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"We know there are no weapons of mass destruction. But there are weapons of misdirection."

-- Joseph Lowery

News and Opinion

In Leaked Emails, Iraq War Architect Expressed Relief That Brexit Distracted From U.K. War Inquiry

Newly leaked emails show how a key U.K. architect of the Iraq war expressed relief that the “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union would reduce media coverage of the devastating results of an inquiry into the United Kingdom’s role in the the war. ...

In anticipation of coming press coverage, Straw asked Powell to review a statement in a Word document he drafted. He wrote that the “only silver lining of the Brexit vote is that it will reduce medium term attention on Chilcot — thought it will not stop the day of publication being uncomfortable.” ...

Nearly a month later, on August 3, Powell emailed Straw to tell him that the Chilcot report “didn’t amount to anything over here” and that he assumes the inquiry simply “faded away.”

“Yes, the Chilcot story has faded altogether here too. It was unpleasant on the day but almost all the focus was on Tony [Blair],” Straw wrote back. He noted that “there is some stuff about some relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq trying to get a legal action against Tony on its feet buy [sic] it’s hard to see how that could work.”

Lawyer for Imprisoned Whistleblower Chelsea Manning: Ongoing Pattern of Abuse Led to Hunger Strike

Chelsea Manning ends hunger strike after winning gender surgery battle

WikiLeaks source serving prison sentence for espionage says she is ‘unendingly relieved’ that military will allow treatment recommended by psychologist

The imprisoned US soldier Chelsea Manning has ended a hunger strike after the army said she would be allowed to receive gender transition surgery, the American Civil Liberties Union has announced.

Manning, 28, who is serving a 35-year prison term for passing classified files to WikiLeaks, began the hunger strike on Friday.

Manning’s treatment would begin with the surgery that was recommended by her psychologist in April, said the ACLU, which represented Manning, who is held in Kansas.

Manning criticised the government in a statement for taking “so long” but said: “I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing. I applaud them for that. This is all that I wanted – for them to let me be me.”

Obama's War on Whistleblowers Forced Edward Snowden to Release Documents, Says Wikileaks Editor

No Civilian Deaths In Syria As Ceasefire Brings Calm

While Syrian rebels were all insisting that the ceasefire would almost certainly fail in short order, a period of relative calm seems to have returned to the country since it went into effect Monday evening, with some stray gunfire here and there, but no major incidents.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights praised the ceasefire as the most successful such effort of the civil war, and noted around noon on Tuesday that not a single civilian death had been confirmed since the ceasefire came into effect.

That’s continued to be the case, with Syrian hospitals noting that they have empty beds for the first time in a long while, and that their only patients are sick people this time, not scores of gunshot victims and other casualties of war.

Details of Syria Pact Widen Rift Between John Kerry and Pentagon

The agreement that Secretary of State John Kerry announced with Russia to reduce the killing in Syria has widened an increasingly public divide between Mr. Kerry and Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, who has deep reservations about the plan for American and Russian forces to jointly target terrorist groups.

Mr. Carter was among the administration officials who pushed against the agreement on a conference call with the White House last week as Mr. Kerry, joining the argument from a secure facility in Geneva, grew increasingly frustrated. Although President Obama ultimately approved the effort after hours of debate, Pentagon officials remain unconvinced.

On Tuesday at the Pentagon, officials would not even agree that if a cessation of violence in Syria held for seven days — the initial part of the deal — the Defense Department would put in place its part of the agreement on the eighth day: an extraordinary collaboration between the United States and Russia that calls for the American military to share information with Moscow on Islamic State targets in Syria.

“I’m not saying yes or no,” Lt. Gen. Jeffrey L. Harrigian, commander of the United States Air Forces Central Command, told reporters on a video conference call. “It would be premature to say that we’re going to jump right into it.”

Pentagon: US Airstrikes in Syria May Have Killed Civilians

In a new statement, the Pentagon conceded that three separate US airstrikes over the past week included attacks which “may have resulted in civilian casualties.” All of the strikes took place in Syria, in and around ISIS-held territory. ...

Centcom rarely admits to killing civilians in airstrikes in either Iraq or Syria, and generally speaking doesn’t even finish its investigations into such reports, just cancelling them part way through and labeling the reports as “not credible.” Though observers have put the toll of US airstrikes in the several hundreds of civilians, Centcom has only admitted to a handful overall.

