Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues singer Lee "Shot" Williams. Enjoy!

"The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason."

-- Paul Wolfowitz

News and Opinion

Well, actually, no, I am not tired of hearing about Hillary's damned emails just now. I hope that we hear a lot more about this one:

Smoking gun emails from Hillary Clinton's private server reveal Bush and Blair's deal on Iraq war was forged a year before the invasion

A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by Tony Blair and George Bush over the Iraq War.The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started. It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis. He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals.

The classified document also discloses that Blair agreed to act as a glorified spin doctor for the President by presenting ‘public affairs lines’ to convince a sceptical public that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction – when none existed.

The damning memo, from Secretary of State Colin Powell to President George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.

In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the President: ‘The UK will follow our lead’. ...

A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used ‘spies’ in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favour of the war.

The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal. ...

Powell says to Bush: ‘He will present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause,’ adding that Blair has the presentational skills to ‘make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace’.

Five months after the summit, Downing Street produced the notorious ‘45 minutes from doom’ dossier on Saddam Hussein’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction. After Saddam was toppled, the dossier’s claims were exposed as bogus.

Nowhere in the memo is a diplomatic route suggested as the preferred option.

Instead, Powell says that Blair will also advise on how to ‘handle calls’ for the ‘blessing’ of the United Nations Security Council, and to ‘demonstrate that we have thought through “the day after” ’ – in other words, made adequate provision for a post-Saddam Iraq.

‘Cheerleader’: Leaked memo claims Blair supported Iraq invasion year before war

Chilcot report unlikely to be delayed by Colin Powell memo

The Chilcot inquiry is unlikely to delay further its report into the war in Iraq as a result of the emergence of a fresh memo from former US secretary of state Colin Powell, according to one of those who gave evidence to the hearing.

A spokesman for the inquiry said Sir John Chilcot will not be commenting on the memo so as not to prejudice or pre-empt the report. Chilcot informed David Cameron last week that he planned to provide a timetable for publication of the long-delayed report by 3 November. The spokesman declined to comment on whether the memo would create a further delay.

The report is likely to be published next year.

According to Powell’s memo, Blair indicated to then US president George W Bush in March 2002 that the UK would support military operations in Iraq if necessary, a full year before the invasion. Blair has said repeatedly he had not committed the UK to the war until 2003. ...

A witness – not one of those criticised – said Chilcot was unlikely to reopen the process at this late stage, not least because the substance of the Powell memo was “not a big revelation”.

It is now well-known that Blair had tilted towards war by March 2002, the witness said, and even if Chilcot had not seen this particular memo, he would have been told similar things by other witnesses or seen evidence in other documents.

MSF Hospital Was in US ‘Restricted’ Database Before Attack

Pentagon Confirms MSF Called Immediately When Attack Began

The Pentagon has reported “initial findings” in its internal investigation of this month’s attack on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, a strike which killed 22 civilians and has fueled calls for an independent investigation into potential war crimes.

The Pentagon’s comments, reported to CNN, were largely in keeping with what MSF had already reported, affirming that the hospital was known and documented by the Pentagon, that Doctors Without Borders “did everything right” in informing the US of the location of the facility, and that MSF, as they reported the day of the incident, contacted the Pentagon immediately upon the first strike on the facility.

That’s where things get murky though. The Pentagon concedes the hospital was “restricted” – not to be attacked under any circumstances, and that they were informed early in the attack that they were hitting a hospital. Despite this, the attacks continued for a solid hour, and Pentagon officials say the call “was quickly put into our system. Beyond that I can’t say where it went.”

Today’s comments have US officials trying to disavow that narrative at any rate, saying it is “preposterous” to think that the US would “knowingly” attack a protected facility even if it knew there was a target within. Yet the US did attack the facility, and confirms it was protected, and so far there hasn’t been even a mediocre excuse for it.

