham have come together in a plan to attack the key ISIS city of Jarabulus, on the western short of the Euphrates River. Unlike most offensives, this one will be cross-border, being launched from inside Turkey.

The rebel force includes substantial numbers of fighters who heretofore had been defending the key border town of Azaz. With ISIS recently focusing more on defense, they’ve decided to go after Jarabulus, another valuable border crossing. With a lot of ISIS territory between Azaz and Jarabulus, however, they decided it was simpler to go through Turkey, and Turkey was apparently fine with the idea.

Turkey’s interest in this is that the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) recently took the city of Manbij, with major US backing, and that’s making Jarabulus tougher for ISIS to defend. Turkey has long warned that the Kurds taking Jarabulus was a “red line” for them.

'US to send team to Turkey' for Fethullah Gulen probe

The US Department of Justice will dispatch a team to Turkey in the coming days to pursue allegations by the Turkish government of criminal activity by Fethullah Gulen, according to a US media report.

If true, the move, first reported on Friday by Bloomberg News citing a US administration official, would mark the first sign of progress in Turkey's attempts to have the Pennsylvania-based Turkish-born religious leader extradited.

The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Gulen's network of being behind a coup attempt last month, a charge he has strenuously denied. ...

However, the Washington Post newspaper, quoting an official at the US justice department, reported on Friday that the extradition request refers only to alleged activities before the failed coup attempt.

"It's actually tied to allegations of certain alleged criminal activities that pre-date the coup," the official said.

"At this point, Turkish authorities have not put forward a formal extradition request based on evidence that he was involved in the coup."

As Kerry Plans to Visit Saudi Arabia, Activists & NGOs Demand U.S. Stop Funding War Crimes in Yemen

Your tax dollars at work:

'Why do they target us?' Yemeni civilians pay the price of escalating crisis

On Tuesday 9 August, Saddam Hussein Abdu al-Burai said goodbye to his wife, pregnant with their first child, and left home to make the 10km journey to a Yemen snack-food factory inside an industrial complex in the Alnahda district of the capital, Sana’a. It was his first day at work but at 9.30am, barely two hours after he had begun manually counting the potato bags inside the steel girder compound, a Saudi-led airstrike began.

Burai was killed on the spot along with six other men and three women. The attack on the potato crisp factory came during the first airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels since the collapse of UN-brokered peace talks earlier this month.

A three-month hiatus following the April ceasefire, which was often violated but had brought some peace to Sana’a, effectively came to an end, hostilities resumed and Burai, who had no connection with politics or the war, was one of the first victims after the talks collapsed. ...

Abdulrahman Saleh Abdu Salah, a 26-year-old electrician, was charging his mobile phone in the manager’s office when a huge blast rocked the building. He was one of the lucky ones. “Suddenly we heard a massive explosion and everything started to fall on us, even the wall fell on us,” he told the Guardian. “I stood up and went back to the factory, I saw everyone was scattered on the floor and some people were killed on the spot because of shrapnel and the place started to burn.”

“I saw one of my colleagues near the machine I was fixing and he was jumping and shouting out in pain – he was the only one I could help and I took him outside. Minutes later the whole place was on fire and people were killed and their bodies were burned.”

Salah said he thanked God that he survived the attack, which left many of his friends dead. His best friend, Mostafa Aqeel, was among 13 workers injured and is still in hospital. Five are in intensive care and one is in a coma. Salah said he did not understand why the Saudi-led coalition targeted civilians.

“Why did they target us?” he asked. “It’s a snack-food factory. No weapons, no bombs, no fighters are inside. Only men and women workers.” The factory, which was established in 1985, has now closed down.

Both sides in the conflict have since escalated their attacks, with a recent airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition hitting a hospital supported by Médecins Sans Frontières in the Abs district of Hajjah governorate, in north-west Yemen.

"This is Our War & It is Shameful:" Journalist Andrew Cockburn on the U.S. Role in the War in Yemen

Hundreds of thousands in Yemen march in support of rebels

Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis marched on Saturday in support of Shiite Houthi rebels and their ally, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The march in the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, was in support of a new combined governing council the rebels and Saleh announced late last month, but which was immediately rejected by the internationally recognized government and the United Nations. Saleh was forced to step down in 2012 amid Arab Spring protests after more than three decades in power.

