Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist Luther Tucker. Enjoy!

“The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.”

-- George Orwell

News and Opinion

Obama Worries Future Presidents Will Wage Perpetual, Covert Drone War

President Obama warns in a new interview of a future in which a U.S. president could engage in perpetual covert wars “all over the world.” But he claims that the accountability and transparency measures he is instituting will make that less likely. ...

The president expressed a sense of urgency to rein in these powers that seems particularly appropriate given that both candidates for the White House have indicated receptiveness to intensifying the use of military force abroad, with Donald Trump going so far as expressing openness to killing the families of suspected terrorists. ...

“What’s so interesting is that President Obama acknowledges this problem — that future presidents will be empowered to kill globally, and in secret. What he doesn’t acknowledge is how much of a role his administration had in making that a bizarre normal,” Naureen Shah, director of national security and human rights at Amnesty International, told The Intercept. ...

From the very beginning of his presidency, Obama tightly embraced legal arguments, including the “state secrets privilege,” to deflect inquiries into the government’s use of lethal force in foreign countries; he fought vigorously for years to keep his rationale for assassinating an American citizen secret; he never explained how the U.S. came to kill that same American citizen’s 16-year-old son; and he has never once forced his premier intelligence agency to publicly answer for the deaths of non-Western civilians — of which there have been many — during an eight-year covert bombing campaign. ...

Obama’s critique of Congress — that it doesn’t seem to care enough to rein in the drone program — is both on point and ironic, coming from him. Far from encouraging Congress to weigh in, the Obama administration has actively fought Congress’s attempts to even get basic information about drone strikes. The White House, for instance, refused to show the legal memos authorizing the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki to Congress until 2014, when Obama nominated the memos’ author to become a federal judge, and a group of senators threatened to hold up the confirmation until they could read the memos.

Another try at a Syrian cease-fire

Putin suspends nuclear pact, raising stakes in row with Washington

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday suspended a treaty with Washington on cleaning up weapons-grade plutonium, signaling he is willing to use nuclear disarmament as a new bargaining chip in disputes with the United States over Ukraine and Syria.

Starting in the last years of the Cold War, Russia and the United States signed a series of accords to reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals, agreements that have so far survived intact despite a souring of U.S.-Russian relations under Putin.

But on Monday, Putin issued a decree suspending an agreement, concluded in 2000, which bound the two sides to dispose of surplus plutonium originally intended for use in nuclear weapons.

The Kremlin said it was taking that action in response to unfriendly acts by Washington. It made the announcement shortly before Washington said it was suspending talks with Russia on trying to end the violence in Syria.

Syria: Russia blames the US for sabotaging the ceasefire as both countries suspend talks

US Suspends Syria Talks, Blames Russia

Two weeks after the ceasefire actually ended in Syria, the Obama Administration has announced it is withdrawing from talks related to the process, and are eager to make sure everyone knows they hold Russia wholly responsible for the failure of the effort.

The ceasefire was meant to provide a 7-day pause to separate US-backed rebels from the Nusra Front. It lasted seven days, though no separation ever occurred, and Syria’s government withdrew complaining Nusra and its allies never stopped attacking them during the period. ...

The US threatened all last week to withdraw from the talks to punish Russia for the airstrikes on Nusra, and say their patience with Russia “has run out” today. The Russian government expressed regret over the end of the talks, but insisted that the ceasefire efforts are untenable at the moment, with so many rebel factions backing Nusra so heavily.

An excellent article worth a full read:

Double Standards for Israel and Syria

There is a hypocritical disconnect in Western and especially U.S. foreign policy. When it comes to Israel, the U.S. is quick to claim “Israel has a right to defend itself.” For Syria, that same right does not seem to exist.

When Israel executed intense bombing campaigns against Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014 the U.S. justified the attacks. At the United Nations on July 18, 2014, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said , “President Obama spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning to reaffirm the United States’ strong support for Israel’s right to defend itself…. Hamas’ attacks are unacceptable and would be unacceptable to any member state of the United Nations. Israel has the right to defend its citizens and prevent these attacks.” ...