Turkey --- Success Story Turns to Disaster

As Saddam Hussein predicted, George W. Bush’s invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq opened the gates of hell. Attempts by Washington to overthrow Syria’s Alawite regime – a natural US ally – have destroyed large parts of that once lovely nation and produced the worst human disaster since the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the late 1940’s and 1967.

Washington’s bull-in-a-China-shop behavior in the fragile Mideast came just as the Turkish government of Recep Erdogan had presided over a decade of stunning economic growth for Turkey, pushed the intrusive armed forces back to their barracks, and achieved friendly relations with neighbors. No Turkish leader in modern history had achieved so much.

Equally important, the Erdogan government was on the verge of making a final accommodation with Turkey’s always restive Kurds – up to 20% of the population of 75 million – that would have recognized many new rights of the “people of the mountains.” ...

Thanks to patient diplomacy and difficult concessions, PM Erdogan’s Islamist –Lite AK Party managed to reach tentative peace accords with the PKK and its jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan in spite of fierce resistance from Turkey’s generals, violent semi-fascist nationalist groups and equally dangerous leftist revolutionaries.

Peace with the Kurds went down the drain when the US intensified the war in Syria and began openly arming and financing Syria’s and Iraq’s Kurds. Various Kurdish groups became involved in the Syria fighting against the Assad regime in Damascus and against the Islamic State – which had been created by Saudi Arabia and the CIA to attack Shia regimes. Turkey struck back, and the war with the Kurds resumed. A decade of patient work kaput.

Oh my, it looks like we've located another zip code that the milkman of human kindness does not deliver to. It's a shame to see so many lactose decency intolerant people there are in America.

Strident Calls to Reject Syrian Refugees Fueled by Wealthy California Donor

While humanitarian groups and religious charities across the country are urging the U.S. to open its arms to refugees fleeing the bloody conflicts in Syria and Iraq, a number of bloggers and political pundits are beating the drums of intolerance, using conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim rhetoric to mobilize the American public against accepting migrants escaping war.

Several of the leading voices in this effort are sponsored by Robert Shillman, a wealthy donor to conservative causes who lives in Rancho Santa Fe, a suburb of San Diego. ...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at FrontPage Magazine, has argued that the only “genuine refugees” are “Christian and non-Muslim” and that the U.S. should not accept any Muslims from the conflict in Syria because those fleeing the region “are not victims, they are perpetrators.”

Greenfield, who has published over a dozen articles this year about the dangers of Syrian refugees, explained on an Internet news program in September that the Obama administration is “really eager to find new undocumented Democratic voters anywhere it can” and that religious charity groups assisting Syrian refugees are simply out to make money from the crisis. “If you’re a 90-year-old Haitian who is HIV-positive, they will roll out the red carpet for you,” Greenfield claimed, as he explained the Obama administration’s approach to immigration.

Raymond Ibrahim, another Shillman Fellow at FrontPage, has argued that Western nations “should only accept Christian refugees” because Muslim refugees are merely escaping “chaos created by the violent and supremacist teachings of their own religion, Islam.”

Germany looks toward Turkey for help on growing refugee crisis

Germany Offers Turkey a Deal: Support For EU Bid In Return For Migration Crisis Help

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has done something of a U-turn and offered Turkey a deal: support for faster progress with its bid to join the European Union in return for more cooperation with stemming the flow of migrants and refugees, and reaccepting those who have been rejected by Europe.

Speaking in Istanbul at a joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Sunday, Merkel said Germany would be willing to help accelerate the path to visa-free travel to the EU for Turks and push forward Ankara's protracted EU membership talks.

In return, she expects Turkey to agree more quickly to take in migrants sent back by the EU, so-called "readmission agreements" that Davutoglu has said he will sign up to only if there is progress on liberalizing the visa regime for Turks.

The German chancellor reiterated her opposition to Turkey joining the EU just 10 days ago, with her and her party previously saying they were strongly against Turkey entering the EU because of its poor human rights record.

But now she needs Turkey's help that position has apparently changed.

