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This evening's music features New Orleans songwriter, piano player and singer Huey "Piano" Smith. Enjoy!

"The next time someone who identifies with the Muslim world attacks American or British citizens, and those countries’ leading political voices answer the question “why, oh why, do they hate us?” by assuring everyone that “they hate us for our freedoms,” it would be instructive to watch that video."

-- Glenn Greenwald

News and Opinion

Photos Show Fragments of U.S. Bombs at Site of Yemen Funeral Masssacre

Fragments of what appear to be U.S.-made bombs have been found at the scene of one of the most horrific civilian massacres of Saudi Arabia’s 18-month air campaign in Yemen.

Aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition on Saturday bombed a community hall in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital city, where thousands of people had gathered for a funeral for Sheikh Ali al-Rawishan, the father of the rebel-appointed interior minister. The aircraft struck the hall four times, killing more than 140 people and wounding 525. One local health official described the aftermath as “a lake of blood.”

Multiple bomb fragments at the scene appear to confirm the use of American-produced MK-82 guided bombs. One fragment, posted in a picture on the Facebook page of a prominent Yemeni lawyer, says “FOR USE ON MK-82 FIN, GUIDED BOMB.”

New evidence from the crime scene (Funeral hall) that was bombed by #Saudi fighters. MK82 guided bomb.The serial number will lead us.#Yemen pic.twitter.com/5Ch4WtF9tz

— I4Yemen (@I4Yemen) October 10, 2016

The MK-82 is a 500-pound explosive weapon manufactured in the United States. The code “96214” indicates that the bomb was produced by Raytheon, the third-largest defense contractor in the United States. ...

The U.S. has supplied Saudi Arabia with more than $20 billion worth of weapons during its Yemen campaign, including thousands of MK-82 bombs. In November, the State Department approved the sale of 8,020 new MK-82 bombs as part of a $1.29 billion transfer of more air-to-ground weapons.

.@I4Yemen Worth pointing out that UK TV crew found a fragment also said to have come from a Mark 82 bomb https://t.co/O3A4tWD6hd

— Brian Whitaker (@Brian_Whit) October 10, 2016

Britain's double standards on Syria and Yemen

The bombing has been "barbaric" and war crimes have "unquestionably" been committed. One especially repugnant kind of bombing is known, euphemistically, as the double tap: "They drop one bomb and then they wait for the aid workers to come out, civilian people pulling the injured from the rubble, and then five minutes later they drop another bomb."

These are the bold words of Britain's foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, referring to attacks by Russia and the Assad regime in Syria – and few would disagree with them.

It was a different story at the weekend, though, when two airstrikes – yes, another "double tap" bombing – hit a funeral gathering in Yemen, killing at least 140 people and injuring hundreds more.

The normally outspoken Mr Johnson was silent and it was left to a junior Foreign Office minister, Tobias Ellwood, to issue a statement. He said he would be raising British "concerns" with the Saudi ambassador and urged the Saudi-led coalition which is bombing Yemen to investigate itself as quickly as possible.

It's very likely that British-made warplanes were involved in the funeral massacre, since Britain has been selling them to the Saudis for years. The British government also has a singular blind spot when it comes to war crimes in Yemen. The test regarding arms sales, it says, is whether weapons sold by Britain "might be used in a commission of a serious breach of international humanitarian law". Despite ample evidence that this is the case, it continues to insist that the test "has not been met".

Obama Is Killing Yemen: A Yemeni Journalist Speaks Out After U.S.-Backed Bombing Strikes Funeral

"If US and UK told King Salman Yemen war has to end, it would end tomorrow"

Bruce Riedel, who directs the Intelligence Project at Brookings, put the war in Yemen into stark terms, noting that 20 million Yemenis “are facing a humanitarian catastrophe.” He added that by refueling aircraft and providing ordnance, intelligence, and logistics to the Saudis, the U.S. “is a partner in this war.” He added that “if the United States of America and the United Kingdom tonight told King Salman that this war has to end, it would end tomorrow.”