Massive pro-Houthi rally in Yemen

How the NSA snooped on encrypted Internet traffic for a decade

In a revelation that shows how the National Security Agency was able to systematically spy on many Cisco Systems customers for the better part of a decade, researchers have uncovered an attack that remotely extracts decryption keys from the company's now-decommissioned line of PIX firewalls.

The discovery is significant because the attack code, dubbed BenignCertain, worked on PIX versions Cisco released in 2002 and supported through 2009. Even after Cisco stopped providing PIX bug fixes in July 2009, the company continued offering limited service and support for the product for an additional four years. Unless PIX customers took special precautions, virtually all of them were vulnerable to attacks that surreptitiously eavesdropped on their VPN traffic. Beyond allowing attackers to snoop on encrypted VPN traffic, the key extraction also makes it possible to gain full access to a vulnerable network by posing as a remote user.

BenignCertain's capabilities were tentatively revealed in this blog post from Thursday, and they were later confirmed to work on real-world PIX installations by three separate researchers. Before the confirmation came, Ars asked Cisco to investigate the exploit. The company declined, citing this policy for so-called end-of-life products. The exploit helps explain documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden and cited in a 2014 article that appeared in Der Spiegel. The article reported that the NSA had the ability to decrypt more than 1,000 VPN connections per hour.

Troops using 'Clinton defense' in classified information cases

Lawyers for troops facing charges of mishandling classified information are using the “Clinton defense” to argue for leniency.

A lawyer for a 29-year-old sailor facing a felony charge for taking and keeping six photos of a submarine's propulsion system cited Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information this week to argue he should get probation instead of jail time.

In the case, Petty Officer 1st Class Kristian Saucier was facing up to 78 months in prison for his conviction on mishandling information. But a federal judge on Friday sentenced him to 12 months instead, as well as six months of low-level home confinement, three years post-release supervision and 100 hours of community service. ...

Clinton will also be mentioned in a separate case involving Maj. Jason Brezler, who is being discharged from the Marine Corps for mishandling classified information, according to his lawyer Michael Bowe. A hearing in federal court is scheduled for October.

Brezler used his personal email account in 2012 to send a classified briefing document to fellow Marines in Afghanistan, warning about the potential threat posed by an Afghan police chief. Brezler self-reported his actions to the military. ...

Bradley Moss, a lawyer specializing in national security and security clearance law, said he did not expect the Clinton defense to necessarily be effective.

Still, he said there could be value in using it to sway judges' perception of the reasonableness and appropriateness of a punishment.

Israel launches up to 50 strikes on Gaza after rocket attack on Sderot

The Israeli military has launched dozens of strikes on Gaza in an unusually strong response to a rocket fired from Gaza that landed between two houses in the Israeli community of Sderot.

Responsibility for the rocket attack on Sunday was initially claimed by Ahfad al-Sahaba, one of the small Salafi groups – ultra-conservative Sunnis – that have recently become more active in Gaza, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It prompted a wave of up to 50 retaliatory attacks, according to Israeli military sources, hitting several of Gaza’s armed Palestinian factions. ...

The raids broke the pattern of limited Israeli retaliation during periods of relative quiet, leading the Islamist group Hamas to accuse Israel of escalating tensions. According to reports, the Israeli response came in two waves, the first immediately after the rocket attack, the second during the night, involving three Israeli jets and tank fire.

Philippines: vigilante justice

Philippines president threatens to quit the UN over criticism about killings of drug suspects

The president of the Philippines has threatened to quit the United Nations in response to criticism from UN human rights officials over hundreds of extrajudicial killings of drug suspects that have occurred in the country since he took office.

President Rodrigo Duterte — nicknamed "The Punisher" for his iron-fisted approach to drug-related crime during his tenure as mayor of the city of Davao — said during a late-night news conference on Saturday in his hometown that the Philippines could leave the UN and form a rival organization with China and other countries. ...

The tirade was prompted by a statement released on Thursday by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that urged Duterte to end a wave of violence that began after he was elected in May. Duterte has said he would bestow medals on the killers of drug dealers, and he's also offered to award bounties to citizens who turn in drug suspects "dead or alive."

A Shocking Story of How a Chicago Cop Killed a Teen -- Then Locked Up His Best Friend for the Murder

Cops try to solve Chicago's murder problem by rounding up gang suspects

With more than 425 people killed so far this year in Chicago — more than twice as many compared to the same period in 2015 — police are cracking down on the city's gangs. More than 100 suspects were arrested in a series of raids on Thursday and Friday, mostly on felony drug and weapons charges, the Chicago Tribune reports. ...

