Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago bluesman Johnny B. Moore. Enjoy!

"I empathize with anyone who’s been groped, pushed past a “no, no, don’t do that.” I understand the assault; both physical and psychic and acknowledge that women don’t have equal status. Abuse of authority is epidemic, and not gender or age specific. It’s just that when I think of injustice, I see men and women murdered for being Black or I stare at the photographs of Syria’s youngest victims, see the eyes and blood-and-tear-stained faces, the small bodies washed ashore. If this isn’t horrendous enough, there’s that other huge: the poisoning of our planet. Radiation leaks into our oceans. Toxins invade our atmosphere, our rivers, the soil, our pipes, our food, our children. Scientists disagree on whether we’ve passed the brink, yet even if there were time, even if there were a viable strategy, a global consensus would be essential. Few people are or would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices.

Trump’s fingerprints are on crotches. Clinton’s are on Haiti, Honduras, Libya, Syria, Iraq, anywhere U.S. Empire lurks. What a choice. It’s worse than pussy grabbing. We’re fucked."

-- Missy Beattie

News and Opinion

Pentagon Video Warns of “Unavoidable” Dystopian Future for World’s Biggest Cities

According to a startling Pentagon video obtained by The Intercept, the future of global cities will be an amalgam of the settings of “Escape from New York” and “Robocop” — with dashes of the “Warriors” and “Divergent” thrown in. It will be a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers.

At least that’s the scenario outlined in “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a five-minute video that has been used at the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University. All that stands between the coming chaos and the good people of Lagos and Dhaka (or maybe even New York City) is the U.S. Army, according to the video, which The Intercept obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.

As the film unfolds, we’re bombarded with an apocalyptic list of ills endemic to this new urban environment: “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” and a “growing mass of unemployed.” The list, as long as it is grim, accompanies photos of garbage-choked streets, masked rock throwers, and riot cops battling protesters in the developing world. “Growth will magnify the increasing separation between rich and poor,” the narrator warns as the scene shifts to New York City. Looking down from a high vantage point on Third Avenue, we’re left to ponder if the Army will one day find itself defending the lunchtime crowd dining on $57 “NY Cut Sirloin” steaks at (the plainly visible) Smith and Wollensky.

[Click the link to the article for the video. - js]

Syria: Assad says Aleppo capture to be "a springboard” to pushing “terrorists back to Turkey"

Assad says Aleppo will be “cleaned”

Bashar al-Assad has called the ongoing bombing of parts of eastern Aleppo by Syrian and Russian warplanes a process of “cleaning” the city, and compared the current diplomatic rift between Russia and the West a continuation of the Cold War.

The Syrian president, speaking to Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said the attacks on the rebel-held parts of Aleppo were necessary to push terrorists back to Turkey and would act as a “springboard” for further Syrian government-led operations.

“You have to keep cleaning this area and push the terrorists to Turkey, to go back to where they come from or to kill them. There’s no other option,” Assad said. “Aleppo is going to be a very important springboard to do this move.”

Obama, Aides to Meet Friday to Discuss Attacking Syria

While US officials have been talking up the idea of overtly attacking the Syrian military for months, and many have been loudly advocating picking a fight with both Syria and Russia since the last 7-day ceasefire ended, there had been no visibility on when such a decision would be made.

Now it looks like Friday’s the day, with President Obama and his top advisers planning a meeting to discuss the “military options” against Syria, which begins with attacking Syrian military bases and munitions depots, and would almost certainly lead to casualties among Russian troops embedded on those bases.

Russia has anticipated the possibility of US attacks, and has deployed the S-300 anti-aircraft defensive system into the country, which would allow them to shoot down US warplanes if they start attacking sites with Russian troops presence. Despite US officials saying they are well aware of this fact, they insist they won’t be deterred on the matter.

Rebels, Families Evacuate Suburbs of Syrian Capital Under Deal

With the suburbs of Damascus increasingly surrounded by the Syrian military and facing growing pressure, a negotiated evacuation today saw buses arrive at Qudsiya and al-Hama to evacuate some 2,000 people, 400 of them rebel fighters and the rest their families.

The deal was made between the Syrian military and the local leaders in those suburbs, who sought to avoid a full-scale assault on the tiny, poorly defended towns. The rebels are being taken north, where they will be delivered to rebel-held territories.

This is the latest in a series of such evacuation deals over the past several months, which have seen the Syrian military consolidate its territory and expel some rebel enclaves.

After Attacking Yemen’s Houthis, US Admits They Don’t Know Who Fired Missiles

Last night, the United States attacked and destroyed a series of radar stations belonging to the Shi’ite Houthis in Yemen, along the Red Sea coast. This was described as retaliation for the missiles fired sort of near a US destroyer off shore, and presented as preventing future such strikes. ...

Yet today, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook admitted that the US still hasn’t actually made any determination who fired those missiles in the first place. It is unclear why they retaliated against the Houthis, who denied involvement, apart from Cook saying that the US believes Iran has “been supportive of the Houthi rebels.”
Pentagon officials are also trying to insist that their attacks on the Houthis are totally distinct from the ongoing Saudi war against the Houthis, which the US is already heavily involved in, meaning this amounts to a second, separate war against the Houthis, with even less of a pretext. The Pentagon appears uncomfortable with connecting their heedless attacks to the myriad war crimes in the extent war.