As Saudis bombed Yemen, U.S. worried about legal blowback

The Obama administration went ahead with a $1.3 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia last year despite warnings from some officials that the United States could be implicated in war crimes for supporting a Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians, according to government documents and the accounts of current and former officials. ...

U.S. government lawyers ultimately did not reach a conclusion on whether U.S. support for the campaign would make the United States a "co-belligerent" in the war under international law, four current and former officials said. That finding would have obligated Washington to investigate allegations of war crimes in Yemen and would have raised a legal risk that U.S. military personnel could be subject to prosecution, at least in theory.

For instance, one of the emails made a specific reference to a 2013 ruling from the war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor that significantly widened the international legal definition of aiding and abetting such crimes.

The ruling found that "practical assistance, encouragement or moral support" is sufficient to determine liability for war crimes. Prosecutors do not have to prove a defendant participated in a specific crime, the U.N.-backed court found.

Ironically, the U.S. government already had submitted the Taylor ruling to a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to bolster its case that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda detainees were complicit in the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

In Secret Goldman Sachs Speech, Hillary Clinton Admitted No-Fly Zone Would “Kill a Lot of Syrians”

Hillary Clinton reiterated her unreserved support for both a “no-fly zone” and “safe zones” in Syria during Sunday’s presidential debate — but in a partial transcript of private remarks she made at a Goldman Sachs event in 2013, she acknowledged some of the complications involved.

Her comments were included in an 80-page report prepared by the Clinton campaign listing the most politically damaging quotes from Clinton’s paid speeches, which she has refused to make public. Among the recipients of that report was Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, whose hacked emails were posted by WikiLeaks on Friday.

In her remarks to Goldman Sachs, Clinton pointed to the Syrian government’s air defense systems, and noted that destroying them would take the lives of many Syrian civilians.

“They’re getting more sophisticated thanks to Russian imports. To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk—you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians,” she said. “So all of a sudden this intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians.”

Russia to Expand Syria Naval Base, Make It ‘Permanent’

45 years after its initial establishment, it’s hard to imagine anyone saw the Tartus naval base in Syria as anything but “permanent,” but Russian officials are looking to formally establish that fact, as well as come to an agreement with the Assad government on a substantial expansion.

The base, such as it is, is Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, but it is small and very limited, unable to provide access to larger warships. Russia seems keen to change that now, and with the Assad government serious indebted to Russia in the ongoing civil war, getting Syria to ratify the terms of the deal should be fairly easy for Russia. ...

Russia has recently deployed an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to the area around the Tartus base, a response to US suggestions that they may unilaterally attack Syria and Russia militarily. This too gives Russia a chance to spin the timing of this announcement as related to US threats, and a sign that Russia won’t be chased out of Syria.

Vladimir Putin cancels Paris visit amid Syria row

Vladimir Putin has cancelled a visit to Paris after the Kremlin accused France of seeking to humiliate the Russian leader.

Moscow announced on Tuesday morning that the planned trip was off, hours after the French president, François Hollande, said Russia could face war crimes charges over its bombardment of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.

France is furious at Moscow’s veto of a French resolution at the UN calling for an immediate halt to Russian bombing of Aleppo.

Hollande had suggested he might refuse to meet Putin, who was due to fly to France next week, and planned to downgrade the trip to a “working visit based on Syria”.

War Crimes: US blames Russia for civilian deaths, omits collateral damage inflicted by own military

Here are some excerpts from this excellent commentary by Glenn Greenwald. It's worth reading in full; his critique of the "reality based community" is quite tasty.

In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots

Donald Trump, for reasons I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is an extremist, despicable and dangerous candidate, and his almost-certain humiliating defeat is less than a month away. So I realize there is little appetite in certain circles for critiques of any of the tawdry and sometimes fraudulent journalistic claims and tactics being deployed to further that goal. In the face of an abusive, misogynistic, bigoted, scary, lawless authoritarian, what’s a little journalistic fraud or constant fear-mongering about subversive Kremlin agents between friends if it helps to stop him?