Iraqi Kurdish civilians bear the brunt of Turkish airstrikes

Turkey continues to conduct airstrikes against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in spite of the unilateral ceasefire brought forth by the PKK. As the bombings go on, Turkey has scheduled critical elections less than three weeks away.

The announcement of the PKK’s ceasefire offer came immediately after the largest attack in Turkey’s modern history. On 10 October, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a peace rally in Ankara, only five days after Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met EU leaders in Brussels to discuss the situation of Syria's refugees. In return for keeping Syrian refugees from reaching Europe, Erdoğan is asking the EU to support his war on the PKK.

Civilians, however, have borne the brunt in this war. Most of the casualties have been non-combatants, and a significant portion of those killed never took up arms against Turkey, but instead fought the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq. ...

“I had been saving money for three years to build this house, and we had only just moved in here”, Nabi Hassan says. Hassan has not been taking up arms against Turkey; he is a sergeant of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces that are fighting IS in Iraq.

The front door of his home has remained intact. Inside his house, however, a child’s bike with a crooked wheel lies on the ground and the glass of the shattered windows is scattered everywhere. A clock is lying on the floor, pointing at 4:10 am, the time when the first missiles landed on this little country village. ...

Hassan explains how a drone flew over and an aircraft fired another missile at the crowd of people who were searching for survivors beneath the ruins. “I saw mutilated bodies. Of civilians, our villagers. If you are looking for the PKK, they are hiding in the mountains. Saddam bombed the Kurds as well. He was a dictator. But Turkey pretends to be a democratic state that wants to become a member of the European Union.”

Does the US Have a Plan in Afghanistan?

Yes, the U.S. can leave Afghanistan

"The narrative that we're leaving Afghanistan is self-defeating," Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced last week, in justifying the latest course change in U.S. policy toward that country. "We're not, we can't, and to do so would not be to take advantage of the success we've had to date." ...

Americans should wonder how it is that the United States today acts from an absence of choice, as Carter acknowledges in his revealing remark. Why is it that we "can't" leave?

Answering that question requires appreciating the fix in which the United States finds itself, not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq, where a war once said to have ended has resumed with a vengeance. In both countries, U.S. military policy has met with profound failure. After overthrowing the established order, U.S. forces attempted in each to restore stability while vowing to create a flourishing new order advertised as both humane and democratic. Yet in Afghanistan and Iraq alike, despite vast expenditures and very considerable sacrifice, those efforts never came close to fruition, even as they exhausted the willingness of the American people to do more.

Even today, however, few in Washington will own up to the magnitude and implications of those twin failures. The fact that senior officials from both parties, along with a succession of high-ranking military officers, share in responsibility for the various misjudgments and miscalculations made along the way helps to sustain an atmosphere of collective denial. Members of the national security establishment to which Carter belongs — he is the fifth Defense secretary to have presided over these ongoing conflicts — have a common interest in diverting attention from just how badly they have screwed up.

So the decision to retain 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the Obama administration's previously announced deadline for withdrawal qualifies less as a noteworthy shift in policy than as an attempt to conceal the utter absence of any policy worthy of the name. Does anyone seriously think that what President Obama describes as a "modest but meaningful extension of our presence" will bring hostilities in Afghanistan to a favorable conclusion, when years of effort by a much larger contingent could not accomplish that goal?

What we have here is temporizing dressed up in policy drag. It is a gesture designed to convey an appearance of purposefulness to an enterprise whose actual purpose has long since vanished in the mists of time.

Pentagon claims to kill Al-Qaeda financier a second time in Syria airstrike

In a new statement today, the Pentagon claimed to have killed Sanafi al-Nasr, a long-sought al-Qaeda financial from Saudi Arabia, in an airstrike against northwest Syria. He was said to have been slain on Thursday. ... The Pentagon has most recently claimed he was a figure in [a group the Pentagon pulled out of its, um, imagination,] "Khorasan."