Al-Qaeda’s Ties to US-Backed Syrian Rebels

The new ceasefire agreement between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which went into effect at noon Monday, has a new central compromise absent from the earlier ceasefire agreement that the same two men negotiated last February. But it isn’t clear that it will produce markedly different results.

The new agreement incorporates a U.S.-Russian bargain: the Syrian air force is prohibited from operating except under very specific circumstances in return for U.S.-Russian military cooperation against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as Daesh, ISIS or ISIL. That compromise could be a much stronger basis for an effective ceasefire, provided there is sufficient motivation to carry it out fully.

The question, however, is whether the Obama administration is willing to do what would certainly be necessary for the agreement to establish a longer-term ceasefire at the expense of Daesh and Al Qaeda.

In return for ending the Syrian air force’s operations, generally regarded as indiscriminate, and lifting the siege on the rebel-controlled sectors of Aleppo, the United States is supposed to ensure the end of the close military collaboration between the armed groups it supports and Al Qaeda, and join with Russian forces in weakening Al Qaeda.

The new bargain is actually a variant of a provision in the Feb. 27 ceasefire agreement: in return for Russian and Syrian restraints on bombing operations, the United States would prevail on its clients to separate themselves from their erstwhile Al Qaeda allies.

But that never happened. Instead the U.S.-supported groups not only declared publicly that they would not honor a “partial ceasefire” that excluded areas controlled by Al Qaeda’s affiliate, then known as Nusra Front, but joined with Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham, in a major open violation of the ceasefire by seizing strategic terrain south of Aleppo in early April. ...

Now that it has gotten a concession from the Russians [the “grounding” of the Syrian air force], the crucial question is what the Obama administration intends to do about the ties between its own military clients and Al Qaeda in Aleppo and elsewhere in the northwest.

Syria: with the truce respected, the sound of children playing replaces that of bombs

The leak of Colin Powell's emails is turning up some fun and interesting things:

Rice: If Rumsfeld, Pentagon Had Done Their Job, Iraq Might Have Turned Out Different

Condoleezza Rice privately criticized Bush administration Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Colin Powell last year in an exchange about the handling of the Iraq War, according to Powell’s personal emails seen by BuzzFeed News.

The two former secretaries of state corresponded briefly after journalist Bob Woodward disputed Rumsfeld’s argument that he had always been skeptical of creating a democracy in Iraq. ...

Powell initiated the 2015 exchange by emailing Rice, who was the national security adviser at the time of the Iraq invasion, with a link to Woodward’s comments.

“First, we didn’t invade Iraq to bring democracy — but once we overthrew Saddam, we had a view of what should follow,” Rice responded. “If Don and the Pentagon had done their job (after claiming the rights to lead post-war rebuilding—things might have turned out differently).”

“Don should just stop talking,” she added. “He puts his foot in his mouth every time.”

Powell replied by seconding Rice’s critique, saying “the boys in the band were brain dead.”

Post-9/11 Wars Have Cost Nearly $5 Trillion (and Counting): Report

The U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost taxpayers nearly $5 trillion and counting, according to a new report released to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the attacks.

Dr. Neta Crawford, professor of political science at Brown University, released the figures in an independent analysis (pdf) of U.S. Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Veteran Affairs spending, as well as their base and projected future spending. Crawford is also a director at Brown's Costs of War Project, which works to draw attention to the human, economic, and political toll of the military response to 9/11.

In total, the wars already boast a price tag of $4.79 trillion, she found. And the cost is still climbing.

Crawford's estimate includes budget requests for the 2017 operations in Afghanistan—which are poised to continue despite President Barack Obama's vow to withdraw troops from the country by then—as well as in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon requested $66 billion for those fights just for that year.

However, even if the U.S. stopped spending on war at the end of this fiscal year, the interest costs, such as debt for borrowed funds, would continue to rise. Post-9/11 military spending was financed almost entirely by borrowing, which in turn has driven debt and interest rates, the project has previously noted.

