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“In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously. They are all forced, and it is the duty of every honest man to ignore them.”

-- Milan Kundera

News and Opinion

South China Sea: Beijing 'not frightened to fight a war' after US move

State-run media in belligerent mood after USS Lassen challenges Beijing’s territorial claims in disputed Spratly archipelago

China is not afraid of fighting a war against the United States in the South China Sea, a state-run newspaper with links to the Communist party has claimed.

Twenty-four hours after Washington challenged Beijing’s territorial claims in the region by deploying a warship to waters around the disputed Spratly archipelago, the notoriously nationalistic Global Times accused the Pentagon of provoking China.

“In [the] face of the US harassment, Beijing should deal with Washington tactfully and prepare for the worst,” the newspaper argued in an editorial on Wednesday.

“This can convince the White House that China, despite its unwillingness, is not frightened to fight a war with the US in the region, and is determined to safeguard its national interests and dignity.”

The People’s Liberation Army Daily, China’s leading military newspaper, used a front-page editorial to accuse the US of sowing chaos in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Cast-iron facts show that time and again the United States recklessly uses force and starts wars, stirring things up where once there was stability, causing the bitterest of harm to those countries directly involved,” the newspaper said, according to Reuters.

US Threatens to Send More Ships Near Chinese Island After Criticism

After months of hyping the incident, the Pentagon finally sent the USS Lassen to 22 km off the Spratly archipelago in the South China Sea, a move that they’d been promising would show China that US ships can sail wherever they please, and over any foreign objection.

Having a US warship go through the area for an actual reason would likely be non-controversial, and the Pentagon’s leadership seemed to be committed to weeks of preamble to make sure this was the international incident it was meant to be. Following this, US officials are threatening to send more ships through.

Details on these new ships going through the area are still scant, and it might not be surprising if the US either doesn’t do it at all, or only does so again after several more months of making hay about today’s crossing. The risk of sending ships through the area too often is that they simply won’t get the publicity they crave.

Boots on Ground? US considering ‘direct action’ against ISIS

US mulls direct ground raids in fight against Isis in Syria and Iraq

The US military will intensify airstrikes and may carry out unilateral ground raids as it steps up efforts against Islamic State militants after a failed attempt to train Syrian rebels, according to the defence secretary, Ash Carter.

Speaking to the Senate armed services committee days after a US soldier was killed participating in a Kurdish-led mission to rescue Isis hostages, Carter said similar missions were likely as US forces adapted to the fight in Syria and Iraq.

“We won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against Isil [Isis] or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground,” Carter said.

He did not say under what circumstances the US might conduct more ground action, but added: “Once we locate them, no target is beyond our reach.”

Separately, reports in Iran say that the foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, and his deputies will attend talks in Vienna on Friday over Syria’s future. If confirmed, it will be the first time Tehran, the main regional backer of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, has attended an international summit on the war.

Iraq: We Didn't Ask for U.S. Ground Operations

The Iraqi government said Wednesday it didn't ask for — and doesn't need — the "direct action on the ground" promised by the Pentagon.

The revelation came a day after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the U.S. may carry out more unilateral ground raids — like last week's rescue operation to free hostages — in Iraq to target ISIS militants.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's spokesman told NBC News that any military involvement in the country must be cleared through the Iraqi government just as U.S.-led airstrikes are.

"This is an Iraqi affair and the government did not ask the U.S. Department of Defense to be involved in direct operations," spokesman Sa'ad al-Hadithi told NBC News. "We have enough soldiers on the ground." ...

The Pentagon has said that the recent raid was in response to a request from the Kurdish regional government — a semi-autonomous body that governs in northern Iraq — which had learned the hostages faced imminent execution.

Turkey Confirms Attacking Kurdish YPG Forces in Syria

Following yesterday’s reports of the incident by Kurdish forces on the ground, Turkey’s government has confirmed that they attacked Kurdish YPG targets across the Syrian border, the first time Turkey has admitted to attacking them, amid an ongoing war against Kurdish forces in both Turkey and Iraq.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu confirmed the incident, but offered little insight, saying only that Turkey had warned the Kurds would never be allowed to go west of the Euphrates and that Turkey would hit them the moment they did.

The YPG are seeking control over Jarabulus, an ISIS-held border town just West of the Euphrates, though interestingly the cross-border gunfire incidents happened nowhere near Jarabulus – rather they were well further east at Tel Abyad, in the Raqqa Province.

Simply delusional. How do these people get elected?