This is the second time Nasr has been reported killed, and many Pentagon claims of slain militants haven’t panned out. ... The US didn’t specify the site of the airstrike, though interestingly a conflicting story has emerged claiming Nasr was actually killed by a Russian airstrike, just west of the city of Aleppo. With the US heavily emphasizing that their focus, unlike Russia’s, is exclusively on ISIS, it is noteworthy that their only recent named killing was of a non-ISIS target.

Who Are the Targets of Russian Airstrikes in Syria?

Russia blocks Israeli jets over Lebanon

Russian forces warned Israel over IAF flights in Russian controlled airspace near the Syrian–Lebanese border area after Israeli jets were detected nearby, according to a report Friday in the Lebanese media outlet As Safir.

The report comes a mere day after Russia announced that it had established a "hotline" with Israel in order to coordinate aerial activity over Lebanon and Syria.

As Safir quoted Lebanese diplomatic officials who were "in the know," as saying that the warning was issued after Russian radar identified Israeli aircraft approaching Russian-controlled airspace two weeks ago.

"Russian aircraft immediately blocked the Israeli jets' path while they flew above the Akkar region in northern Lebanon. The Russians immediately sent a clear warning to the Israelis that entering Syrian airspace would be a pretext for opening fire," the source said.

Israel-Palestine: As Stabbings, Shootings Kill Dozens, Endless Occupation Fuels Vengeful Resistance

US Officials: Iran Complying Too Fast With Nuclear Deal

While everyone expected Iran to move quickly on implementing the P5+1 nuclear deal, US officials are alarmed at the alacrity of their compliance, saying they have “unreasonable expectations” that the West will implement their own side of the deal in a timely fashion. ...

The overall attitude from US officials, and that some are already accusing Iran of “cutting corner” by moving so quickly, suggests that Western nations, and the US in particular, were expecting to be able to drag out their end of the bargain on the P5+1 nuclear deal.

That may not be realistic, however, as Iran seems to be quickly implementing the pact, and some of the EU nations, particularly Germany, have substantial business deals on the line with Iran, which would be threatened if they drag out implementation.

US to clean up Spanish radioactive site 49 years after plane crash

Nearly 50 years after a US air force B-52 bomber carrying nuclear weapons crashed in Palomares in south-east Spain, Washington has finally agreed to clean up the radioactive contamination that resulted from the crash.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, and the Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel García-Margallo, signed an agreement in Madrid on Monday to clean up the site and “store the contaminated earth at a suitable location in the United States”.

The Palomares crash was the worst nuclear accident of its time. On 17 January 1966, at the height of the cold war, the B-52 bomber collided with a KC-135 tanker plane during mid-air refuelling off the coast of Almería, Spain, killing seven of the 11 crew members.

The B-52 was carrying four hydrogen bombs more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two were recovered intact from the sea but the others leaked radiation into the surrounding countryside when their plutonium-filled detonators went off, strewing 3kg of highly radioactive plutonium 239 around Palomares. ...

The Palomares clean-up deal is seen by many as a sweetener in exchange for Spain agreeing to Washington ramping up its military presence in the country. ... Talks with Spain’s rightwing government over the military build-up have intensified in recent months amid fears that a government less sympathetic to Washington’s strategic aims may be elected in December. Barack Obama said during the King of Spain’s visit to Washington in September that a change of government might harm bilateral relations.

Inside Allan Dulles' Reign as CIA Director, from '54 Guatemala Coup to Plotting Castro's Overthrow, A CIA Tie to JFK Assassination?

Marines are warned not to read leaked 'drone files'

Curious Marines, be warned: Reading this could get you in a whole lot of trouble. "The Drone Papers," published on Thursday by The Intercept, contain classified files explaining the ins and outs of how the U.S. drone program is run. Though the information is now easily accessible, it's still technically classified — which means that service members, civilian employees, and government contractors put their security clearance at risk just by taking a peek, the Jacksonville Daily News reports.

Drone Papers 'No Surprise to Yemenis,' Says Man Who Lost Family

One man who lost family members to the covert U.S. drone war in Yemen responded Friday to The Intercept's explosive new exposé of the American "assassination complex" by proclaiming he is not surprised but now more hopeful "the whole truth will come out."