Helping to 'Sustain Occupation,' US and Israel to Sign Biggest Military Aid Pact Ever

The United States and Israel are set to ink on Wednesday a landmark 10-year, $38 billion military aid deal that will be a boon for U.S. arms manufacturers.

It "constitutes the single largest pledge of bilateral military assistance in U.S. history," the State Department said in a statement.

The new pact, which runs from 2019-2028, will give Israel—already the biggest recipient of U.S. aid—an average of $3.8 billion a year, the Times of Israel reports. That's an increase from the currently deal, expiring in 2018, which gave $3.1 billion a year. ...

As Reuters reports, "the agreement triggered pushback from pro-Palestinian groups, who said the U.S. shouldn't reward Israel with unprecedented aid despite its settlement-building in the disputed West Bank. The Palestinians have demanded that construction stop before restarting peace talks, and the U.S. considers the settlements illegitimate."

Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, for example, told the New York Times that the U.S. is "helping the Israelis sustain the costs of the occupation we claim is unsustainable," adding that "it is high time we address our complicity in [the occupation.]"

And human rights activist Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, told Common Dreams that one word would be enough to sum up her response to the deal. "Disgusting," she said.

Coalition hits Yemen factory but Italian businessmen deny alleged war role

An Arab coalition bombed a Yemeni industrial site in the capital Sanaa on Tuesday, damaging what the Saudi-led alliance called a workshop making missile parts but which businessmen said were several plants making pipes and building materials.

Among the buildings struck was a factory used by Yemen's Alsonidar Group to make and sell pumps under a long standing arrangement with Italian water specialist company Caprari, both companies said.

That strike caused a fire that destroyed half the premises and resulted in several million dollars worth of damage, said Caprari managing director Alberto Caprari. ...

In Saudi Arabia, a coalition spokesman said warplanes hit the Alsonidar plant because it "is now becoming a military manufacturing unit specialized in producing pipes Houthis use to assemble local-made missiles." ...

Caprari said the site was purely civilian.

"We are very angry. We have been operating in Yemen with our partner for more than 20 years, helping to produce pumps which are for civilian use," Caprari said by phone from the company headquarters in the northern Italian city of Modena.

"This is a forgotten war. The Gulf nations are taking advantage of the situation and are ruining the industrial fabric of Yemen."

Turkey Asks US to Arrest Gulen for ‘Ordering Coup’

Following almost two solid months of extradition requests, Turkey has now formally requested that the US immediately arrest exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen for “ordering and commanding the attempted coup” back in July. The US has yet to respond.

Turkey’s previous extradition demands, despite Turkish officials couching them as being a reaction to the coup, did not include any evidence of Gulen’s involvement in the coup, and rather centered on allegations of crimes he’d committed in the years before the coup.

Hillary Clinton's probably too late to keep her word about North Korea's nukes

The blast from North Korea's fifth and most powerful nuclear weapons test shook the earth last week, causing a literal earthquake and figurative aftershocks that continue to reverberate across Asia and the United States. ...

On Sunday, following the routine chorus of calls to to tighten sanctions and pressure the Chinese to rein in their unruly neighbor, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton laid out in no uncertain terms how she would approach Kim Jong-un's regime as president. "We will not allow North Korea to have a deliverable nuclear weapon," she told CNN, adding later that Pyongyang would "not be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapon that has a deliverable capacity on a ballistic missile."

But unfortunately for Clinton — and for the rest of the world within missile range of North Korea — nuclear weapons experts warn that it's likely too late to keep that promise.

"We need to start behaving as if they already have a compact warhead," said Melissa Hanham, a researcher James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "And if they don't already have it now, they will soon."

KJU: What does this button do?
Hong Sung Mu: (gasps)
KJU: Kidding, kidding. (smiles) You guys. pic.twitter.com/zIIrlFh2HE

— Joshua H. Pollack (@Joshua_Pollack) March 9, 2016

Date set for questioning of Julian Assange over rape allegation

Ecuador has set a date for the questioning of Julian Assange over a Swedish rape allegation, a move that could end a four-year-long deadlock ever since the WikiLeaks founder took refuge in Ecuador’s London embassy.

Swedish prosecutors said the questioning would take place on 17 October and be conducted by an Ecuadorian prosecutor. Swedish chief prosecutor Ingrid Isgren and a police investigator will be allowed to be present to ask questions through the Ecuadorian prosecutor, who will later report the findings to Sweden.