GOP senator: Guantanamo a 'top-rate' facility

Three Republican senators reiterated their stance on Tuesday against closing the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base following a visit last week that they said showed the “professionalism” at the “top-rate” facility.

“I’m very proud of the work done by our men and women in uniform who serve there,” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). “Their professionalism and the way that they conduct themselves made all of us proud. This is a top-rate detention facility that is being conducted in a humane, legal and under-the-law-of-war detention.” ...

Ayotte said Obama should not continue to oppose the NDAA over Guantanamo language that is similar to what it has been in the past. Obama’s other issue with the NDAA — budget allocations — appears to be addressed in the budget deal announced Monday.

“The administration has always — even when Democrats were in charge and Republicans were in charge — has always complained about the provisions in the defense authorization about Guantanamo,” she said.

“I would hope that Guantanamo doesn’t become a barrier given that the bill that was passed by overwhelming votes in the Senate and a very large vote margin in the House really reflects, I think, what the viewpoint is here on Guantanamo.”

‘I Would Have Refused Such An Order’ – Former RAF Pilot Gives His View Of US Bombing Of MSF Hospital In Kunduz

In response to our alert, we were contacted by a former RAF pilot with twenty years' military experience in several countries, including Afghanistan. He had discovered our alert by following a link in a comment posted underneath a recent Guardian piece mentioning the attack.

The former pilot gave us his name but, for obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. He told us that he has experience of flying fast jets and multi-engine aircraft, and that he served operationally in the Balkans, Kosovo, Afghanistan and elsewhere. As far as we can tell, he appears to be genuine. He wrote to us in a series of emails (October 21-24):

'It has been my firm opinion from the very beginning that Kunduz hospital was indeed deliberately targeted. I slightly digress from the Lindorff article in that the C-130 Gunship is a pinpoint platform with a choice of munitions. The fact that the hospital was targeted on five separate occasions with unerring accuracy simply underlines how deliberate this attack was. The Gunship itself is a revered weapon on the battlefield, manned by elite crews who are very highly trained. I was involved in the Afghan campaign almost from the beginning when things were pretty hairy. The aircraft of choice for UK Special Forces on the ground was the Gunship and they lobbied for a UK version. It is expensive and due to the side-mounted howitzer limited to one role and so their requests were denied. The Gunship gives unsurpassed support to troops on the ground because of its multi-hour endurance and loiter capability and the accuracy of its smaller calibre cannon and capability of its enormous 105mm howitzer.'

'I do not accept that the target could have been mistakenly targeted. The crew and command centre would have been fully aware they were attacking a hospital. I followed one of your links suggesting that the C130 crew challenged their orders to target the hospital. This is the very least that I'd have expected to happen. I have extensive operational experience flying in Afghanistan. I am struggling to comprehend in what circumstance I would blindly follow an order to attack a fully manned civilian hospital. If the description provided by MSF's director-general is accurate I can say without hesitancy that I would have refused such an order for it is an obvious war crime. During the Kosovo war it was fairly routine for RAF Harrier pilots to return home with bombs still loaded because they had been unable to confirm visual acquisition of targets. RAF pilots are probably more inclined to think for themselves than American crews who are extremely tightly controlled. American military personnel give up many rights when they join up, but I am still disappointed that this crew did not appear to do more to challenge their orders. Back in the UK, we lost crown immunity many years ago and it is essential to challenge every questionable act carried out on the battlefield (our emphasis).

Industry Giant Northrop Grumman Wins Big, Fat Contract For Big, Fat US Air Force Bomber

Tuesday, the Pentagon has announced Christmas will come a little early for Northrop Grumman, in the form of a gigantic contract for the US Air Force's new and evocatively-named Long Range Strike Bomber, also known as LRS-B. Northrop Grumman beat out a joint bid from Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Because nothing costing tens of billions of dollars is ever simple, the costs for this plane have some qualifiers. But, if you take all the engineering, the manufacturing, and all that, and assume that they'll spread the cost out over the planned 100 aircraft, the total comes to $72.5 billion dollars (in 2010 dollars). The first planes are expected to be deployed and ready for use is 2025.

‘Strategic depopulation’ of Syria likely cause of EU refugee crisis – Assange

The flooding of Europe by countless waves of refugees may be the result of the “strategic depopulation” of Syria carried out by opponents of the country’s government, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested.

Transparency organization WikiLeaks has looked through its diplomatic cables and unearthed “an interesting speculation about the refugee movement,” Assange said in an interview with Geek news site, ThePressProject.