"I read that the Americans have very little knowledge of the innocent civilians they are killing in Yemen," said Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a Yemeni engineer whose nephew Waleed bin Ali Jaber and brother-in-law Salem bin Ali Jaber were killed in a 2012 U.S. drone strike attack on their village of Khashamir.

"This is no surprise to Yemenis," he continued. "For years, we have been confused by the sharp contrast between what we see with our own eyes and what the U.S. government tells the world. Slowly, the whole truth will come out."

Snowden Says Hillary Clinton’s Bogus Statements Show a “Lack of Political Courage”

Hillary Clinton twice this week has insisted, contrary to the facts, that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden could have accomplished his goals and avoided punishment if he’d raised his concerns through the proper channels.

Clinton first made that assertion at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, and again at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Friday. ...

Snowden was asked about Clinton’s comments in an appearance, by videolink from Moscow, at a Bard College privacy symposium Friday afternoon.

Snowden said her statement was “false” and he decried “a lack of political courage.”

“Truth should matter in politics, and courage should matter in politics,” he said.

During Tuesday’s debate, Clinton said Snowden “could have been a whistleblower. He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistleblower. He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that.” (She also inacurately claimed that the Snowden files had “fallen into a lot of the wrong hands.”)

But media outlets and advocates quickly noted that Snowden was not in fact entitled to whistleblower protections, which do not apply to contractors.

Victim of state spying? Facebook will tell you

The social network will now explicitly warn users it fears are being targeted by state-sponsored hackers

Users whose accounts are targeted or compromised by state-sponsored hackers will now receive a notification upon login, warning them that “we believe your Facebook account and your other online accounts may be the target of attacks from state-sponsored actors”.

The user is then prompted to turn on Facebook’s “login approvals”, a form of two-factor authorisation which texts a login code to the user when they (or anyone else) tries to access the app using their phone.

Is UN Planning to Call for Global Decriminalization of All Drugs?

Business titan Richard Branson claimed on Monday that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has prepared an unreleased document calling on "governments around the world to decriminalise drug use and possession for personal consumption for all drugs."

"It's exciting that the UNODC has now unequivocally stated that criminalization is harmful, unnecessary and disproportionate, echoing concerns about the immense human and economic costs of current drug policies voiced earlier by UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, UNDP, The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Women, Kofi Annan and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon," wrote Branson, who founded the business conglomerate Virgin Group and sits on the Global Commission on Drug Policy. ...

"But as I'm writing this," Branson added, "I am hearing that at least one government is putting an inordinate amount of pressure on the UNODC. Let us hope the UNODC, a global organization that is part of the UN and supposed to do what is right for the people of the world, does not do a remarkable volte-face at the last possible moment and bow to pressure by not going ahead with this important move."

Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people

Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal.

From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show. ...

According to an analysis of data disclosed to the Guardian in late September, police allowed lawyers access to Homan Square for only 0.94% of the 7,185 arrests logged over nearly 11 years. That percentage aligns with Chicago police’s broader practice of providing minimal access to attorneys during the crucial early interrogation stage, when an arrestee’s constitutional rights against self-incrimination are most vulnerable. ...

The narcotics, vice and anti-gang units operating out of Homan Square, on Chicago’s west side, take arrestees to the nondescript warehouse from all over the city: police data obtained by the Guardian and mapped against the city grid show that 53% of disclosed arrestees come from more than 2.5 miles away from the warehouse. No contemporaneous public record of someone’s presence at Homan Square is known to exist.

Nor are any booking records generated at Homan Square, as confirmed by a sworn deposition of a police researcher in late September, further preventing relatives or attorneys from finding someone taken there.

“The reality is, no one knows where that person is at Homan Square,” said Craig Futterman, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who studies policing. “They’re disappeared at that point.”

Holder Defends Record of Not Prosecuting Financial Fraud

Former attorney general Eric Holder was the honored guest at a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reception on Wednesday (leading investigative reporter Murray Waas to reasonably wonder: How’s that again?). ...

