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"It is not viable for one country to demand a right to increase and upgrade its nuclear weapons capabilities while asking others to eliminate theirs."

-- John Bruton

News and Opinion

Trump Promises No First Nuclear Strike, Sort of; New Bill Would Make it Illegal

Donald Trump tried to ease fears about his finger being on the nuclear button during Monday night’s presidential debate, declaring that “I would certainly not do first strike.” He added: “Once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.”

But moments later, the Republican presidential nominee seemed to backpedal, claiming that he “can’t take anything off the table.”

Two members of Congress don’t want Trump to have the option.

Responding to the majority of Americans who say they would not trust Trump with the nuclear arsenal, Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass, and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., introduced legislation Tuesday that would bar the president from conducting a nuclear strike unless Congress had issued a formal declaration of war. ...

Whatever Trump actually believes about nuclear weapons, neither Clinton nor President Obama nor any former president has ever adopted a firm “no first use” policy. ...

In the closing months of Obama’s presidency, some media outlets have speculated that the Obama administration might revise its policy and issue a “no first use” pledge. But the New York Times reported in September that such a proclamation was unlikely, given strong opposition from Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry.

U.S. and EU Sanctions Are Punishing Ordinary Syrians and Crippling Aid Work, U.N. Report Reveals

U.S. and European sanctions and war have destabilized every sector of Syria’s economy, transforming a once self-sufficient country into an aid-dependent nation. But aid is hard to come by, with sanctions blocking access to blood safety equipment, medicines, medical devices, food, fuel, water pumps, spare parts for power plants, and more.

In a 40-page internal assessment commissioned to analyze the humanitarian impact of the sanctions, the U.N. describes the U.S. and EU measures as “some of the most complicated and far-reaching sanctions regimes ever imposed.” Detailing a complex system of “unpredictable and time-consuming” financial restrictions and licensing requirements, the report finds that U.S. sanctions are exceptionally harsh “regarding provision of humanitarian aid.” ...

Syria was first subjected to sanctions in 1979, after the U.S. designated the Syrian government as a state sponsor of terrorism. More sanctions were added in subsequent years, though none more extreme than the restrictions imposed in 2011 in response to the Syrian government’s deadly crackdown on protesters.

In 2013 the sanctions were eased but only in opposition areas. Around the same time, the CIA began directly shipping weapons to armed insurgents at a colossal cost of nearly $1 billion a year, effectively adding fuel to the conflict while U.S. sanctions obstructed emergency assistance to civilians caught in the crossfire.

An internal U.N. email obtained by The Intercept also faults U.S. and EU sanctions for contributing to food shortages and deteriorations in health care. ... The email went on to cite sanctions as a “principal factor” in the erosion of Syria’s health care system. Medicine-producing factories that haven’t been completely destroyed by the fighting have been forced to close because of sanctions-related restrictions on raw materials and foreign currency, the email said. ...

Meanwhile, in cities controlled by ISIS, the U.S. has employed some of the same tactics it condemns. For example, U.S.-backed ground forces laid siege to Manbij, a city in northern Syria not far from Aleppo that is home to tens of thousands of civilians. U.S. airstrikes pounded the city over the summer, killing up to 125 civilians in a single attack. The U.S. replicated this strategy to drive ISIS out of Kobane, Ramadi, and Fallujah, leaving behind flattened neighborhoods. In Fallujah, residents resorted to eating soup made from grass and 140 people reportedly died from lack of food and medicine during the siege.

War in Syria: Residents recount ordeal of life in Aleppo

Two Aleppo hospitals bombed out of service in 'catastrophic' airstrikes

The two largest hospitals in besieged eastern Aleppo have been put out of service in airstrikes overnight and on Wednesday morning, the latest in a devastating week-long bombing campaign that has claimed hundreds of lives.

The M2 and M10 hospitals, codenames used by local doctors to obscure the locations of the facilities, were hit at about 4am and then again at around 10am in what one health official described as a bombing campaign that was “catastrophic and unprecedented in modern history”.

On Wednesday morning, doctors at the M2 hospital said they had sought shelter from shelling in the hospital’s basement, and emerged to treat the wounded in the hospital once the bombing had ceased.

There are only 30 doctors remaining in eastern Aleppo.