But come January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. – more so than ever – and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions or opposes those leaders is a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow.

... On Friday, WikiLeaks published its first installment of emails obtained from the account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Despite WikiLeaks’ perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents, MSNBC’s favorite ex-intelligence official Malcolm Nance, within hours of its release, posted a tweet claiming – with zero evidence and without citation to a single document in the WikiLeaks archive – that the archive was compromised with fakes. ... [M]ore than 4,000 people have re-tweeted this “Official Warning.” That includes not only random Clinton fans but also high-profile Clinton-supporting journalists, who by spreading it around gave this claim their stamp of approval, intentionally leading huge numbers of people to assume the WikiLeaks archive must be full of fakes, and its contents should therefore simply be ignored.

Except the only fraud here was Nance’s claim, not any of the documents published by WikiLeaks. Those were all real. Indeed, at Sunday night’s debate, when asked directly about the excerpts of her Wall Street speeches found in the release, Clinton herself confirmed their authenticity. And news outlets such as the New York Times and AP reported – and continue to report – on their contents without any caveat that they may be frauds. No real print journalists or actual newsrooms (as opposed to campaign operatives masquerading as journalists) fell for this scam, so this tactic did not prevent reporting from being done.

Hard Brexit will cost Treasury up to £66bn a year, ministers are told

Treasury coffers may take a £66bn annual hit if Britain goes for a hard Brexit, cabinet ministers have been warned.

Leaked government papers suggest that leaving the single market and switching to World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules would cause GDP to fall by up to 9.5% compared with staying in the EU.

The draft cabinet committee paper seen by the Times is based on forecasts from the controversial study into the predicted impact of quitting the EU published by George Osborne in April during the referendum campaign. Although the then chancellor faced widespread criticism over the report, the Treasury stands by its calculations, according to the Times.

Hillary Clinton Privately Pitched Corporations on “Really Low” Tax Rate for Money Stashed Abroad

In public, top Hillary Clinton surrogate Neera Tanden said at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia that there’s no need to cut the federal corporate tax rate from its current 35 percent.

But in private, Clinton says something quite different to corporations and trade groups. ...

During an October 13, 2014, speech to the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, Clinton told the audience that “A number of business leaders have been talking to my husband and me about an idea that would allow the repatriation of the couple trillion dollars that are out there. And you would get a lower rate — a really low rate — if you were willing to invest a percentage in an infrastructure bank.”

Clinton has repeatedly called for increased spending on U.S. infrastructure, but has never specified where the needed revenue would come from.

In a speech the previous month to the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Clinton also said that a lower rate for all corporate profits regardless of where they are earned “certainly could be on the table” as long as that was “part of a broader package.”

The Empire Files: Inside Palestine's Refugee Camps

Chris Hedges: The New Slave Revolt

A nationwide prison work stoppage and hunger strike, begun on Sept. 9, the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising, have seen over 20,000 prisoners in about 30 prisons do what we on the outside should do—refuse to cooperate. “We will not only demand the end to prison slavery, we will end it ourselves by ceasing to be slaves,” prisoners of the Free Alabama Movement, the Free Ohio Movement and the IWW Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee wrote in a communique.

This round of prison strikes—there will be more—has had little outside support and press coverage. There have been few protests outside prison walls. ...

These prison strike leaders put no hope in a “national conversation” about race and mass incarceration. They know that corporations, the courts and politicians will never halt the lethal police violence against unarmed men and women of color or dismantle the vast gulags for the poor that dot the country. The mechanisms of repression are by design. They are the logical consequence of deindustrialization. The corporate state uses fear, police violence and huge networks of jails and prisons to keep hundreds of millions of underemployed and unemployed poor people from revolting.