After Holder stepped down from his [AG] post in April, he went back to his job at Covington & Burling, the gigantic D.C. law firm whose clients have included many of the big banks which Holder chose not to prosecute. ... Holder bristled at my suggestion that there might be a connection between his current employer and his conduct at Justice, saying that many top prosecutors at Justice had pursued cases as best they could. “We were simply unable to do it under the existing statutes that we had, and given the ways the decision-making worked at those institutions,” he said.

However, Holder had all the statutory authority he needed to prosecute straightforward crimes such as robosigning fraud, perjury in front of Congress by Goldman Sachs executives, or for that matter, HSBC’s money laundering for Mexican drug cartels. He simply chose not to. (In response to another questioner, he denied that any of his decisions not to prosecute were based on the massive legal teams that were fielded against the government.) Moreover, he actively waved off offers of additional help such as the suggestion from Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, that Congress give him more staff for his Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, or extend the statute of limitations on some crimes. ...

Holder’s comment was only the most recent in a series of pronouncements from formerly powerful government officials that they were in fact powerless — while talking tough once they no longer have the ability to do anything about it.

This is a really excellent article worth reading in full, here's a taste to get your appetite whetted:

Exclusive Federal Reserve Videos and the Glass-Steagall Media Conspiracy

A funny thing happened in 2012 after Andrew Ross Sorkin, a financial writer at the New York Times, wrote his spectacularly false narrative telling readers that the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act had nothing to do with the crash because problem firms like Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and AIG didn’t own insured commercial banks — which would have been prohibited under the Glass Steagall Act, had it not been repealed in 1999. In fact, all three of the firms did, indeed, own banks insured by the FDIC at the time of the crash.

We figured that Sorkin had just made an error, or, well, three monster errors, so we wrote to his editor. We heard nothing. We wrote to the New York Times public editor who is supposed to uphold the integrity of the paper. Nothing. We wrote to the publisher. Nothing. To this very day, the errors remain in the Sorkin article. When the so-called paper of record allows three outrageously wrong errors to persist as fact, it doesn’t look like sloppy journalism, it looks like a conspiracy to deny the public an honest narrative.

Sorkin’s lie has since been regurgitated by two other writers at the New York Times: Paul Krugman and William Cohan. The lie has also spread to President Obama and Presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, as a cover for why they won’t buck Wall Street and work to reinstate this critically needed legislation as Senators Elizabeth Warren, John McCain, Bernie Sanders and dozens of others in Congress are demanding. Marcy Kaptur’s legislation in the House of Representatives to restore the Glass-Steagall Act has 67 cosponsors.

Final Election Poll Shows Canada’s Liberal Party Could Win a Majority

With Canadians just hours away from heading to the voting booth, a new poll provided in advance to VICE News predicts the Liberal Party is on track for a big win on Monday evening.

The Forum Research survey puts Justin Trudeau's Liberals at 40 percent — the highest result they've achieved thus far in the 78-day campaign — meaning the third-place party could be in a position to sweep into power with a majority government.

The poll puts the governing Conservatives at just 30 percent, and the official opposition New Democratic Party, who entered the campaign with a strong lead, in third place at 20 percent.

Why Americans should care about the Canadian election

The incumbent Conservatives, under Stephen Harper, have not been popular with the Obama administration, partly because they have lobbied the US hard to build the Keystone XL pipeline.

But with Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s party predicted to win the most seats – if not an outright majority – experts say there is a chance of a thaw in relations between the two countries in time to facilitate real action on issues like climate change. ...

Canadian participation in the US-led coalition against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq is also in question. Canada has six F-18 jets in Kuwait, flying sorties against Isis, and a special operations unit in Iraqi Kurdistan training Kurdish peshmerga forces. The Conservatives have campaigned to keep those missions going.

But the Liberals have indicated that they would end the air mission, and the NDP would remove all non-Nato Canadian military presence from the region. ...