Syrian Troops Invade Nusra Front-Held Aleppo, Seize Key District

Heavy airstrikes against the Nusra Front-held half of the Syrian city of Aleppo began Friday, with officials saying it was to lay the groundwork for a ground invasion. This appears to have begun today, with Syrian ground troops pushing their way into the Farafra District.

The airstrikes killed over 200 people from Friday through Monday, and 11 people were reported killed in airstrikes again today, though the strikes seem to be more limited, as heavy fighting begins on the ground, with the Syrian military believing they can gain control of the city.

The early push was successful, as the Farafra District, in the city’s center, has been captured in the fighting.

Syrian rebels may get weapons capable of downing planes - reports

Turkey: Kurds Joining Raqqa Offensive Would Endanger Syria’s Future

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu today reiterated his government’s warnings that the Kurdish YPG must not be allowed to participate in the offensive against the ISIS capital city of Raqqa, warning that any Kurdish involvement would endanger Syria’s future.

Turkish officials have made such statements repeatedly over the past few weeks, suggesting that the offensive should include them and the United States, but not the Kurds. The vast majority of US troops in Syria presen6tly are embedded with the YPG, and the few that have attempted to embed with Turkey have faced threats from Islamist rebel factions that are allied with Turkey. ...

Turkey has insisted Kurds west of the Euphrates River are a “red line” for them, and have similarly said they won’t allow the Kurds to use the battle for Raqqa to gain additional territory. Since invading northern Syria, Turkey has also indicated an interest in expelling “terrorists” from the entire border, which means Kurdish territory east of the Euphrates faces targeting as well.

Defense Secretary: 9/11 Victims Bill Could Be Devastating to Military

JASTA would allow the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its role in supporting plotters in the lead-up to the attack. President Obama vetoed the bill Friday, claiming other nations could reciprocate and that it would open taxpayers up to lawsuits for America’s own misdeeds internationally.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s opposition to JASTA took a different tack, arguing that a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia over 9/11 would lead to “an intrusive discovery process,” and ultimately lead to the public disclosure of “American secrets,” potentially damaging the terror war.

While this is in keeping with the administration’s obsession to keep myriad secrets (after all, the 28 pages disclosure on Saudi involvement in 9/11 only became public in a heavily redacted form after a protracted effort), it also seems to amount to an admission that America has more secrets that would be relevant in the case against the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia is showing signs of financial strain as its relationship with the US sours

Things are not well in Saudi Arabia and this week there were two pieces of bad news. Hitherto, there have been protests like this by foreign employees suffering from the knock-on effects of cuts in state expenditure following the drop in the oil price. In work camps far out in the desert workers complain that, not only have they stopped receiving money owed to them, but they are no longer even receiving supplies of food and electricity.

But now cuts are extending to the public sector workers who are Saudi citizens, 70 per cent of whom work for the government. So far the austerity is limited, with lower bonuses and overtime payments and a 20 per cent reduction in the salaries of ministers, though those close to political power are unlikely to be in actual need. ...

Among those exempted from this week’s benefit cuts are Saudi forces in Yemen, which may remind Saudis that they are still mired in a vastly expensive conflict there which their government entered voluntarily last year but shows no sign of winning. In Syria, the five-year-long effort by Saudi Arabia, together with Turkey and Qatar, to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad, has likewise failed. In the decade-long Saudi rivalry with Iran, today it is the Iranians who look like getting the upper hand.

But a more menacing development than this may be facing the rulers of the Kingdom in the US. For so long the ultimate guarantor of the status quo in Saudi Arabia, the US is increasingly ambivalent or hostile towards its old ally.

Isis poses 'sustained' threat to US for years to come despite loss of territory

The United States will face years of “sustained vulnerability” from Islamic State fighters even after the fall of its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, intelligence chiefs have warned.

Giving evidence in the wake of the recent bombings in New York and New Jersey bombings, they told a Senate panel on Tuesday that pushing Isis out of the territory it has claimed will lead to a diaspora of operatives in the US and Europe rather than the destruction of the jihadi army.

Nicholas Rasmussen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, expanded upon an emerging consensus within US intelligence circles, saying: “The effects we’re looking to see are simply going be delayed or lag behind the physical progress on the battlefield,” Rasmussen told the Senate homeland security and government affairs committee.