“After the report, the Swedish prosecutor will take a view on the continuing of the investigation,” Swedish prosecutors said in a statement. ...

Even if Sweden drops the investigation, Assange is likely to be arrested for breaching bail conditions in Britain.

The Guardian has a long piece based on 1,500 pages of leaked documents from the "John Doe" investigation for suspected campaign finance violations of Wisconsin Governor and former Republican candidate for the presidency, Scott Walker. The conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered the investigation terminated and the incriminating evidence destroyed back in 2015, but apparently copies of the documents survived and are now available to the public at The Guardian's site.

Here's a teaser to get you going...

Because Scott Walker asked

Leaked court documents from ‘John Doe investigation’ in Wisconsin lay bare pervasive influence of corporate cash on modern US elections

Scott Walker was under pressure. It was September 2011, and earlier that year the first-term governor had turned himself into the poster boy of hardline Republican politics by passing the notorious anti-union measure Act 10, stripping public sector unions of collective bargaining rights.

Now he was under attack himself, pursued by progressive groups who planned revenge by forcing him into a recall election. His job was on the line.

He asked his main fundraiser, Kate Doner, to write him a briefing note on how they could raise enough money to win the election. At 6.39am on a Wednesday, she fired off an email to Walker and his top advisers flagged “red”.

“Gentlemen,” she began. “Here are my quick thoughts on raising money for Walker’s possible recall efforts.”

Her advice was bold and to the point. “Corporations,” she said. “Go heavy after them to give.” She continued: “Take Koch’s money. Get on a plane to Vegas and sit down with Sheldon Adelson. Ask for $1m now.”

Her advice must have hit a sweet spot, because money was soon pouring in from big corporations and mega-wealthy individuals from across the nation. A few months after the memo, Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate who Forbes estimates has a personal fortune of $26bn, was to wire a donation of $200,000 for the cause.

Adelson’s generosity, like that of most of the other major donors solicited by Walker and crew, was made out not to the governor’s own personal campaign committee but to a third-party group that did not have to disclose its donors. In the world of campaign finance, the group was known as a “dark money” organisation, as it was the recipient of a secret flow of funds that the public knew nothing about.

One of the checks made out to the group, for $10,000, came from a financier called G Frederick Kasten Jr. In the subject line of the check, Kasten had written in his own hand: “Because Scott Walker asked”.

Because Scott Walker asked. That could stand as an elegant catchphrase for the state of democracy in the US today, where elections are lost or won as much according to candidates’ ability to attract corporate cash as by the strength of their leadership or ideas.

"Most transparent administration ever!"

Obama’s Transparency Promise: FOIA Lawsuits Grow 42 Percent Since 2008

Last Thursday the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report showing that since President George W. Bush left office, lawsuits by persons who were unable to obtain Federal records that they believed belonged in the public domain grew dramatically. In 2008, the last year of Bush’s presidency, 321 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits were filed. By 2014, that number had spiked to 434 lawsuits and registered 456 last year, an increase of 42 percent over 2008.

The numbers understate the public’s frustration with Federal government stonewalling on public record requests. According to the GAO report, 713,168 FOIA requests were made by the public last year. Before one can file a FOIA lawsuit, one must file an administrative appeal with the agency that denied or partially denied the records sought. Average citizens have inadequate time and resources to engage in fighting an entrenched, stonewalling bureaucracy.

Curiously, the GAO study wasn’t looking at whether the public interest was being served under the FOIA legislation; it was looking at costs to the Federal government for stonewalling and getting sued. Its finding, in a nutshell, is that it’s quite cost effective to draw a dark curtain around the U.S. government. The report found that for fiscal years 2009 through 2014, Federal agencies “collectively reported costs totaling $144 million for all of the FOIA lawsuits that they defended.” Out of an approximate $3.5 trillion in Federal expenditures in 2014, $144 million is likely pocket change in the government’s view.

Fighting your government in Federal court, where FOIA lawsuits land, is not a particularly winning strategy either. The GAO study found that of the “1,672 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits with a decision rendered between 2009 and 2014, GAO identified 112 lawsuits where the plaintiff substantially prevailed” in court. Federal courts have judges who are appointed by the President of the United States and have lifetime appointments, making them free from worry about losing their job because of a public uprising over jaded decisions.