“We have to shut down the prisons,” Council, known as Kinetik, one of the founders of the Free Alabama Movement, told me by phone from the Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County, Ala. He has been in prison 21 years, serving a sentence of life without parole. “We will not work for free anymore. All the work in prisons, from cleaning to cutting grass to working in the kitchen, is done by inmate labor. [Almost no prisoner] in Alabama is paid. Without us the prisons, which are slave empires, cannot function. Prisons, at the same time, charge us a variety of fees, such as for our identification cards or wrist bracelets, and [impose] numerous fines, especially for possession of contraband. They charge us high phone and commissary prices. Prisons each year are taking larger and larger sums of money from the inmates and their families. The state gets from us millions of dollars in free labor and then imposes fees and fines. You have brothers that work in kitchens 12 to 15 hours a day and have done this for years and have never been paid.”

These strike leaders say that, inside and outside the prison walls, rebellion is the only option.

These striking prisoners are far more effective, and far more threatening to the corporate state, than the outside multitudes entranced and manipulated by the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Goon Show. Denied the right to employment, to vote and to public assistance because of felony convictions, denied the right to justice because they are poor, and denied a voice because they have been silenced by state censorship and a bankrupt media, these prisoners were some of the first to understand the totalitarian nature of the corporate state.

“We do not believe in the political process,” said Ray, who spoke from the St. Clair Correctional Facility in Springville, Ala., and who is serving life without parole. “We are not looking to politicians to submit reform bills. We aren’t giving more money to lawyers. We don’t believe in the courts. We will rely only on protests inside and outside of prisons and on targeting the corporations that exploit prison labor and finance the school-to-prison pipeline.”

Kids in Prison: Getting Tried as An Adult Depends on Skin Color

Kids who commit certain crimes in New Jersey, like robbery, drug trafficking or homicides, can be tried as adults. Their mugshots and criminal records are made public and they face the same, long prison sentences as adults.

But getting "waived up" into the adult system won't happen unless a prosecutor requests it. And according to an analysis by the WNYC Data News Team, most of their requests are for black kids. ...

Two people decide whether kids get tried as adults: The prosecutor in each county has to request it, and a judge has to approve it. ...

“There are obvious disparities and gross disparities in the exercise of discretion to seek a waiver,” said Laura Cohen, the director of the Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic at Rutgers Law School.

Cohen says national research shows white kids commit the same "waivable" offenses as black kids, but prosecutors just don’t ask to try white kids as adults at the same rates.

“Controlling for nature of offense, controlling for family background, controlling for educational history — all of the things that go into a prosecutor’s decision, there are still disparities, significant disparities, that cannot be explained by anything other than race," Cohen said.

What Wells Fargo knew

A Wells Fargo bank manager tried to warn the head of the company’s regional banking unit of an improperly created customer account in January 2006, five years earlier than the bank has said its board first learned of abuses at its branches.

In recent months, the discovery of as many as 2 million improperly created accounts has widened into a public scandal for Wells Fargo, one of the country’s largest banks by assets. Some lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Roger Williams of Texas, have called for CEO John Stumpf to step down. A letter written in 2005 and obtained by VICE News details unethical practices that occurred at Washington state branches of the bank, suggesting the conduct began years before previously understood.

Dennis Hambek, a former branch manager in West Yakima, Washington, sent a certified letter in January 2006 to Carrie Tolstedt, then Wells Fargo’s head of regional banking, outlining unethical “gaming” activity at area branches. In 2007, Tolstedt was made the company’s head of community banking, the division where many of the unethical practices occurred.

Hmmmm...

Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not

When Elon Musk isn’t outlining plans to use his massive rocket to leave a decaying Planet Earth and colonize Mars, he sometimes talks about his belief that Earth isn’t even real and we probably live in a computer simulation. ...

Musk is just one of the people in Silicon Valley to take a keen interest in the “simulation hypothesis”, which argues that what we experience as reality is actually a giant computer simulation created by a more sophisticated intelligence. ...