According to the Tribune, most of those arrested in the recent police raids were listed on the Chicago Police Department's "Strategic Subject List." Their names ended up there because of a Minority Report-like computer algorithm that attempts to guess which citizens are most likely to commit crimes or become a victim of violence.

The methodology used in the making of the list has come under scrutiny, and its effectiveness is questionable. The Tribune quoted a study released last week by the RAND Corporation that said the list "does not appear to have been successful in reducing gun violence." The study also said the data used by police to make the list "raises privacy and civil rights concerns."

Cops murder a mentally ill person, "armed" with a broomstick, fleeing from them in his underwear - and there are no legal consequences for the murderers.

Judge dismisses lawsuit against Miami cops who killed mentally ill man

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit on Friday against two Miami police officers who shot and killed a mentally ill black man last year.

The lawsuit, filed by the family of 25-year-old Lavall Hall, contended that the officers needlessly resorted to gunfire when they attempted to subdue Hall, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. The suit accused the officers of wrongful death and violating Hall's civil rights.

Earlier this year, Miami-Dade County prosecutors ruled that Officer Eddo Trimino was "justified" in his use of deadly force against Hall.

Anti-Austerity Leftist Announces Challenge to French President Hollande

Seeking to replace France's increasingly unpopular President François Hollande, former industry minister and "left-wing firebrand" Arnaud Montebourg announced his candidacy for president on Sunday.

The French election will take place in May 2017. Hollande, whom Jacobin notes has "force[d] his way though political institutions and democracy in order to implement his unpopular policies," has not yet said whether he will run for re-election. In 2016, he faced a popular uprising under the banner "Nuit Debout," a pro-democracy movement that grew out of protests against his anti-labor and authoritarian security policies.

On Sunday, Montebourg urged Hollande not to run, calling his record "indefensible" and charging him with betraying the "ideals of the left." ...

Montebourg was ousted two years ago "amid open disagreements with his bosses over their shift to supply-side economic policies," Politico Europe wrote earlier this year, pointing out that this dust-up "bolsters his credentials as an outsider."

Notably, Reuters reports, Montebourg, "who came third in the 2012 primary winning some 17 percent of the vote, did not say whether he would take part in the [Socialist] party's primaries or run as an independent left-wing candidate."

Chris Hedges interviews Rob Urie

As Resistance Mounts, TPP Becoming 2016 Election's Third Rail

As the White House prepares for its final "all-out push" to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are being made vulnerable due to growing opposition to the controversial, corporate-friendly trade deal.

"[I]n 2016," the Guardian reported on Saturday, "America's faltering faith in free trade has become the most sensitive controversy in D.C."

Yet President Barack Obama "has refused to give up," wrote Guardian journalists Dan Roberts and Ryan Felton, despite the fact that the 12-nation TPP "suddenly faces a wall of political opposition among lawmakers who had, not long ago, nearly set the giant deal in stone."

The Huffington Post reported Thursday:

In the past month alone, 12 Republican House members who voted to approve fast-track authority for trade agreements have announced their opposition to the TPP, including Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.), a Senate candidate in Louisiana and the chairman of the Friends of the TPP congressional caucus. In the Senate, Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), ardent free-traders facing tough reelection battles, have announced their opposition to the deal.

Not only are "[v]ulnerable Senate Republicans are starting to side with Donald Trump (and Democrats) by opposing President Obama's signature trade deal," as the Washington Post reported Thursday, but once-supportive Dems are also poised to jump ship.

To that end, in a column this week, Campaign for America's Future blogger Dave Johnson listed for readers "28 House Democrat targets...who—in spite of opposition from most Democrats and hundreds of labor, consumer, LGBT, health, human rights, faith, democracy and other civil organizations—voted for the 'fast-track' trade promotion authority (TPA) bill that 'greased the skids' for the TPP by setting up rigged rules that will help TPP pass."

It's worth checking out this article; Federal Election Commissioner calls for (actual) citizen comments on Citizens United:

Citizens United, Foreign Money, and Your Voice

There are serious concerns about how foreign money may influence elections in the United States, at the federal, state and local level. My fellow commissioners at the Federal Election Commission should share those concerns. And I suspect many Americans feel the same way, too. That’s why I would like to hear directly from you before the FEC meeting in September where this will be discussed. After you read this, send me your thoughts by emailing CommissionerRavel@fec.gov. The FEC’s job, because we exist in the public interest, is to hear from the public.