“It’s not surprising. It puts us in a period of sustained vulnerability that I don’t think any of us are comfortable with, but it’s a reality.” He doubted that such a period would end within a year of the caliphate’s downfall.

Not only has the US-led war against Isis in Iraq and Syria not “significantly diminished” the group’s external terrorism operations, Rasmussen testified, “we don’t think battlefield or territorial losses alone will be sufficient to completely degrade the group’s terrorism capabilities – necessary, but not sufficient.”

MH17 shot down by missile brought into Ukraine from Russia, says investigation

Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine by a Buk missile brought across the border from Russia and fired from a village under the control of pro-Russian rebels, an international criminal investigation has said.

In a press conference on Wednesday in Nieuwegein, in the Netherlands, the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) said there was conclusive evidence that a Buk 9M38 missile hit the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, killing all 298 people on board.

Wilbert Paulissen, the head of the Dutch national detective force, said: “The missile was shot down by a Buk. This Buk was brought in from the territory of the Russian Federation, and after launch was subsequently returned to Russian Federation territory.”

Shimon Peres dies at 93

Shimon Peres, one of Israel’s defining political figures and a Nobel peace prize laureate, has died at the age of 93, two weeks after suffering a stroke.

Peres had twice served as prime minister of Israel and later as the country’s ninth president. He had been seriously ill on a respirator in an Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv and died after his condition deteriorated sharply. ...

In more than six decades of political life his defining achievement was as one of the key architects of the Oslo peace accords, for which he was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1994 with the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Those peace agreements – signed in Washington in 1993 and Taba, Egypt in 1995, – foresaw the creation of a Palestinian state, and were named after the Norwegian capital where the two sides launched eight months of secret negotiations in which Peres played a key role.

Brazil’s Impeached Ex-President Dilma Rousseff Says Successor “Confessed to the Coup”

In the first exclusive interview following her impeachment, former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said that her unelected successor, installed president Michel Temer, has “confessed to the coup” against her. Rousseff was referring to controversial public remarks delivered by Temer last week in which he explicitly stated that the impeachment process was initiated due to Rousseff’s refusal to accept his party’s neo-liberal economic plan, rather than the alleged budgetary manipulations which served as the stated justification for impeachment. Temer’s remarks were first reported by The Intercept Brasil last Thursday.

The frankness of Temer’s statement, delivered to an audience of U.S. financiers and foreign policy elites at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA), in New York City, stunned many people, although virtually none of the large Brazilian media – which united in support of impeachment – has yet reported the remarks.

OMG. We've hit peak cellphone!

The global smartphone boom is over — sorry Apple

It couldn't go on forever. A little less than a decade after the release of the first iPhone in 2007, the meteoric rise of the smartphone as a must-have device in the modern world has finally leveled off.

Smartphones aren't going anywhere; it's just that the global mobile phone market has plateaued, according to a new report out this week from CCS Insight saying that growth in the market is finished for the foreseeable future — even in once-high-growth markets like China and India, as everyone who can afford a smartphone now has one.

And that means tough times ahead for global electronics firms — Apple included — who've depended on the proliferation of smartphones for growth. ... Saturation in developed markets is the main reason for the massive slowdown.

Intelligence Agencies Are Gathering Information Against You in Case of Your Dissent

Wells Fargo executives forfeit millions and CEO to forgo salary amid inquiry

Wells Fargo executives will forfeit millions of dollars in the wake of revelations that the bank’s sales quotas led to the creation of more than 2m unauthorized accounts.

The bank’s chief executive, John Stumpf, will forgo his salary for the coming months as independent directors launch a new investigation into Wells Fargo’s retail banking and sales practices.

Last year, Stumpf made about $19.3m. Stumpf will also forfeit unvested equity awards worth about $41m.

Carrie Tolstedt, who oversaw retail banking at Wells Fargo while the unauthorized accounts were opened, was slated to receive as much as $124.6m after retiring this summer, according to Fortune. The bank said on Tuesday that she would not receive an undisclosed severance and would forfeit about $19m in unvested awards. ...

Stumpf was scheduled to testify in front of the House financial services committee on Thursday. Many expected the hearing to be much of the same, including calls for clawing back the executives’ pay.

Wells Fargo pre-empted that by announcing the clawbacks on Tuesday.

The board also reserved the right for further clawbacks pending the results of its investigation.