Trudeau is leading in the polls, so it seems increasingly likely that he will be the prime minister for the final year of Obama’s presidency and the opening years of his successor’s. It is possible the US president will find in him a more willing partner in his attempt to leave a lasting environmental legacy.

If Donald Trump Wins, Please Don't Move To Canada

Egyptians Shun Long-Awaited Parliamentary Election

Egyptians appeared to be shunning the ballot box for a second day on Monday in what one newspaper called "an election without voters", highlighting growing disillusionment since the army seized power in 2013 and promised to restore democracy.

In 2012, millions of people across the country queued up outside polling stations to excitedly cast their vote in the first presidential election Egypt had ever held — a turnout of around 46 percent. In this parliamentary election, polling stations visited by Reuters correspondents pointed to a turnout of around 10 percent.

Younger Egyptians who make up the majority of the population were virtually absent, with many people dismissing it as a sham or expressing doubt that new lawmakers would change anything. The absence of opposition parties has also fuelled voter apathy.

While Sanders Scores Small Donors, Clinton and Bush Buoyed by Wall Street

While the 2016 U.S. presidential election fundraising numbers released Thursday by the Bernie Sanders campaign illustrate the power of a Main Street donor base, filings from Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton show their campaigns continue to be the darlings of Wall Street.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports indicate that Bush and Clinton—both of whom are facing challenges from insurgent candidates—"continued to win with bankers, even as their fundraising slowed down last quarter," Politico reported Friday:

Bush collected more than $922,000 from people who said they work in finance, about even with his take from the industry in the previous quarter, and amounting to 7 percent of his total haul. Clinton trailed with some $682,000 from self-identified bankers and investors, well below the $2 million she drew from the financial industry in the second quarter, but tracking an overall decline in her take.

Wall Street remains a crucial money base for both candidates even as they try to avoid appearing too cozy with the institutions that many voters blame for crashing the economy. Marco Rubio is also making a play for finance dollars, but last quarter netted only $201,754. Ted Cruz got $255,676 from bankers and investors.

Meanwhile, Reuters zeroed in on big bank financiers, noting that Bush raked in $107,000 from employees of firms like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America. Clinton took in nearly $84,000 from employees of the same banks.

Indigenous Canadians take leading role in battle against tar sands pipeline

It is the country’s environmental battle of the decade, uniting a wide variety of citizens’ groups against the billions of dollars of investment by oil companies and millions in secret funding from the government. First proposed in 2004, the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline was planned for a 731-mile (1,177km) stretch from the center of Alberta to the coast of British Columbia.

The plan was to carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands, across hundreds of waterways, over two major mountain ranges and through some of the wildest country in North America. It was approved, with 209 conditions, in June of 2014.

Environmental groups, citizen activists and First Nations have used everything from lawsuits to old-fashioned civil disobedience to battle the project – and so far they have been successful. No mean feat, considering that Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper took office in 2006 pledging to make the country into an “energy superpower”. ...

Even as the political battles rage, the Northern Gateway is back in court for a new round that may prove decisive. A group of First Nations, environmental organizations and a labor union argued that the approval process for the pipeline was flawed, did not take environmental impact into account and violated the rights of First Nations. It was the longest case ever heard before the federal court of appeals, Canada’s second-highest federal court.

The Haisla are one of eight First Nations taking part in the case. When Gerald Amos, whose Haisla name is Gagamguist, was asked what the Conservative government could do to work better with First nations, he simply responded: “The best thing that can happen with the conservative government is to be un-elected.”

Rich Nations Failing to Meet Climate Obligations at Expense of Poor: Report

"If the deal that world leaders sign in Paris looks anything like the Bonn negotiating text, then world leaders will have wholly failed to respond to the urgency of climate science, let alone climate justice."

The U.S. and other wealthy nations are not pulling their weight in the climate change fight and may be setting the world on an even more devastating climate track, a new report published Monday reveals.