Campaign finance laws have long guarded against foreign spending in our elections to protect the integrity of our representative government. But the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United transformed our campaign finance system and opened up new avenues for outside and corporate spending in elections, so the issue has become more significant. ...

The prohibition on foreign campaign spending remains on the books. But with Citizens United, 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. We already know that much of the new outside spending comes from undisclosed, dark money sources. We must ensure that foreign corporations and foreign nationals do not influence our elections by funneling funds through their U.S.-based subsidiaries.

Third parties aren't 'spoilers'. They're at the cutting edge of democracy

A vote for the Republicans or Democrats is a vote for the status quo. Pressure from the radical left could be the beginning of a transformational change.

There is one example of a third party winning a presidential election. The first political party, the Democrats, was a party of slave plantation owners. The second long-lasting political grouping was the Whig party, northern industrialists who profited from slavery. By the mid-1800s slavery was more valuable than manufacturing, banking and railroads combined. There had been an abolition movement since before the founding of the nation, but it was stalled, even going backward. Abolitionists decided to force their issue onto the agenda by running for office. They lost repeatedly, but over nearly two decades they weakened the Whigs and divided the Democrats. Abraham Lincoln, a former Whig, won a four-way race in 1860 for the Republicans with less than 40% of the vote.

The abolitionist spoilers were hated because they were blamed for the Mexican war by giving the greater-evil Democrats the presidency. But, we should be eternally grateful to those who voted in those losing elections to end slavery. They were democracy heroes, using the tools available to force an end to slavery.

We face a similar issue today when the issue is corporate power, especially the power of Wall Street and transnational corporations controlling government. Two parties take hundreds of millions from big business and do their bidding. ...

Establishment parties nominated two very unpopular candidates. Since we know who will win, why throw away your vote on either? Use your vote to challenge corporate power.

Only the Greens, Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka, are challenging corporate power. The movement, already planning “#NoHoneymoon for Hillary” protests, has been growing rapidly since 2011, getting stronger and winning battles. Every vote for Stein makes the movement stronger by forcing Clinton to look over her left shoulder, worried that the Greens will have enough votes to impact her re-election.

As She Rakes in the Cash, Clinton Fundraisers Still Shrouded in Secrecy

Hillary Clinton spent the weekend fundraising in affluent New England communities, speaking to more than 2,200 donors at private brunches and gatherings in Nantucket and Cape Cod—but what she told them "remains a mystery," the Associated Press reported Monday.

The fundraising effort—which follows her campaign's most lucrative month so far with a $63 million gain in July—underscores Clinton's continued evasion of transparency over her ties to wealthy elites. In fact, of the roughly 300 fundraising events she has held since announcing her White House run in April 2015, only five have allowed any press coverage, and Clinton has attempted to ban the use of social media among guests, according to the AP.

It has even incurred criticism from some of her Democratic allies, who "privately acknowledge" that Clinton's aversion to transparency could be a liability considering her issues with appearing "trustworthy" to voters. ...

In addition to her private fundraising efforts, Clinton has gone months without a "full-fledged press conference," the AP continues, while her Republican opponent Donald Trump has held several.

One racist bipartisan calls out another racist bipartisan, it'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Trump's pitch to black voters: 'What the hell do you have to lose?'

Despite facing criticism earlier this week for the way he attempted to appeal to black voters, Donald Trump doubled down on his approach during a rally in Michigan on Friday night.

"Look at how much African-American communities are suffering from Democratic control," Trump said. "To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose? You live in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs, 58 percent of your youth is unemployed — what the hell do you have to lose?" ...

According to the Pew Research Center, 82 percent of black voters see treatment of minorities as a key issue in this election, compared to 56 percent of whites who feel the same.

Climate change will mean the end of national parks as we know them

After a century of shooing away hunters, tending to trails and helping visitors enjoy the wonder of the natural world, the guardians of America’s most treasured places have been handed an almost unimaginable new job – slowing the all-out assault climate change is waging against national parks across the nation.

As the National Parks Service (NPS) has charted the loss of glaciers, sea level rise and increase in wildfires spurred by rising temperatures in recent years, the scale of the threat to US heritage across the 412 national parks and monuments has become starkly apparent.