Chicago has had 3,000 shootings so far this year — hitting a two-decade high

Another bloody weekend in Chicago has catapulted its total number of shootings this year over the 3,000 mark – a two-decade high for the midwestern city. Around 480 of those shootings have been fatal; much more than other metropolitan cities like New York or Los Angeles, but about half as many as were recorded in the early 1990's.

Ten people were murdered and 36 wounded in Chicago over the weekend. ...

By the early hours of Monday, more than 3,029 people had been shot – according to data collected by the Chicago Tribune – surpassing 2015's end-of-year total of 2,980.

Chris Hedges: Fooled Again

The naive hopes of Bernie Sanders’ supporters—to build a grass-roots political movement, change the Democratic Party from within and push Hillary Clinton to the left—have failed. Clinton, aware that the liberal class and the left are not going to mount genuine resistance, is running as Mitt Romney in drag. The corporate elites across the political spectrum, Republican and Democrat, have gleefully united to anoint her president. All that remains of Sanders’ “revolution” is a 501(c)(4) designed to raise money, including from wealthy, anonymous donors, to ensure that he will be a senator for life. Great historical events happen twice, as Karl Marx quipped, first as tragedy and then as farce. ...

While there is a difference in the temperament of the two major presidential candidates, that difference will play out only in how our poison will be delivered. Political personalities serve global corporate centers of power. They do not control them. Barack Obama illustrates this.

To neoliberals, everyone and everything are disposable. The failed states that have risen up across the Middle East, Africa, the Caucasus and Asia in the wake of the Cold War herald a neoliberal world driven by violence, corruption, greed and desperation. The drug traffickers, smugglers, pirates, kidnappers, jihadists, criminal gangs and militias that roam huge swaths of territory where central authority has vanished are the real faces of globalization. These nihilists define Islamic State just as they define the corporate state. ... The failed states of Iraq, Syria and Libya, a direct result of globalization, have their counterparts in Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, Baltimore, Atlanta, Milwaukee and the south side of Chicago. They are our versions of Mogadishu, complete with lawlessness, senseless killings, armed gangs, widespread hunger, fear, a population retreating into the numbing embrace of opiates, crippling poverty, dysfunctional state institutions, the growth of private security companies that protect the elites, and indiscriminate police violence that creates reigns of terror aimed at the poor. The more the global corporate forces extract from us in the name of austerity and the maximization of profit, the more parts of the U.S. will descend into domestic versions of the failed states overseas. ...

History has amply demonstrated where this will end up. The continued exploitation by an unchecked elite, and the rising levels of poverty and insecurity, will unleash a legitimate rage among the desperate. They will see through the lies and propaganda of the elites. They will demand retribution. ... Failed states—czarist Russia, the Weimar Republic, the former Yugoslavia—vomit up political monstrosities. We will be no different. ...

Voting for Hillary Clinton will not halt this slide into the apocalypse. It will only accelerate it. Donald Trump may vanish from the political landscape, but someone even more venal, and probably more intelligent, will take his place. Our job is to dismantle the machinery that is pushing toward the cliff. And this means sustained and massive civil disobedience. As exemplified by the protests at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and by prisoners across the nation who carried out work stoppages last Friday, it means doing everything possible not to cooperate with the elements of authority. It means disrupting the mechanisms of power. It means overcoming fear. It means no longer believing the lies we are told.

Clinton IT aide pleads Fifth, skips hearing

Three IT specialists involved with Hillary Clinton’s private email server on Tuesday refused to testify before the House Oversight Committee on deletions of some of Clinton’s emails.

One of these three, Bryan Pagliano — the former State Department employee who set up the server — defied a subpoena and failed to appear at the hearing altogether.

The other two, engineers at the outside firm that managed Clinton’s server, appeared under subpoena but invoked their Fifth Amendment rights in response to every question.

Outraged Republicans quickly threatened reprisal against Pagliano, who has long been a flashpoint in various investigations into the server. ...

“I will consult with counsel and my colleagues to consider a full range of options available to address Mr. Pagliano’s failure to appear,” Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said. “When you are served a subpoena by the United States Congress, that is not optional.”