If we believe that there is nothing supernatural about what causes consciousness and it’s merely the product of a very complex architecture in the human brain, we’ll be able to reproduce it. “Soon there will be nothing technical standing in the way to making machines that have their own consciousness,” said Rich Terrile, a scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. ... “If one progresses at the current rate of technology a few decades into the future, very quickly we will be a society where there are artificial entities living in simulations that are much more abundant than human beings.”

If there are many more simulated minds than organic ones, then the chances of us being among the real minds starts to look more and more unlikely. As Terrile puts it: “If in the future there are more digital people living in simulated environments than there are today, then what is to say we are not part of that already?”

Reasons to believe that the universe is a simulation include the fact that it behaves mathematically and is broken up into pieces (subatomic particles) like a pixelated video game. “Even things that we think of as continuous – time, energy, space, volume – all have a finite limit to their size. If that’s the case, then our universe is both computable and finite. Those properties allow the universe to be simulated,” Terrile said.

Meanwhile, the Presidential Grudge Match grinds on...

Trump amplifies personal attacks on Hillary and Bill Clinton post-debate

Lest there be any doubt, Donald Trump made clear Monday that he is running a scorched earth campaign for the next month.

Speaking in a high school gym in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, his first public event since the leak on Friday of his 2005 comments about groping women without their consent, Trump amplified his rhetoric from Sunday night’s debate and attacked rival Hillary Clinton and her husband – former president Bill Clinton – in starkly personal terms.

Trump, who invited four women who claimed to be the victims of misconduct by the Clintons to be his guests at the debate on Sunday, renewed his offensive against his Democratic opponent.

The Republican nominee called Bill Clinton “a predator” and said his wife enabled him “instead of trying to stop it, she made possible for him to take advantage of more women, she put more women into harm’s way”.

He also threatened that “if they want to release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we’ll continue to talk about Bill and Hillary doing inappropriate things.”

"All the President’s Misogynists": Jodi Jacobson on Why It Took So Long to Derail the Trump Train

Trump marches on amid spiraling disaster of Republican party desertion

A pumped-up Donald Trump strutted in front of a crowd of diehard supporters in Pennsylvania on Monday night, throwing aside a spiraling disaster of the groping tape, Republican defections and his plummeting poll ratings.

The Republican presidential nominee made no reference at a rally in the old coalmining town of Wilkes-Barre to the catastrophic 72 hours his campaign had endured since an 11-year old recording was released in which he bragged about using his celebrity status to sexually assault women.

Nor did he refer to the many members of his party who abandoned him publicly over the weekend in protest at his offensive comments, or to the dramatic headway made by his Democratic rival in the polls.

Instead, he fired up his loyal army of followers by repeating the threat he made directly to Hillary Clinton’s face at the second presidential debate on Sunday night that once ensconced in the White House he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her alleged crimes.

When the baying crowd at Mohegan Sun Arena shouted “Lock her up!”, Trump shot back at them: “Lock her up is right!”

Could Donald Trump really jail Hillary Clinton if he wins the election?

Chants of “Lock her up” are a regular feature of Trump’s rallies, but on Monday his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, claimed that the threat “was a quip” and that he was “channeling the frustration of thousands of voters he hears every day”. Legal experts argued that, even in the increasingly unlikely event of a Trump presidency, the odds of Clinton being put behind bars are “infinitesimally small” in a constitutional democracy born out of revolution against the absolute power of monarchs.

Henry Chambers, a professor at the University of Richmond’s school of law, said: “He could start the ball rolling by suggesting to the Department of Justice that it start an investigation, but even then it’s kind of nuts. The idea that he could decide on his own, ‘I will put Hillary Clinton in jail,’ is bizarre squared. He himself would be threatened with impeachment.” ...