“So, the speculation was this: Occasionally opponents of a country would engage in strategic depopulation, which is to decrease the fighting capacity of a government,” he explained.

The whistleblower pointed out that “it’s predominantly the middle class that is fleeing” Syria on account of having “language skills, money, some connections.” Engineers, managers and civil servants are “precisely, the classes that ...[are] needed to keep the government functioning,” he said.

30 minute interview with Julian #Assange including on the strategic depopulation of Syria https://t.co/VR3sSZaPXB

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 26, 2015

Syrian people are encouraged to flee their country “by Germany saying they’ll accept many-many refugees, and by Turkey taking nearly three million refugees, thus significantly weakening the Syrian government,” Assange stressed. ...

The intercepted documents, already published by WikiLeaks, revealed that the US had been plotting to overthrow the Syrian government since around 2006, Assange stressed.

“It was trying to make the Syrian government ‘paranoid’ trying to get it to ‘overreact’ by instilling that fear and paranoia; trying to make it worried about coups; trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias … trying to stop foreign investment in Syria and secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria also to make trouble, using the Saudis and Egypt to help push that along,” he said.

Video Shows Turkish Police Storming Opposition Media Offices Days Before Election

Turkish police on Wednesday stormed the offices of an opposition media company, days before an election, in a crackdown on companies linked to a United States-based cleric and foe of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, live footage showed. ...

The media groups are owned by Koza Ipek Holding, which has links to Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen. The authorities on Tuesday took over 22 companies owned by Koza Ipek in an investigation of alleged financial irregularities, including whether it funded Gulen. The company denies wrongdoing.

Erdogan has clamped down on commercial interests belonging to once-influential followers of Gulen, his former ally, after police and prosecutors considered sympathetic to the cleric opened a corruption investigation of Erdogan's inner circle in 2013.

Legal action against more opposition newspapers, including the nationalist Sozcu newspaper, is planned for after the vote, said Aydin Unal, a lawmaker in the ruling AK Party.

"After November 1, we will hold them accountable. Sozcu newspaper insults us every day," Unal, a former Erdogan adviser, told A Haber channel on Tuesday. "There is a lot of pressure on Turkey. If we say something, the world accuses us of interfering with the press, so we're not in a comfortable position now, but after November 1 we will settle up with all of them."

Anti-Israel Activism Criminalized in the Land of Charlie Hebdo and “Free Speech“

The post-Charlie Hebdo “free speech” march in Paris was a fraud for multiple reasons, as I wrote at the time. It was led by dozens of world leaders, many of whom imprison or even kill people for expressing prohibited views. It was cheered by many Westerners who feign upset only when free speech abridgments are perpetrated by Muslims, but not — as is far more common — by their own governments against Muslims. ...

The absurdity of France’s celebrating itself for free expression was vividly highlighted by this week’s decision from that nation’s highest court, one that is a direct assault on basic free speech rights. The French high court upheld the criminal conviction of 12 political activists for the “crime” of advocating sanctions and a boycott against Israel as a means of ending the decades-long military occupation of Palestine. What did these French criminals do? This:

The individuals arrived at the supermarket wearing shirts emblazoned with the words: “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel.” They also handed out fliers that said that “buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.”

In France — self-proclaimed Land of Liberté — doing that makes you a criminal. As The Forward reported, the court “cited the French republic’s law on Freedom of the Press, which prescribes imprisonment or a fine of up to $50,000 for parties that ‘provoke discrimination, hatred or violence toward a person or group of people on grounds of their origin, their belonging or their not belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a certain religion.'” Because BDS is inherently “discriminatory,” said the court, it is a crime to advocate it.

The French court ruling is part of a worldwide trend. As more and more people around the world recognize the criminal and brutal nature of the Israeli government, its loyalists have been increasingly trying literally to criminalize activism against the Israeli occupation.  ...

Ponder how pernicious this is. It is perfectly legal to advocate sanctions against Iran, or Russia, or Sudan, or virtually any other country. Indeed, sanctions and boycotts against those countries are not only frequently advocated in the West but are official policy. But it is illegal — criminal — to advocate boycotts and sanctions against one country: Israel.

Left Parties In Portugal Vow to Topple New Center-Right Government

EU Toughens Against TTIP as Top German Lawmaker Blasts Anti-Democratic Deal

Adding yet another voice to the growing chorus of European activists and government officials who oppose the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the U.S. and EU, the president of the German Bundestag, or parliament, has threatened to vote against the so-called "trade" agreement due to its lack of transparency and democratic legitimacy.