With so few deaths and little damage caused by the rockets from Gaza, it seems Palestinians have launched these as almost symbolic protest against Israeli repression. The Gazan economy is hugely restricted, the borders are closed and even the sky and ocean are off limits. Many people would say that Israel is keeping the entire population of Gaza in prison-like circumstances. In addition, many residents of Gaza are descendants of refugees from nearby Israeli towns and cities. Under the Geneva Conventions and U.N. Resolution 194, they have the right to return but have been deprived of this in addition to most other rights. ...

The disproportionate nature of these Israeli attacks suggests that the Israeli government is not defending itself; it is imposing punishment on a captive and defenseless population.

The situation in Syria is dramatically different. The armed opposition in Syria has inflicted a huge number of deaths and damage in its five-year campaign to overthrow the government.  Data from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is sympathetic to the opposition, show the following number of casualties since March 2011: Pro Government forces (army and militias) – 105,000; Anti Government forces – 101,000; Civilians – 86,000.

These numbers reveal the intensity of the violence and how wrong it is for critics to blame President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government for all the deaths. As shown, soldiers and militias defending the state make up the largest number of casualties. ...

Martin Chulov of the Guardian described East Aleppo in 2015 and estimated its population at just 40,000. In sharp contrast, there is a large population of about 1.5 million Syrians living in the rest of the city. This is reflective of the reality: the vast majority of Syrians support the government and hate the terrorists. This includes many who are critical of the Baath Party and who want reforms but not violence and destruction.

In contrast with Israeli’s periodic wars on Gaza, the Syrian government is truly fighting to defend itself – and its civilian population – against an armed opposition that is violent, sectarian and unpopular with the large majority of Syrians.

Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga ask UK for help against Isis chemical attack

Kurdish peshmerga forces preparing to join the attack on Mosul, the Islamic State stronghold in northern Iraq, have written to the UK defence secretary, Michael Fallon, asking urgently for equipment to protect themselves from an Isis chemical attack.

The battle for Mosul, designed to end the Isis caliphate in Iraq, is expected to begin as early as middle of this month, with peshmerga forces likely to play a vital role.

The letter was sent to Fallon by the Kurdish high representative in the UK, Karwan Jamal Tahir, who said Kurdish forces had been subjected to the use of chemical weapons on at least 19 separate occasions and were concerned at the lack of protection while trying to hold a frontline stretching over 1,000km.

Kurdish forces have so far been relying on primitive protection from chemical attacks, such as towels, water tanks and hats. He added that the protection of peshmerga forces in an attack on Mosul should be of the highest priority.

Isis has used chemical munitions, including mustard and chlorine agents, on a number of occasions in Iraq and Syria, according to the CIA.

One Year After Kunduz: Battlefields Without Doctors, in Wars Without Limits

Today, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is remembering one of the darkest moments in its history. On 3 October 2015, U.S. airstrikes killed 42 people and destroyed the MSF trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. As we grieve the loss of our colleagues and patients, we are left with the question: is it still possible to safely provide medical care on the frontline? In the past year, there have been a further 77 attacks on medical facilities run and supported by MSF in Syria and Yemen. Hospitals are being continually dragged onto the battlefield, and patients and their doctors and nurses are sacrificed in the process.

It was the destruction of the Kunduz Trauma Centre, and the devastating assault on health facilities in Syria and Yemen that led to UN Security Council Resolution 2286 being passed in May 2016. The resolution strongly condemned attacks on medical facilities and demanded that all parties to armed conflict comply fully with their obligations under international law. And yet, five months later and on the same day as two health facilities were hit in Syria, we returned to the chambers of the Security Council to decry the hypocrisy of States – particularly those involved in the wars in Syria and Yemen. With one hand States sign a resolution to protect health facilities, while with the other they continue to be directly involved or complicit in the ongoing onslaught against health workers and patients in conflict zones.

What is clear is that with every attack on a health facility the chasm widens between the rhetoric from governments about their respect for International Humanitarian Law, and the way they wage wars in reality. No government has ever said it intentionally bombs hospitals, but they are bombed nonetheless. More often than not, these attacks occur under the umbrella of the ever-expanding ‘war on terror’ – a label used with increasing frequency including today by all military coalitions in Syria. Attacks are either dismissed as tragic ‘mistakes’, denied outright, or become political footballs as States desperately point fingers at each other while claiming at the same time that their bombs are the smartest and that their airstrikes are the most ‘humanitarian’.