Hunger Strikes, Marches & Work Stoppages: Unprecedented National Prison Strike Enters Third Week

NYC Uber and Lyft drivers are protesting for union rights

Drivers for the ride-hailing service Uber turned out in the streets of Queens on Tuesday morning, demanding their right to unionize outside the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission in Long Island City.

"We demand living wage fares, no pool fares, protection from exploitation, union representation," read one big green sign held up by one Uber driver, a middle-aged black man with a tan jacket and blue pork pie hat.

The ride-share workers — categorized as "independent contractors" rather than employees by tech companies like Uber and Lyft — had joined up with the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181, which represents city bus drivers. Copies of over 14,000 signed union cards sat in a fat bundle on the table in the center of the demonstration, 10,000 cards thicker since May.

"We're asking the Commission to order Uber and Lyft and those other companies to negotiate with us, and we believe under their charter, they have the ability to do so," said local President Michael Cordeillo.

Uber, however, told VICE News that the 14,000 cards held no authority, since the ATU was not organizing against an employer, but a regulatory agency, i.e. the Taxi Commission. Since Uber doesn't categorize its drivers as employees, organizers admit they're having trouble finding the best way to get drivers recognized.

"I Called You to Help Me, But You Killed My Brother": Police Shoot Dead Unarmed African-American Man

Police killing of unarmed black man in San Diego sparks protest

Police in suburban San Diego have shot and killed an unarmed black man who they say pulled an object from his pocket, pointed it at officers and assumed a “shooting stance”.

One officer tried and failed to subdue the unidentified man with a stun gun before a second officer fired several times, said the El Cajon police chief, Jeff Davis. Davis would not say what the object was, but acknowledged it was not a weapon.

Before police announced the death, dozens of protesters gathered at the scene, with some claiming the man was shot with his hands raised. Police disputed the claims and produced a frame from cellphone video recorded by a witness that appeared to show the man in a shooting stance as two officers approached with weapons drawn. ...

Police were called to a strip mall in El Cajon shortly after 2pm by a woman who said her brother was “not acting like himself” and walking in traffic. Officers said the man refused “multiple” orders to take his hand from his pocket, and then was shot after pulling out the object.

Police say a female witness came forward and voluntarily provided cellphone video of the incident. Authorities did not release the video, only the single frame from it. El Cajon officers do not wear body cameras.

One of Hedges' most excellent rants, definitely worth a full read.

Chris Hedges: Police Killings Won’t Stop

The corporate state, no matter how many protests take place in American cities over the murder of unarmed citizens, will put no restraints on the police or the organs of security and surveillance. It will not protect the victims of state violence. It will continue to grant broader powers and greater resources to militarized police departments and internal security forces such as Homeland Security. Force, along with the systems of indoctrination and propaganda, is the last prop that keeps the corporate elites in power. These elites will do nothing to diminish the mechanisms necessary for their control. ...

Naomi Murakawa in her book “The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America” documents how the series of “reforms” enacted to professionalize police departments resulted in placing more money and resources into the hands of the police, giving them greater power to act with impunity and expanding legally sanctioned violence. All penal reform, from President Harry Truman’s 1947 Committee on Civil Rights report to the Safe Streets Act of 1968 to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to contemporary calls for more professionalization, have, she notes, only made things worse. ...

The fiction used to justify expanded police powers, a fiction perpetrated by Democratic politicians such as Bill Clinton and Obama, is that a modernized police will make possible a just and post-racial America. ... The calls for more training and professionalization, the hiring of minority police officers, the use of body and dash cameras, improving procedures for due process, creating citizen review boards, even the reading of Miranda rights, have done nothing to halt the indiscriminate use of lethal violence and abuse of constitutional rights by the police and courts. Reforms have served only to bureaucratize, professionalize and legalize state abuse and murder. Innocent men and women may no longer be lynched on a tree, but they are lynched on death row and in the streets of New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte and dozens of other cities. They are lynched for the reasons poor black people have always been lynched—to create a reign of terror that serves as an effective form of social control.

The wreckage left behind by deindustrialization created a dilemma for the corporate state. The vast pools of “surplus” or “redundant” labor in our former manufacturing centers meant the old forms of social control had disappeared. The corporate state needed harsher mechanisms to subjugate a population it condemned as human refuse. Those on probation and parole or in jails or prisons grew from 780,000 in 1965 to 7 million in 2010. The kinds of federal crimes punishable by death leaped from one in 1974 to 66 in 1994, thanks to the Clinton administration. The lengths of prison sentences tripled and quadrupled. Laws were passed to turn inner-city communities into miniature police states. This had nothing to do with crime.