"I see no chance that the Bundestag would ratify a trade agreement between the EU and the USA without involvement in how it came together or any say regarding alternatives," Norbert Lammert said in an interview with Germany's FUNKE Media Group on Wednesday.

Lammert agreed with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that all the relevant documentation "must be available to the governments and parliaments of all members of the EU." He said he "will insist on that."

Currently German MPs can only see key TTIP negotiation documents by going personally to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. The secrecy surrounding the mammoth trade deal has engendered scathing criticism as well as a €100,000 reward for the full text.

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz on "Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy"

Two ACLU Defeats Highlight Judiciary’s Lopsided Deference to Executive Branch Secrecy

The American Civil Liberties Union suffered major defeats on Friday, when two of its cases involving clear violations of civil rights and civil liberties were dismissed, both undone by the judiciary’s deference to executive-branch secrecy.

A dramatically divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit ruled in favor of Department of Justice lawyers who argued that Amir Meshal couldn’t sue for damages for his alleged torture at the hands of FBI agents in three African countries because it happened overseas and because the litigation would jeopardize “national security.” Meshal is a U.S. citizen who FBI agents suspected had ties to al Qaeda.

And a Maryland district court judge threw out a massive legal challenge to the National Security Agency and its “Upstream” surveillance program on behalf of Wikimedia, Amnesty International USA, The Nation magazine and six other groups, because they couldn’t prove that the NSA had specifically spied on them — despite the troves of publicly available information on how the mass-surveillance program works, primarily from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

In both cases, the ACLU had appealed to the judicial branch for relief from the excesses of the executive branch. But both courts allowed the federal government to escape judicial oversight simply by insisting that national security matters should remain secret. ...

Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, despaired over the common thread between the two cases. “The Obama administration insistently invokes secrecy and ‘national security’ to prevent courts from hearing constitutional cases on the merits,” she wrote in an email to The Intercept. “In Meshal, it argued that national security considerations precluded a judicial remedy for FBI agents’ flagrantly unlawful detention and coercion of a U.S. citizen. The government has followed a similar playbook in Wikimedia and other surveillance cases, asserting that plaintiffs cannot show that they’ve been subjected to secret spying, and thus the court shouldn’t hear the merits of their claims.”

The Senate, ignorant on cybersecurity, just passed a bill about it anyway

This is the state of such legislation in this country, where lawmakers wanted to do something but, by passing Cisa, just decided to cede more power to the NSA

Under the vague guise of “cybersecurity”, the Senate voted on Tuesday to pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa), a spying bill that essentially carves a giant hole in all our privacy laws and allows tech and telecom companies to hand over all sorts of private information to intelligence agencies without any court process whatsoever. Make no mistake: Congress has passed a surveillance bill in disguise, with no evidence it’ll help our security.

All that is needed for companies to hand over huge swaths of information to the government is for it to contain “cyber threat indicators” – a vague phrase that can be interpreted to mean pretty much anything. Your personal information – which can include the content of emails – will be handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, the agency supposedly responsible for the nation’s cybersecurity. From there the information can be sent along to the NSA, which can add it to databases or use it to conduct even more warrantless searches on its internet backbone spying (which once again, a judge ruled last week could not be challenged in court because no one can prove the NSA is spying on them, since the agency inevitably keeps that information secret). ...

There were barely any actual cybersecurity experts who were for the bill. A large group of respected computer scientists and engineers were against it. So were cyberlaw professors. Civil liberties groups uniformly opposed (and were appalled by) the bill. So did consumer groups. So did the vast majority of giant tech companies. Yet it still sailed through the Senate, mostly because lawmakers – many of whom can barely operate their own email – know hardly anything about the technology that they’re crafting legislation about. ...

In an era of secret law, where the government has no problem completely re-interpreting laws in complete secrecy to allow mass spying on Americans, we now have another law on the books that carves a hole in our privacy laws, contains vague language that can be interpreted any which way, and that has provisions inserted into it specifically to prevent us from finding out how they’re using it.

Tech Companies and Civil Liberties Groups Force Obama To Weigh In On Encryption Debate

President Obama will now be forced to publicly describe the extent of his commitment to protecting strong encryption, after nearly 50 major technology companies, human rights groups, and civil liberties collectives—including Twitter, the ACLU, and Reddit — succeeded in getting over 100,000 signatures on a White House petition on Tuesday.