There have been no impartial investigations carried out by an independent international body into any of the attacks on hospitals that have occurred over the past year. This is because there is zero political will among governments to have their military conduct examined from the outside.

FARC: Colombia Ceasefire to Continue Despite Referendum Loss

A referendum on the peace deal with FARC, expected to be a landslide victory, ended up a shocking loss yesterday, with 50.2% of voters rejecting the deal, and 49.8% in favor. ... FARC called on its supporters to “mobilize peacefully” to back the peace process, and has promised that they will continue to respect the ceasefire, and the peace deal as it was to be implemented. The Colombian government doesn’t appear to be looking to make any changes either. ...

Even former President Uribe, who campaigned against the deal, isn’t wanting a return to war. Rather, Uribe has been trying to score political points over his rival Santos, and is now promising to step forward and help make “corrections” to the peace deal which would ensure it was more palatable and able to survive a referendum.

Marking 10 Years, WikiLeaks Says 'October Surprises' Coming...Soon

During a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday, the media organization WikiLeaks touted 10 years of drawing the veil of secrecy away from governments and businesses worldwide while also confirming that a new batch of documents—specifically targeting the U.S. government and internet giant Google—will be released over the next two months.

There was significant anticipation surrounding Tuesday's announcement, which was originally set to come from a balcony at the embassy but was reconfigured due to "security concerns." As the New York Times noted, "[the] remarks from Mr. Assange disappointed many followers of WikiLeaks in the United States, who had stayed up into the early hours hoping to hear information relevant to the presidential election."

Indeed, The Verge reported:

There was a lot of build-up to today's press conference, in anticipation of what had been billed as an "October surprise" that could swing the U.S. presidential election. Instead, WikiLeaks devoted most of the event to recounting its most notorious releases and refuting criticism levied against it. Assange acknowledged the anticipation of a bombshell release in a winding address to reporters, though he declined to say whether the upcoming leaks would tilt the election toward Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

"There is enormous expectation in the United States," Assange said of the forthcoming leaks. "Some of that expectation will be partly answered; but you should understand that if we're going to make a major publication in relation to the United States at a particular hour, we don't do it at 3am."

WikiLeaks' Assange promises election leaks

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed Tuesday that the online publishing organization would publish "significant" secret information related to the United States presidential election — and that it would do so before Nov. 8.

Assange made the comments via video link from London to Berlin as part of a news conference to mark WikiLeaks' 10th anniversary.

He said WikiLeaks intends to start "publishing every week for the next 10 weeks" material on weapons, war, Google, the election and other topics, but did not otherwise elaborate on the timing or the subject matter of the documents.

Ahead of the news conference there was intense speculation that WikiLeaks would release documents Tuesday connected to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but that did not happen.

Spanish politicians in court over corruption case billed as trial of the year

Thirty-seven people who allegedly took part in a kickbacks-for-contracts scheme involving businessmen and members of Spain’s ruling People’s party stood trial at the national court, where developments were likely to prove irresistible to even the most jaded observers of the country’s enduring political turmoil.

Billed as the trial of the year, the Gürtel case involves Swiss bank accounts, clowns, fake invoices and, most arrestingly of all, several former senior PP members.

The figure at the centre of the proceedings is Francisco Correa, a businessman with close ties to the PP who is accused of paying bribes to party officials between 1999 and 2006 in return for contracts to carry out public works and organise events. The investigation was codenamed Gürtel, the German translation of correa (belt).

Among the defendants are three former PP treasurers, including Luis Bárcenas, a former ally of Spain’s acting prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. The party itself is also alleged to have benefited from illegally obtained funds, though it is not facing criminal charges. ...

Rajoy’s party has been plagued by corruption scandals in recent years. The former International Monetary Fund chief Rodrigo Rato, who was also a PP economy minister and deputy prime minister, is on trial at the national court for allegedly misusing corporate credit cards while in charge of two leading Spanish banks.

UK prime minister: 'There will be no opt-out for Brexit'

Pledging to make the United Kingdom "truly global," UK Prime Minister Theresa May revealed her plan Sunday to begin the process of separation from the European Union by March 2017. May told the Conservative Party conference she plans to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon, which sets the requirements of any country wishing to leave the EU. ...