FBI Investigating Possible Hacking of Dems’ Cellphones

Though the FBI is refusing to provide any details on the matter, those familiar with the situation say they are conducting an investigation into the possible hacking of cellphones being used by top officials of the Democratic Party, adding to a litany of ongoing probes into hacks related to the Democrats.

The Clinton campaign said they were unaware of the report, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said they had not been contacted by the FBI regarding the possible hacking. DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile, however, reported that “our struggle with the Russian hackers that we announced in June is ongoing,” saying she didn’t want to provide any specific updates on the matter.

The hacking of the DNC has become a hugely political issue, with Democrats repeatedly insisting, despite a total lack of publicly available evidence, that “everyone” knows Russia is behind the matter.

Clinton’s Faulty New Scheme to ‘Fight’ ISIS

Hillary Clinton has unveiled a two-part plan to defeat the Islamic State, and just as critics might expect, it’s a doozy. One part calls for an “intelligence surge” to combat the group both at home and abroad while the other urges that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Islamic State’s self-styled caliph, simply be knocked off.

Both are indicative of why the disaster in the Middle East can only get worse. The problem with an “intelligence surge” is twofold: (1) it’s not clear what it’s supposed to do beyond undermining civil liberties in the name of anti-terrorism and (2) whatever information it turns up will only be as good as the people who use it. ...

Since the U.S. is unwilling to examine how its policies have contributed to the growth of the Islamic State, stepped-up intelligence will undoubtedly do the same, i.e. confirm all of Washington’s preconceived notions and allow it to continue on the same disastrous course.

Moreover, considering that U.S. authorities received advanced warnings not only about Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old Afghan-American charged with last week’s bombings in New York and New Jersey, but also about Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, it would seem that what’s needed is not a super-sophisticated intelligence “surge” so much as old-fashioned police work like knocking on doors and following up leads. ...

As for part two of Clinton’s anti-Islamic State plan – knocking Al-Baghdadi off – it’s simply a medley of her greatest hits, i.e. the murder of Muammar Gaddafi (“We came, we saw, he died”) and the assassination of Osama bin Laden (“I was one of those who recommended the President launch what was a very risky raid”). Since Clinton seems to think her ratings go up every time she kills an Arab leader, she figures it can’t hurt to kill more. ...

The only thing killing Bin Laden accomplished was to remove a leader who was a bit out of touch and allow even more aggressive jihadis to take his place. ... By 2014, the former “Al Qaeda in Iraq” had spun off into the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) and was claiming large swaths of Iraq and Syria, even as Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Nusra Front, was taking over other areas of Syria and bringing U.S.-backed “moderate” rebel groups under Al Qaeda’s command structure.

Al Baghdadi is a bad guy whom no rational person would miss. But bumping him off will be just as ineffective as killing bin Laden. Indeed, we already have an idea of who his successor would be, and it’s not pretty.

US drives rainforest destruction by importing Amazon oil, study finds

US imports of crude oil from the Amazon are driving the destruction of some of the rainforest ecosystem’s most pristine areas and releasing copious amounts of greenhouse gases, according to a new report.

The study, conducted by environmental group Amazon Watch, found that American refineries processed 230,293 barrels of Amazon crude oil a day last year.

And California, despite its green reputation, refines an average of 170,978 barrels, or 7.2m gallons, of Amazon crude a day, with the Chevron facility in El Segundo accounting for 24% of the US total alone.

The expansion of planned oil drilling poses “one of the most serious threats” to the western region of the Amazon, with most of the oil originating from Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. While green groups have enjoyed some success in fighting the Amazon ambitions of large oil firms like Chevron, other players from countries such as China have moved in, with proposed oil and gas fields now covering 283,172 sq miles of the Amazon – an area larger than Texas.

Felling the carbon-rich trees of the Amazon produces greenhouse gases even before the oil is transported and burned, while indigenous communities and the Amazon’s vast trove of biodiversity are also at risk.