Should Trump pull off a dramatic win, he might, for example, name Chris Christie as attorney general. Christie has been an aggressive critic of Clinton and even used his Republican national convention speech to play prosecutor and put her “on trial” for endangering national security.

He might therefore appoint a special prosecutor with some relish. “The FBI decision does not preclude reopening the investigation into Clinton,” said a former government lawyer, who did not wish to be named. “It’s not like double jeopardy. James Comey of the FBI has already looked at it and decided it is not a criminal matter – but of course, under a different administration, there might be new pressure from on high.”

If the special prosecutor found sufficient evidence to bring an indictment, Clinton could in theory go on trial before a jury and, if convicted, the judge would determine her sentence. But such a scenario for a high-profile politician is highly unlikely, the lawyer said. In 1973 Vice-President Spiro Agnew admitted evading taxes and resigned under an agreement with the Department of Justice to avoid imprisonment; he was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $10,000.

Heh, if Hillary wins, one of the likely results of the campaign waged by Trump will be a heightened desire to see Her Heinous exchange her pants suits for an orange jump suit. To get into the spirit of things, I offer this rewording of the traditional presidential flourish, "Hail to the Chief":

Jail to the Chief the wealthy chose for the nation,
Jail to the Chief! We deplore her, one and all.
Jail to the Chief, we expect immiseration
In fulfillment of the rich folks' lusty call.

Hers is the aim to collect graft and to pander
This she will do, that's our strong, firm belief.
Jail to the one they selected as commander,
Jail to the President! Jail to the Chief!

The greatest snub of the debate? It was against Black Lives Matter

On Sunday night, I wanted Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to delve into real talk about race in America. After all, they debated at Washington University in St Louis, just about 8 miles from the Canfield Apartments where Michael Brown was killed.

It didn’t happen. ...

There was no room for race talk, but there was room for a hall of questioners who mostly seemed like props made out of meat, bolstering the TV producers’ illusion of democracy. They asked softball questions with little substance. They reflected well how the US has been bullied into a state of idiocy, fear, shame and incuriosity.

There was room for more questions about Hillary’s email server – and none at all about the biggest social movement of the day, which exploded in 2014 just down the road from the hall. ...

The debate was depressing. I know Clinton will be better than Trump in many ways, but she’s not going to protect black people. Not really. At best she will maintain the status quo, which even with a black man in the White House involves black folks dying younger, having a fraction of white wealth, being considered guilty in preschool and being more likely to be arrested or killed by police. Another Clinton presidency will not change this.

Apparently they’re serving ice cream in Hell todayhttps://t.co/icBAtVqhBm

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) October 11, 2016

Climate Activists Shut Down All US-Canada Tar Sands Pipelines

Five activists shut down all the tar sands pipelines crossing the Canada-U.S. border Tuesday morning, in a bold, coordinated show of climate resistance amid the ongoing fight against the Dakota Access pipeline.

The activists employed manual safety valves to shut down Enbridge's line 4 and 67 in Leonard, Minnesota; TransCanada's Keystone pipeline in Walhalla, North Dakota; Spectra Energy's Express pipeline in Coal Banks Landing, Montana; and Kinder-Morgan's Trans-Mountain pipeline in Anacortes, Washington.

The activists, who planned the action to coincide with the International Days of Prayer and Action With Standing Rock, expressed feeling "duty bound to halt the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels...in the absence of any political leadership" to address the withering goal of keeping global temperature increase beneath the 2°C climate threshold.

"I have signed hundreds of petitions, testified at dozens of hearings, met with most of my political representatives at every level, to very little avail," said 64-year-old mother Annette Klapstein of Bainbridge Island, Washington, who was arrested just before publication. "I have come to believe that our current economic and political system is a death sentence to life on earth, and that I must do everything in my power to replace these systems with cooperative, just, equitable and love-centered ways of living together. This is my act of love." ...

The action comes two days after a U.S. federal court of appeals lifted an injunction on the Dakota Access project, to the dismay of the Indigenous water protectors and their supporters across the U.S. and Canada.