This declaration ushers in the process of negotiation, with May saying she's keen to get talks underway and considers border control a priority. ...

In a veiled reference to the Scottish National Party, May also insisted that Scotland would be leaving the EU along with the rest of the United Kingdom, saying: "There is no opt-out from Brexit. And I will never allow divisive nationalists to undermine the precious union between the four nations of our United Kingdom."

Honeywell workers say lockout aims to destroy union: 'It's corporate greed'

More than four months into the lockout, Allan Enright and Jose DeLeon – both wearing T-shirts emblazoned with a bald eagle and the word “Solidarity” – were picketing outside the Honeywell factory that makes airline brakes. ...

Honeywell says it locked out the members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) – and brought in replacement workers – to assure continued production and meet customers’ deadlines. Enright, 59 and soft-spoken, sees things differently. “Bottom line, they want to get rid of the union completely,” he said. “That’s why they locked us out.”

Honeywell and the UAW resumed talks this week after reaching a stalemate but tempers are high. The company has embraced a weapon that has grown increasingly popular across corporate America as organized labor has grown weaker: locking out workers to throw the union on the defensive and perhaps break the union’s and the workers’ will.

“I really think they’re just trying to hold us out, to make us hungry, to make the membership fold,” said Bryan Rodgers, the recording secretary of UAW Local 9 in South Bend. Honeywell has also locked out 42 UAW members at a second airline brake factory, in Green Island, New York, just north of Albany. ...

The union asserts that Honeywell should not be demanding concessions on health coverage, seniority and other matters when the company had record profits of $4.77bn last year and income in its aerospace division rose. But Honeywell says it needs to rein in costs because the aviation industry has hit some turbulence.

Breaking Through Power: Janine Jackson on Challenging Corporate Media

Feds' Proposal on Tracking Deaths in Custody Shows Lack of Desire to Change 'Status Quo in Policing'

It may seem that the simplest way to gather accurate information about deaths in police custody is for the police departments themselves to collect the data.

But that's not the how the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) proposes to implement the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act (DICRA), signed into law in 2014, and that's a real problem, according to scores of organizations.

In a letter sent Monday to the DOJ, 96 groups including the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, Government Accountability Project, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights outline what they see as major flaws in the proposal.

Among them: it wrongly shifts the reporting requirement from state to federal authorities. That authority, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, will rely on an "inadequate method"—the Arrest-Related Deaths Program, which uses publicly available information. That means that investigative projects undertaken by the Guardian and the Washington Post are the "best national sources" for the data, but that puts the key data on lives lost at the risk of potentially dwindling national interest and media resources.

Further problematic, the groups write, is that the proposal fails to fully clarify what is meant by "custody," and the fact that data is also needed in confrontations with the police in community encounters such as traffic stops.

Officers tried to run over man before shooting him 14 times, video shows

In the last seconds before he was shot 14 times, Joseph Mann dodged the police cruiser once, then twice. Dashboard video recorded the officer’s words inside the car: “Fuck this guy. I’m going to hit him.”

“OK, go for it. Go for it,” his partner replies.

The Mann family’s attorney amended his complaint against the city of Sacramento on Friday and sent a letter to the justice department requesting a civil rights investigation into the Sacramento fatal police shooting of Mann, a 51-year-old homeless man with a history of mental illness.

“It’s disgusting,” attorney John Burris told the Guardian. “It raises the question that this might have been a deliberate, premeditated murder, that they intended to do what they did.”

Burris said the video and audio, first published by the Sacramento Bee on Friday, suggested that officers Randy Lozoya and John Tennis “had no regard for him as a human being, and no consideration that he might be mentally impaired from the way he was non-responsive, waving his hands, making karate chops, giving obvious signs of a disability”. ...

When officers tried to hit him a second time, he jumped over a median, prompting officers to abandon their car in the middle of oncoming traffic. Mann was quickly chased down by officers, who fired 18 times and hit him with 14 bullets. He died in the street. The shooting itself not captured by the dashboard camera.

Supreme court to address Duane Buck's 'racially tainted' death sentence

Duane Buck attended in 1997 the sentencing hearing in Texas that would seal his fate. The jury was being asked to decide whether to have him executed for killing his former girlfriend, Debra Gardner, and her friend Kenneth Butler.