No fracking, drilling or digging: it’s the only way to save life on Earth

For the first time we can see the numbers on which the Paris agreement on climate change depends, and their logic is inescapable. Governments can either meet their international commitments or allow the prospecting and development of new fossil fuel reserves. They cannot do both. ...

The only means of reconciling governments’ climate change commitments with the opening of new coal mines, oilfields and fracking sites is carbon capture and storage: extracting carbon dioxide from the exhaust gases of power stations and burying it in geological strata. But despite vast efforts to demonstrate the technology, it has not been proved at scale, and appears to be going nowhere. Our energy policies rely on vapourware.

As for the belief among some governments that they can overshoot the climate targets, then at a later date suck carbon dioxide out of the air: this depends on scenarios that would be no less realistic if they involved sorcery. The most popular proposal is to combine the capture and storage phantasm with biofuel plantations covering an area between one and three times the size of India, then harvesting the material they grow, burning it in power stations and burying the emissions. The use of a mere few hundred million hectares of fertile land would have to compete with all the other problems the biofuel wand is meant to magic away, such as the use of petroleum in cars and kerosene in planes, as well as the minor issue of feeding the world’s people. ...

Their choices are as follows. First: a gradual, managed decline of existing production and its replacement with renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure, which offer great potential for employment. Second: allowing fossil fuel production to continue at current rates for a while longer, followed by a sudden and severe termination of the sector, with dire consequences for both jobs and economies. Third: continuing to produce fossil fuels as we do today, followed by climate breakdown. Why is this a hard choice to make?

New York City accelerates emissions efforts in face of daunting sea level rise

New York City has set out a plan to quicken its pace of decarbonization in order to meet its emissions reduction target, as the metropolis prepares for a daunting sea level rise due to climate change.

The proposals state that New York “must accelerate efforts” to expand renewable energy generation, improve the energy efficiency of buildings, transition to electric vehicles and improve waste management in order to meet its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, based on 2005 levels.

The city has already lowered its emissions by 12% and is set to almost treble this reduction by 2030, but the road map warns that these efforts are not enough and “we must continue to do more to reduce emissions in New York City and lead progress across the globe if we are all to avoid the worst impacts of climate change”. ...

New York is set to be increasingly challenged by sea level rises caused by melting glaciers and thermal expansion of the ocean as the planet warms. By 2100, sea levels could be up to 50 inches higher than today in New York, a scenario that has prompted the city to pledge billions of dollars for flood defenses and adaptation. Still, high-value property in Manhattan is considered a long-term risk, with some scientists believing that a managed retreat from parts of the city is inevitable.

Rare bird being driven to extinction by poaching for its 'red ivory' bill

A virtually unknown ivory poaching crisis is rapidly driving one of the world’s most spectacular birds to extinction, a global wildlife summit has heard.

The helmeted hornbill, found mainly in Indonesia, Borneo and Thailand, has a solid red beak which sells as a “red ivory” on the black market, for several times the price of elephant ivory. The huge birds have been caught for centuries for their tail feathers, prized by local communities, but since 2011 poaching has soared to feed Chinese demand for carving ivory, even though the trade is illegal, sending the hornbill into a death spiral.

The bird, which can have a wingspan of 2m, was officially listed as “near threatened” in 2012 but within three years had plunged three danger levels to “critically endangered”. Over 2,100 heads were seized in Indonesia and China in the two years up to August 2014, according to the Species Survival Network, and some estimates suggest 6,000 a year are killed.

Also of Interest

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

Killing People, Breaking Things, and America’s Winless Wars

Meet Guy Sims Fitch, a Fake Writer Invented by the US Government

How Bankers Live With Themselves

If Elizabeth Warren Wants to Probe Worker Abuse on Wall Street, Start With the Unprecedented Rash of Deaths and Suicides

UK opens secret files about 'Jewish terrorists' in 1940s

Serena Williams speaks out against police killings

‘Corporate feminism’ oppresses women

A Little Night Music

Robert Wilkins - Police Sergeant Blues

Robert Wilkins - That's No Way To Get Along

Rev. Robert Wilkins - Don't You Let Nobody Turn You Round

Rev. Robert Wilkins - Streamline 'Frisco Limited

Robert Wilkins - Falling Down Blues

Robert Wilkins - I'll Go With Her

Robert Wilkins - I Do Blues

Robert Wilkins - Alabama Blues