To Avert #Climate Catastrophe, Activists Shut Down 5 #TarSands Pipelines: https://t.co/YznNx9sxXf #ShutItDown #NoDAPL #cdnpoli #abpoli pic.twitter.com/dd9WvFp61e

— Mike Hudema (@MikeHudema) October 11, 2016

Shailene Woodley arrested while protesting North Dakota oil pipeline

Actor Shailene Woodley, star of The Fault In Our Stars and the Divergent series, has been arrested along with 26 other people at the Standing Rock oil pipeline protest in North Dakota. ...

Rob Keller, a spokesman for the Morton County sheriff’s department, said Woodley was being charged with two misdemeanor counts: criminal trespassing and engaging in a riot. ...

“You trespassed on the property, so you are being placed under arrest,” the officer tells her [In a video recording of the arrest].

“But hundreds of people did,” Woodley responds.

“You were identified,” another officer tells her.

Hundreds of activists and supporters have been arrested so far at the protests, including Dave Archambault, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux. Arrest warrants have also been issued for Democracy Now presenter Amy Goodman, as well as Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka, who spray-painted “I approve this message” on a bulldozer when she visited the protest camp in September.

Man-Made Climate Change Making Kindling of America's Forestlands

Researchers found that wildfires will worsen exponentially until there are no longer enough trees to sustain them

Apocalyptic images of fire and brimstone may well be the future of our planet, according to a new scientific study which found that the recent uptick in forest fires is due in large part to human-caused climate change.

The research team, from the University of Idaho and Columbia University, said that scientists have known for some time that global warming is making wildfires longer and more powerful as they eat up wide swathes of forestland across the western United States. But the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on Monday, sought to determine just how much of that increased fire activity can be attributed to anthropogenic warming—and how much worse will it get.

Warmer, drier air saps the moisture from trees and plants, turning them into prime kindling. And there is plentiful research to suggest that, thanks to fossil fuel emissions, the western United States in recent years has been sacked with increasing droughts and hotter temperatures.

The study found that since the 1970s, global warming is responsible for half the documented increase in drier, fire-prone "fuel," which in turn has doubled the areas susceptible for forest fires and lengthened the annual fire season. ...

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, "9 of the worst 10 years for acres burned have occurred since 2000."

Also of Interest

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

WikiLeaks Bombshell: Emails Show Citigroup Had Major Role in Shaping and Staffing Obama’s First Term

U.S. and U.K. Continue to Actively Participate in Saudi War Crimes, Targeting of Yemeni Civilians

Do Western Nations Care about Yemeni Lives or Saudi Blood Money?

Obama’s Syria Policy and the Illusion of US Power in the Middle East

Russia Reads US Bluster as Sign of War

Debate Moderator Distorted Syrian Reality

Nuclear-armed drones? They may be closer than you think

Trump May Go Away, But the People He Has Empowered Will Not

Planned Attacks on Sanders Included in WikiLeaks' Third Batch of Podesta Emails

RBS Looted Small Business Customers, Deliberately Driving Thousands in Bankruptcy, While Under Government Ownership

The way to a better work-life balance? Unions, not self-help

Hillary Clinton Touted Her Record of Spreading Fracking in Secret, Paid Speeches

Court finds CFPB structure unconstitutional

A Little Night Music

Huey Piano Smith - Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu

Huey Piano Smith - Psycho

Huey "Piano" Smith and The Clowns - We Like Birdland

Huey "Piano" Smith and The Clowns w/Frankie Ford - Roberta

Huey "Piano" Smith - Don't You Just Know It

Huey Smith & His clowns - Free Single and Disengaged

Huey Piano Smith & the Clowns - Everbody's Whalin

Huey "Piano" Smith and His Clowns - Sea Cruise

Huey Piano Smith & The Clowns - Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas and the Sinus Flu

Huey Piano Smith - Don't You Know Yockomo