There was no disputing the conviction – Buck had carried out the brutal murders on 30 July 1995. Even so, he was still astonished by what he heard coming from the mouth of a so-called “expert” witness.

Walter Quijano, a then psychologist who was frequently called to testify in Texas capital trials, was asked to give his professional opinion with regards to a key issue concerning whether Buck should live or die. Under Texas law, in order to put him on death row the prosecution had to convince the jury that the prisoner posed such a danger of future violence that life imprisonment would be too risky – executing him was the only safe option.

The prosecutor put a blunt question to Quijano: “You have determined that the race factor, black, increases the future dangerousness for various complicated reasons; is that correct?”

“Yes,” the expert witness replied.

“It’s like he’s basically saying because you are black you need to die,” Buck told his lawyers a few years later, by now on the eve of his appointment with the death chamber. “I felt that was strange because my lawyer didn’t say nothing, and nobody else, you know, the prosecutor or the judge, nobody did. It was like it was an everyday thing in the courts.”

That question – whether it is acceptable in the United States in 2016 to put a prisoner to death because he is black – will be addressed by the US supreme court in oral arguments on Wednesday.

From the Department of Pot. Kettle. Black.

Hillary Clinton hammers Trump on taxes: he 'represents the rigged system'

Hillary Clinton skewered opponent Donald Trump on Monday as a phony prophet of the working class amid revelations that the real estate mogul may have avoided paying federal income taxes for nearly two decades.

“Trump represents the same rigged system that he claims he’s going to change,” the Democratic presidential nominee told voters in Toledo, during the first of two scheduled campaign stops in the battleground state of Ohio.

[Really, Hillary? And you, presumably, represent a different rigged system? Pffffftttt!!!! - js]

Gosh, I wonder how many of the "geniuses" that wiped trillions of dollars worth of value out of the economy are Hillary donors? How many of those "geniuses" think that Hillary is so interesting that they are willing to pay her $200,000. a pop for a speech?

Hillary Should Ask Jamie Dimon What Kind of Genius Loses $6.2 Billion

Yesterday, building on the momentum afforded her by a series of articles in the New York Times, Hillary Clinton asked the audience at a campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio: “What kind of genius loses a billion dollars in one year.” Clinton was referring to the New York Times revelation on Sunday that Donald Trump’s 1995 tax return showed a loss of $916 million.

If Hillary really wants to know what kind of genius can lose a billion dollars in one year or $6.2 billion in the case of traders at JPMorgan Chase, she should ask the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon. The $6.2 billion London Whale loss at JPMorgan Chase is far more scintillating a feat since it involved wild derivative gambles in London in 2012 using the taxpayer-backstopped, insured savings deposits at the largest bank in the U.S. The U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations conducted an in-depth investigation and report of the matter. The Chairman of the Subcommittee at the time, Senator Carl Levin, stated that JPMorgan “piled on risk, hid losses, disregarded risk limits, manipulated risk models, dodged oversight, and misinformed the public.”

In fact, New York City, where both Trump and the New York Times hail from, is filled to the brim with Wall Street geniuses who have wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars in shareholder equity or completely destroyed their Wall Street banks through unsound business models while reaping windfalls for themselves. Compared to these guys, Trump is a piker.

Planet at its hottest in 115,000 years thanks to climate change, experts say

The global temperature has increased to a level not seen for 115,000 years, requiring daunting technological advances that will cost the coming generations hundreds of trillions of dollars, according to the scientist widely credited with bringing climate change to the public’s attention.

A new paper submitted by James Hansen, a former senior Nasa climate scientist, and 11 other experts states that the 2016 temperature is likely to be 1.25C above pre-industrial times, following a warming trend where the world has heated up at a rate of 0.18C per decade over the past 45 years.

This rate of warming is bringing Earth in line with temperatures last seen in the Eemian period, an interglacial era ending 115,000 years ago when there was much less ice and the sea level was 6-9 meters (20-30ft) higher than today.

In order to meet targets set at last year’s Paris climate accord to avoid runaway climate change, “massive CO2 extraction” costing an eye-watering $104tn to $570tn will be required over the coming century with “large risks and uncertain feasibility” as to its success, the paper states.