How Bipartisan Economic Policy Fuels White Working Class Support for Trump

Hillary Clinton: Boycotting North Carolina Is Noble and Just; Boycotting Israel Is Bigoted and Hateful

The @NCAA is right to pull tournament games from North Carolina because of the anti-LGBT HB2 law. Discrimination has no place in America. -H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 13, 2016

Could someone explain why it’s noble, enlightened, justifiable, and progressive to boycott an American state, but hateful, bigoted, retrograde, and evil to support a boycott of a foreign country that has been imposing a brutal, discriminatory, and illegal occupation for many decades, a boycott that is led by people with virtually no political rights? How did that happen? Hillary Clinton is far from the only person espousing this bizarre distinction — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as but one example, is punishing companies that support a boycott of Israel while forcing state employees to honor the boycott of North Carolina — but what could possibly justify U.S. politicians drawing the moral and ethical lines about boycotts in this manner?

Colin Powell Urged Hillary Clinton’s Team Not to Scapegoat Him for Her Private Server, Leaked Emails Reveal

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell attempted to discourage Hillary Clinton and her team from using him as a scapegoat for her private email server problems, according to newly leaked emails from Powell’s Gmail account.

“Sad thing,” Powell wrote to one confidant, “HRC could have killed this two years ago by merely telling everyone honestly what she had done and not tie me to it.”

“I told her staff three times not to try that gambit. I had to throw a mini tantrum at a Hampton’s party to get their attention. She keeps tripping into these ‘character’ minefields,” Powell lamented. He noted that he had tried to settle the matter by meeting with Clinton aide Cheryl Mills in August. ...

The emails show Powell regularly corresponding with reporters and friends about the Clinton email server scandal, explaining that his situation was different. When Powell arrived at the State Department, the information technology system was badly dated, he argued. And unlike Clinton, Powell never set up a private server. Instead, he used his personal AOL account, on a server maintained by AOL, and used a government computer for classified communications. ...

The Clinton campaign’s effort to blur the lines between Clinton’s private email server and Powell’s AOL account left Powell deeply frustrated.

New York attorney general opens inquiry into Trump Foundation

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman has opened an inquiry into the conduct of the Donald J Trump Foundation, the personal charity of the Republican presidential nominee, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to the Guardian.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Schneiderman said Tuesday that he had been “looking into the Trump Foundation to make sure it’s complying with the laws governing charities in New York”.

The source said that Schneiderman “opened an inquiry on the Trump Foundation based on troubling transactions that have recently come to light.”

Schneiderman said “my interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of nonprofits in New York state, and we have been concerned that the Trump Foundation may have engaged in some impropriety from that point of view.” ...

The comments come a week after the IRS fined the Trump Foundation $2,500 for making an illegal campaign contribution to Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, a longtime Trump supporter who decided not to investigate Trump University.

Dakota Access Pipeline plan still on despite protests across the US and world

The company behind the $3.8bn Dakota Access Pipeline, which the Standing Rock Sioux tribe claims threatens their water supply and cultural heritage has vowed to press ahead, despite the plan sparking protests across the world on Tuesday. ...

Kelcy Warren, chief executive of Energy Transfer, the company behind the pipeline, insisted that the project would continue.

“We intend to meet with officials in Washington to understand their position and reiterate our commitment to bring the Dakota Access Pipeline into operation,” Warren said.

“We respect the constitutional right of all assembled in North Dakota to voice their opinions for or against projects like ours. However, threats and attacks on our employees, their families and our contractors as well as the destruction of equipment and encroachment on private property must not be tolerated.” ...

Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, said the pipeline has “already led to the destruction of our sacred sites”.

“It is unfortunate that the corporate world chooses to ignore the millions of people and hundreds of tribal nations who stand in opposition to the destruction of our lands, resources, waters, and sacred sites,” he said.

“Energy Transfer Partners has demonstrated time and time again that the bottom line for them is money. The bottom line for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe is and will always be protecting our lands, people, water and sacred sites from the devastation of this pipeline."

#NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/aRmbq1MLaV

— Ruth Hopkins (@RuthHHopkins) September 13, 2016

OMG! Climate change might impair US effectiveness at killing people. Something must be done about this!