Globally, governments' pledges to limit greenhouse gas emissions are not adequate to stave off an average surface temperature warming of 2°C, the agreed threshold to prevent irreparable global warming and extreme weather events, according to the report (pdf), Fair Shares: A Civil Society Equity Review of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), crafted by 18 civil society groups.

The groups, which include Friends of the Earth International and Oxfam, analyzed the pledges put forth ahead of time in early negotiations in Bonn, Germany this week by about 150 United Nations (UN) member states taking part in this year's COP21 climate talks in Paris and determined that the "ambition of all major developed countries falls well short of their fair shares."

While there is no official method of determining a nation's climate obligations, the civil society groups weighed the pledges against individual countries' economic wealth and historical contribution to global warming.

Because the U.S. and the European Union (EU) can afford to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and because they have benefited financially from burning coal, oil, and natural gas for centuries, their pledges amount to roughly a fifth of what they owe on climate action, the coalition said. Japan has pledged a tenth, according to the same metrics.

COP21 Pledge by Dirty Energy CEOs Called 'Meaningless'

As reporting on Friday suggested that some of the world's largest fossil fuel companies are trying to shed their "bad guy image" ahead of upcoming UN climate talks, a number of environmental and climate campaigners are issuing a quick retort: Do not trust them for a Parisian minute.

Though it contains no U.S. companies, an international group calling itself the  Oil and Gas Climate Initiative—which includes BG Group Plc, BP, Eni SpA, Pemex, Reliance Industries Ltd., Repsol SA, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Statoil AG and Total—held a press conference and issued a joint statement on Friday to declare its support for policies that would help world governments meet their agreed goal of keeping global temperatures from rising more than 2°C this century. ...

The Union of Concerned Scientists, meanwhile, says what the oil and gas giants have put on offer should be greeted with a very healthy dose of skepticism.  "We would certainly welcome serious climate policy proposals from the companies," said Alden Meyer, UCS's director of strategy and policy. "But we should be skeptical. Given their track record, the onus is on them to prove to both their shareholders and the public that they are truly serious."

Charlie Kronick, representing Greenpeace, was even less forgiving. According to Kronick, the fossil fuel industry's declaration on Friday "contains nothing meaningful" when it comes to fighting the global warming which their industry has been the chief culprit in creating.

"The oil companies behind this announcement have spent years lobbying to undermine effective climate action, each and every one of them has a business plan that would lead to dangerous global temperature rises, yet suddenly they expect us all to see them as the solution, not the problem," he said.

Also of Interest

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

'All We Could Find Were Body Parts': America's Role in Yemen's Civilian Carnage

The US Could End Saudi War Crimes in Yemen - It Just Doesn't Want To

Dealing With the Syrian Quagmire

NYPD has some scary-sounding x-ray vans – and it’s refusing to talk about them

The Democrats’ Presidential Debates: Underway and Underwhelming

Quantitative Easing Was a Bust; Let’s Try Higher Wages Instead

Chris Hedges: Death by Fracking

What a party! I wonder if it has a soul worth fighting for.

Corrupt Corporatists Steve Israel And Debbie Wasserman Schultz Declare Fratricidal War Against Progressives

A Little Night Music

Lee Shot Williams - I Hurt Myself

Lee Shot Williams - I'm Trying

Lee Shot Williams - Our Thing Is Through

Lee Shot Williams - I Found A Love

Lee Shot Williams - Hello Baby

Lee Shot Williams - I'm In Love

Lee 'Shot' Williams - Checking Out

Lee 'Shot' Williams - I Like Your Style

Lee Williams & the Cymbals - Peeping Through the Window

Lee 'Shot' Williams - The Love You Save

Arlene Brown and Lee "Shot" Williams" - Impeach Me Baby

Lee Shot Williams - I'm Tore Up

Lee Shot Williams - Mark My Words

Lee Shot Williams - When You Move You Lose

Lee Shot Williams - Get Some Order

Lee Shot Williams - The Millionaire

Lee Shot Williams - It Ain't Me No More

Lee Shot Williams - Love Now Pay Later

Lee Shot Williams - It's Friday