The Statue of Liberty is at “high exposure” risk from increasingly punishing storms. A national monument dedicated to abolitionist Harriet Tubman, who will be enshrined on a new $20 note, could be eaten away by rising tides in Maryland. The land once walked by Pocahontas and Captain John Smith in Jamestown, the first English settlement in the US, is surrounded by waters rising at twice the global average and may be beyond rescue.

These threats are the latest in a pile of identified calamities to befall national parks and monuments due to climate change. Receding ice, extreme heat and acidifying oceans are morphing America’s landscapes and coasts at a faster pace than at any time in human history. ...

Change, however, is inevitable no matter how quickly greenhouse gas emissions are cut. An NPS study from 2014 found four in five of America’s national parks are now at the “extreme end” of temperature variables charted since 1901.

“We are starting to see things spiral away now,” said Gregor Schuurman, an ecologist at the NPS climate change response program. “We are going to look back at this time and actually think it was a calm period. And then people will start asking questions about what we were doing about the situation.”

The Empire Files: Chevron vs. the Amazon - The Environmental Trial of the Century

Amid Flooding, Groups Call for End to 'Unconscionable' Fossil Fuel Auctions

A coalition of climate and advocacy groups on Friday called on the Obama administration to cancel an upcoming fossil fuel auction as Louisiana reels from the unprecedented floods that have ravaged the state—and which rescue groups have described as the worst U.S. disaster since Superstorm Sandy.

The organizations, including 350.org, CREDO, and Greenpeace, circulated a petition imploring President Barack Obama to call off the planned August 24 offshore drilling lease auction for a portion of the Gulf of Mexico "the size of Virginia." The auction is set to take place in the New Orleans Superdome, which became an infamous symbol of climate injustice and bureaucratic callousness when Hurricane Katrina victims were forced to take shelter there in 2005.

In the wake of the flooding, the groups said, allowing any more fossil fuel extraction—and in turn, facilitating the release of more climate-changing greenhouse gases—would be "unconscionable."

Dakota Pipeline Construction Halted Amid Ongoing 'Defiance of Black Snake'

Construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline has been temporarily halted as protests against the $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project continued this week at the North Dakota state capitol building as well as at a "spirit camp" at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers.

According to the Associated Press, pipeline developers on Thursday agreed to pause construction until a federal court hearing next week in Washington, D.C.—but a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer Partners vowed the work would still be completed by the end of the year. 

Meanwhile, Indigenous and environmental activists continue to gather in opposition to the pipeline, with between 1500 and 2000 people currently engaged in active resistance. 

They said we are armed...
The only thing we're armed with is our prayers. #NoDAPL #RezpectOurWater pic.twitter.com/87xndzl520

— Dirk Whitebreast (@dw641) August 19, 2016

"What happens to the Missouri River happens to all of us, all human beings," said actress Shailene Woodley at the Thursday night protest in the capital of Bismarck. "Water is not limited to Indigenous people, water is limited to everyone. Indigenous people right now are the only ones protecting it."

And in Minneapolis on Friday, Indigenous community members and council member Alondra Cano presented a resolution calling on the city to support native resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. According to the state chapter of climate group 350.org, "The resolution was referred to the Intergovernmental Relations Committee where we will have the opportunity to further educate council members on the issue before it is brought back to the full council and passed."

Also of Interest

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

Making Sense of Trump and His National Security State Critics

Clinton’s Transition Team: A Corporate Presidency Foretold

Hillary’s Hubris: Only Tell the Rich for $5000 a Minute!

Student Loan Debt Slaves Get the Runaround Seeking Promised Relief

Capitalism Is Predicated Upon a Gluttony That Is Leading to Our Extinction

How Abusive Employers Combined With Job Insecurity Lead to Suicides

Shame, Trauma, and Confusion as Judge Blocks Obama's Trans Bathroom Order

Not on the map: cartographic omission from New England to Palestine

Hidden codex may reveal secrets of life in Mexico before Spanish conquest

Celebrated Belgian jazz musician Toots Thielemans dies aged 94

A Little Night Music

Van Morrison & Them - (Get your kicks on) Route 66

Van Morrison - And It Stoned Me

Van Morrison - Moondance

Van Morrison - Precious Time

Van Morrison - Days Like This

Van Morrison - Wild Night

John Lee Hooker w/Van Morrison - Serves Me Right To Suffer/Syndicator

Van Morrison - Ain't nothin' you can do

James Hunter & Van Morrison - Turn On Your Love Light