The government’s “We the People” platform, created in 2011, was designed as “a clear and easy way for the American people to petition their government.” Once a petition gains 100,000 signatures, it is guaranteed a response.

The savecrypto.org petition demands that Obama “publicly affirm your support for strong encryption” and “reject any law, policy, or mandate that would undermine our security.”

The FBI Director Says Cops Are 'Under Siege' From Viral Videos

FBI Director James Comey is faulting anti-police brutality activists and the explosion of police brutality video footage with discouraging cops from doing their jobs. It's an odd move for one of the nation's top law enforcement officials, especially since the White House is currently championing body cameras as a solution to police brutality.

Speaking to students at the University of Chicago, Comey said on Friday that the "era of viral videos" has put cops "under siege," pushing cops to stay in their cars and avoid walking their beats in rough neighborhoods. He doubled down on Monday in a speech to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, telling the group that those filming the police were driving a wedge between African-American communities and law enforcement. ...

David Couper, a celebrated former chief of police in Madison, Wisconsin, was in the audience on Sunday — he called Comey's remarks "strange" and "dangerous." ...

""The question is, are these kinds of things changing police behavior around the country?" said Comey. "The honest answer is I don't know for sure whether that's the case… but I do have a strong sense."

"The word "sense" rubbed Couper the wrong way.

"Is the FBI director going to start shooting from the hip on this without any real information?" he asked. "We don't want that."

Ummm, Mr. Comey, Who's "sieging" whom?

South Carolina parents criticize school board after police altercation

Parents say video that shows a sheriff’s deputy manhandling a teenage girl reveals race issues within school district and negligence on part of school board

Parents of students at the South Carolina school where a police officer threw a black teenage girl to the floor have spoken out against district’s school board, accusing them of negligence and saying the altercation reveals race issues.

A video that shows a sheriff’s deputy manhandling a student for refusing to leave her chair provoked the outrage, and prompted the Richland County sheriff Leon Lott to put the deputy, Ben Fields, on leave. Lott has called a press conference for noon on Wednesday to announce the results of his department’s internal investigation into the incident.

Columbia attorney Todd Rutherford told ABC’s Good Morning America on Wednesday that Fields should have been fired as soon as Sheriff Leon Lott saw the video recorded by several students at Spring Valley high school in Columbia.

“She now has a cast on her arm, she has neck and back injuries. She has a Band-Aid on her forehead where she suffered rug burn on her forehead,” Rutherford told the network.

Lott had said Tuesday that the girl was uninjured in the confrontation but “may have had a rug burn”.

Fields’ suspension was not nearly enough for one parent, who asked the school board on Tuesday night: “You’re beating up little girls in school and you’re thinking about firing him?”

When School Cops Go Bad: South Carolina Incident Highlights Growing Police Presence in Classrooms

Officer who killed teen avoids criminal charges

A police officer in South Carolina will not face criminal charges for shooting dead a young man who was driving away from a drug deal sting operation, prosecutors said on Tuesday, even as new video footage challenged his account of what happened.

Lieutenant Mark Tiller of Seneca police, who said he killed Zachary Hammond because the 19-year-old drove a car at the officer and his patrol vehicle, was cleared despite a dashboard recording showing that Hammond was shot from the side as he passed.

Tenth circuit solicitor Chrissy Adams said that while the video was “troublesome” and “raised questions”, evidence from an inquiry by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (Sled) supported Tiller’s claim that he believed he was about to be run over, meaning “deadly force was justified”.

“Zachary Hammond failed to comply with Lt Tiller’s orders and as a result he lost his life,” said Adams, in a letter to Sled investigators. “When Hammond made the conscious decision to flee a lawful stop he set in motion this tragic chain of events.”

The Department of Justice is reviewing the case for potential federal charges, which are not expected.

Bernie and the Big Banks

Retirement assets of 100 CEOs are worth more than the entire nest eggs of 41% of American families

The 100 largest CEO retirement accounts—which totaled $4.9 billion last year—would equal the total saved by 50 million U.S. families, according to a report that was jointly published by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Center for Effective Government.

Analyzing SEC documents, researchers found that your garden variety Fortune 500 CEO will have set aside $49.3 million by the end of their tenure, a piggy bank that would be enough to generate a $277,686 monthly retirement check for the rest of their lives. More than half of these are company-sponsored pension plans, and 73% of these firms have also set up tax-deferred compensation accounts that leave the retirement pot untouched by the IRS.