“There’s a misconception that we’ve begun to address the climate problem,” said Hansen, who brought climate change into the public arena through his testimony to the US congress in the 1980s. “This misapprehension is based on the Paris climate deal where governments clapped themselves on the back but when you look at the science it doesn’t compute, it’s not true."

An excellent article, here's a teaser:

The Dakota Access Pipeline: Another Epic Clash Between America’s Military-Corporate Powers and the Great Sioux Nation

This latest epic invasion in the 21^st century of the Great Sioux Nation’s territory in North Dakota isn’t anything new under the sun. It’s but the latest episode in a centuries-old saga of American military and corporate might operating in tandem, hand-in-glove, to constantly dispossess the Sioux and other Native American Nations of their homelands and all its natural, cultural and sacred resources.

Starting in the early 19th century there were the incursions into Sioux territory by American fur companies that sought to strip from the land, as much as they could, all its precious fur-bearing animals for Wall Street’s profiteers in the East; ever since, the homelands of the Sioux has been a non-stop scene of one epic clash after another between those who want to preserve the land and its natural resources and those who want to rape and pillage it.

This epic clash started in earnest in the mid-19^th century with the westward movement of immigrants and refugees from the East. What started as a trickle quickly turned into a horde-like swarm of locusts. This epic struggle continued on with the building of wagon roads and railroads by one corporate enterprise after another across Sioux lands.

It really kicked into high gear when General George Armstrong Custer and his 7^th Cavalry regiment undertook their Black Hills Expedition in 1874 in search of gold, in defiance of the terms of the Treaty of Laramie of 1868 between the U.S. Government and Sioux Nation that legally granted to the Sioux the lands and natural resources of the Black Hills, and specifically forbade trespass by non-Indians. Custer and his troop’s illegal incursions ultimately led to the gold rush that decimated the Sioux’s sacred Paha Sapa (Black Hills) and stripped it of all its precious minerals, timber and water resources under the protection of General Custer and his troops. This led, as a result, to General Custer engaging the Sioux Nation in a series of battles until he and his 7^th Cavalry regiment were finally annihilated by the Sioux at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

General George Crook picked up where Custer left off and continued America’s relentless military-corporate war against the Sioux’s Chief Crazy Horse at the Battle of the Rosebud and Battle of Slim Butte. Following the murder of Chief Sitting Bull on the Standing Rock Agency where he lived, Chief Spotted Elk (also known as Chief Big Foot) fled with his band of Minniconjou and Hunkpapa allies before they were eventually caught by a remnant detachment of the 7^th Cavalry who massacred them at Wounded Knee, in reprisal for Custer’s defeat, for which many received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

BP platform leaks 95 tonnes of oil into North Sea

About 95 tonnes of oil have been leaked into the North Sea from a BP platform, the company has said.

The leak is about two and a half times smaller than the biggest North Sea spill in recent years, at Shell’s Gannet platform off Aberdeen in 2011.

The spill from the Clair platform is being monitored from the air by plane which, combined with modelling, shows the oil moving away from land in a northerly direction.

“The most recent surveillance flight already indicates significant dispersal of the oil at the surface,” the company said in a statement. ...

The leak was caused by a technical issue with a system designed to separate the mixed production fluids of water, oil and gas, the company said following an investigation.

Also of Interest

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

We spoke to the inmate in solitary who inspired a national strike against 'modern-day slave conditions'

Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria

Destroying Syria: a Joint Criminal Enterprise

US Diplomacy and Interventionism in the Age of Endless War

Making Cold War to the End of the World

What We Talk About When We Don’t Want to Talk About Nuclear War

When Is Direct Military Intervention Not Direct Military Intervention?

Wildlife sanctuary free to good owner – as long as you care for the animals

Arctic cruise boom poses conundrum for Canada's indigenous communities

A Little Night Music

Luther Tucker - Sad And Lonely

Luther Tucker - Lonesome Boulevards

James Cotton & Luther Tucker/Rod Piazza - Playboy after dark

Al Perkins w/Luther Tucker - Love Me Baby

Luther Tucker - Mean Old World

Charlie Musselwhite, Luther Tucker, Bobby Murray - Roll Me Mama

Mark Hummel & Luther Tucker - Peter Gunn