Military experts say climate change poses 'significant risk' to security

A coalition of 25 military and national security experts, including former advisers to Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, has warned that climate change poses a “significant risk to US national security and international security” that requires more attention from the US federal government.

The prominent members of the US national security community warned that warming temperatures and rising seas will increasingly inundate military bases and fuel international conflict and mass migration, leading to “significant and direct risks to US military readiness, operations and strategy”.

n a report outlining climate risks, the group state: “The military has long had a tradition of parsing threats through a ‘Survive to Operate’ lens, meaning we cannot assume the best case scenario, but must prepare to be able to effectively operate even under attack. Dealing with climate risks to operational effectiveness must therefore be a core priority.” ...

Recommendations to the federal government include the creation of a cabinet-level official dedicated to climate change and security issues and the prioritization of climate change in intelligence assessments.

Last year, the Department of Defense called climate change a “threat multiplier” which could demand greater humanitarian or military intervention and lead to more severe storms that threaten cities and military bases and heightened sea levels that could imperil island and coastal infrastructure. In January, the Pentagon ordered its officials to start incorporating climate change into every major consideration, from weapons testing to preparing troops for war.

Climate conflict fans the flames of civil war

"It's Time We Were Heard": Another Day in Court for Climate Kids

In a federal courthouse in Oregon on Tuesday, 21 youths and their supporters argued that by failing to act on climate change, the U.S. government has violated the youngest generation's constitutional rights. 

With Big Oil behind it, the government, in turn, has sought to dismiss the case, which has been called "the most important lawsuit on the planet right now."

The plaintiffs, currently aged 9-20, scored a win in April when U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin decided the case could proceed.

On Tuesday, the kids and their attorneys hoped that U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken would agree.

As John D. Sutter wrote in his profile of plaintiffs' attorney Julia Olson for CNN, the goal is to get Aiken, "a Bill Clinton appointee, to feel the weight of the court's responsibility to do what other branches of government so far have failed to do: Create a national plan to get greenhouse gas emissions to levels that scientists consider safe."

Sutter wrote:

Some legal scholars consider the climate kids' case to be a long shot. Olson will argue that the federal government, by failing to adequately regulate greenhouse gas pollution and by continuing to lease new federal lands and waters for fossil fuel extraction, as recently as this year, is violating the kids' constitutional right to life, liberty, and property. (Warming is causing the seas to rise, for example, and one plaintiff lives in coastal Florida). She'll also claim that children are a class that's being discriminated against when it comes to climate change: They're not causing this problem, and yet they will be disproportionately subjected to its dire consequences.

Consider 13-year-old plaintiff Jayden Foytlin, a resident of Rayne, Louisiana. For her, Tuesday's hearing comes just one month after the waters from a catastrophic 1,000-year flood "crept into her bedroom in the middle of the night and destroyed most of her family's home," as Our Children's Trust, the group behind the suit, said in a statement.

"They called it a thousand-year flood, meaning it should only happen every thousand years or so," Foytlin said ahead of the hearing. "But in my state—Louisiana—we have had that 1,000-year flood and eight 500-year floods in less than two years. A few weeks ago I literally stepped out of bed and was up to my ankles in climate change."

Also of Interest

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

Security Firm Guarding Dakota Pipeline Used Psychological Warfare Tactics for BP

Don't punish Chelsea Manning – release her

The kingmaker club

More Proof the U.S. National Anthem Has Always Been Tainted with Racism

Israel’s Bogus Civil War

Clinton Aides Complain About Double Standard, But Media Also Went After Bush Foundation

Dakota Access Pipeline: The Wrong Side of a Long, Long History of Resource Extraction

Berkshire Hathaway Gets Slapped With an $18 Million Lawsuit

A Little Night Music

Buddy & Ella Johnson - I'm Just Your Fool

Little Walter- I'm Just Your Fool

Buddy Johnson - Shufflin & Rollin'

Buddy & Ella Johnson - Since I Fell for You

Buddy Johnson & His Orchestra - No More Love

Buddy Johnson - A Pretty Girl, A Cadillac & Some Money

Buddy Johnson & His Orchestra - Rock On

Buddy Johnson - Boogie Woogie's Mother in Law