By contrast, the median retirement account balance is $2,500 for all working-age households and $14,500 for near-retirement households. ...

“The CEOs’ extraordinary nest eggs are not the result of extraordinary performance,” said Scott Klinger, director of Revenue and Spending Policies at the Center for Effective Government, in a statement. “They are the result of rules intentionally tipped to reward those already on the highest rungs of the ladder.”

'Yes, I Lied': Vindicating Villagers, Star Chevron Witness Busted for Perjury

'Chevron has taken the people of Ecuador and the U.S. court system on a ride, full of lies, deliberate delay, and obstruction of justice,' says Amazon Watch

In what is being called "a dramatic turn" in a protracted legal battle, documents publicized Monday reveal that the star witness in a case pitting rainforest villagers against a multinational oil giant has admitted to lying under oath in an effort to help Chevron avoid paying a $9.5 billion judgment for deliberate pollution of the Ecuadorian Amazon. 

"Yes sir, I lied there...I wasn't being truthful," ex-judge Alberto Guerra reportedly told an international arbitration tribunal earlier this year when asked about his claim that the plaintiffs' legal team offered him a $300,000 bribe to ghostwrite the ruling in their favor.

Guerra's claim, VICE News explains, provided the underpinnings for New York federal judge Lewis Kaplan's 2014 ruling that the $9.5 billion verdict was obtained by way of fraud and coercion—a victory for Chevron, which had refused to abide by the judgement.

In fact, transcripts (pdf) of the 2015 tribunal proceedings made public on Monday—obtained through a disclosure request by Courthouse News with support from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press—shine new light on the extent of Chevron's payments to Guerra for his false testimony, some $12,000 per month plus other perks which included a car, healthcare, and relocating him and his family to the United States.

"Chevron has now been busted by the lying testimony of its main witness," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Steven Donziger, told VICE. "The latest iteration of Guerra's testimony proves clearly that Chevron paid its star witness huge sums of money to present false evidence to frame the very people in Ecuador the company poisoned."

Massive Indonesian Plantation Fires Create Environmental Catastrophe Spewing Haze & Carbon Emissions

Poachers Just Killed Some More Elephants With Cyanide in Zimbabwe

With the discovery on Monday of 22 poisoned elephants in Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, the number of elephants poached in the country during the month of October alone has risen to 62, according to the Associated Press.

Rangers found the carcasses in the north-central region of the park, the national park's spokeswoman Caroline Washaya-Moyo told the AP. She added that there were young elephants found among those killed.

Over the weekend, nearly 400 pounds of ivory — worth an estimated $43,000 — was seized at the international airport in the capital Harare. That bust and the 22 elephant deaths this week come on the heels of park rangers finding in early October a kilo of cyanide in the park and seizing an undisclosed amount of ivory from Hwange park officials at the airport. ...

Zimbabwe is considered one of the world's largest remaining reserves for elephants, with an estimated population of 100,000 in its territory. ... The Great Elephant Census, which surveyed all major elephant populations in Africa last year, found that Zimbabwe had lost 75 percent of its elephant population in the southern Zambezi Valley, and a 40 percent decrease in the middle part of the valley. The report also found that Zimbabwe formed part of a larger, regional decline. Tanzania lost 60 percent of its elephants between 2009 and 2014, while Mozambique lost approximately 50 percent of its population during the same period.

Also of Interest

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

The End of Communism in Russia Meant the End of Democracy in the West

George W. Bush Was AWOL, But What’s “Truth” Got to Do With It?

Learning while black: the latest offense that the police will get you for

Hillary Clinton Hasn’t Learned a Thing from Iraq

Seeing Syrian Crisis Through Russian Eyes

A Little Night Music

The Impressions - This Is My Country

Curtis Mayfield - People Get Ready

Curtis Mayfield - Get Down

Curtis Mayfield - Superfly

Curtis Mayfield - Diamond in the Back

Curtis Mayfield - Freddies Dead

Curtis Mayfield - We The People Who Are Darker Than Blue

Curtis Mayfield - Hard Times

The Impressions - Mighty Mighty (Spade & Whitey)

Curtis Mayfield - Pusherman

The Impressions - Gypsy Woman

The Impressions - Movin' On Up

The Impressions - Keep On Pushing

The Impressions - Its All Right

The Impressions - Talking About My Baby

Curtis Mayfield - Fool For You

Curtis Mayfield - New World Order