The Growing Danger of Military Conflict with Russia

Once more, the circle in U.S.-Russia relations is complete. The Clinton administration took office in 1993 promising a “Bill and Boris” strategic partnership between the two countries, and ended with recriminations over the Kosovo operation, with Gen. Wesley Clark prepared to start World War III to block the arrival of Russian peacekeepers in Pristina. George W. Bush left the Ljubljana summit with Vladimir Putin in summer 2001 promising a qualitatively different U.S.-Russia relationship, which seemed to bear fruit in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but concluded his term dealing with the Russian incursion into Georgia with calls from his own party, especially in Congress, for a forceful U.S. response. Barack Obama was going to reset relations with Russia, and now, in the weeks remaining in office, is facing demands from his own State Department and Department of Defense for drawing a line in the sand in Syria against Russian airstrikes on a besieged Aleppo—even at the risk of a face-to-face confrontation between American and Russian forces. ...

Each side has a well-rehearsed litany of complaints and accusations—cyber attacks, Syria, Ukraine, human rights, NATO enlargement, color revolutions, duplicity over Libya, and so on and so forth—that makes dialogue almost impossible. ...

Russia is indeed expecting a period of distraction and lack of reaction while the United States sorts out its presidential future. However, the Kremlin is not waiting passively to see who the next occupant of the Oval Office will be, but working to establish facts on the ground. It seems clear that the Russian government wants to present the new U.S. administration with the following: an Aleppo largely back under Syrian government control, with Bashar al-Assad having outlasted the Obama administration which demanded his departure and predicted his overthrow; a whole host of new capabilities—from new cruise missiles to drones to cyber tools—to suggest that U.S. predominance in these areas may be ending; putting Iskander missile systems in Kaliningrad to undermine recent efforts to reassure NATO’s eastern flank; extensive civil defense efforts at home; and diplomatic efforts aimed at attenuating Washington’s ties with traditional allies on both the western and eastern ends of the Asian continent (Turkey and the Philippines) while seeking to reestablish Soviet-era bases in Cuba and Vietnam.

On the last point, the irony is that Putin closed those facilities in part to save money and in part to signal his interest in pursuing partnership with Washington. The fact that he is now committed to reestablishing them is the strongest signal that he has lost interest in pursuing any new “reset” with Washington come January. Instead, he will want the new President to have to accept cold realities about Russian power and to understand Russia’s abilities to create costs for U.S. actions—and not to discount Moscow’s ability or willingness to use these tools if pressed. Civil defense exercises that impact one-quarter of the country’s population are not run on a whim.

The messaging is plain: Russia is deadly serious.

US is exceptional, needs to continue leading the world - Hillary Clinton

Let's hope Hillary Clinton is lying about Syria and Russia

Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president of the United States. ... So what will this second Clinton presidency look like? Well, in the weeks leading up to her inevitable coronation, Clinton has been giving us some hints about how she's thinking of foreign policy these days. They are not at all reassuring. Indeed, Clinton's recent statements about Syria and Russia hint at a potentially destabilizing escalation of America's conflict with Vladimir Putin and his cat's paw, Bashar al-Assad.

At the last debate, Clinton articulated a classically Clintonian foreign policy for Syria, disavowing the use of ground troops (except special forces) and praising the use of air power. But the way she defined the terms of the conflict were a little frightening. "There are children suffering in this catastrophic war, largely, I believe, because of Russian aggression," Clinton said, arguing for a no-fly zone. ...

And that is what is so nerve-wracking about the way that Clinton has now begun redefining America's mission in Syria once again. At first, Obama went over the top of public opinion to avenge American honor against ISIS. Slowly, America's mission has crept to include some form of regime change with the ouster of Assad. Now Clinton is selling the American people on greater military interventions so that the U.S. can challenge Putin.

Clinton seems unable to distinguish between what is of vital interest to the Russians and peripheral interest to America. She combines this with her bias toward always taking action — of any sort, for good or ill. The combination is dangerous. And it makes the Republicans' inability to field someone capable of challenging her intelligently on these terms even more egregious.

We're Not in a New Cold War - It's Far Worse

WikiLeaks Release Of Clinton Campaign Emails Smeared As Russian Masterminded Plot (Again)

With no specific evidence, President Barack Obama’s administration explicitly claimed the Russian government was responsible for stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee and other individuals and organizations closely linked to the Democratic Party. The accusation came just as WikiLeaks published emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.

The New York Times unquestionably advanced this accusation in a story written by David Sanger and Charlie Savage. In facilitating the spread of this unsubstantiated accusation, they quoted director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and the Homeland Security Department, which stated the emails published were “intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the statement added.

Remarkably, the New York Times published a story on the emails published by WikiLeaks, including a document containing excerpts from transcripts to Goldman Sachs and other banks which Clinton refused to make public during the primary.

The story described Clinton’s “easy comfort with titans of business” and how she “embraced unfettered international trade” and a budget plan that would have cut Social Security. But there was no indication from the Times that they viewed this journalism as aiding and abetting the Russian government’s plans to interfere with the U.S. election.

On WikiLeaks, Journalism, and Privacy: Reporting on the Podesta Archive is an Easy Call

Some have been arguing that because these hacks were engineered by the Russian government with the goal of electing Trump or at least interfering in U.S. elections, journalists should not aid this malevolent scheme by reporting on the material. Leaving aside the fact that there is no evidence (just unproven U.S. Government assertions) that the Russian government is behind these hacks, the motive of a source is utterly irrelevant in the decision-making process about whether to publish.

Once the journalist has confidence in the authenticity of the material, the only relevant question is whether the public good from publishing outweighs any harm. And if the answer to that question is “yes,” then the journalist has not only the right, but the absolute duty, to report on it. It’s often – perhaps almost always – the case that sources have impure motives: a desire for vengeance, careerism, ideological or political advantage, a sense of self-importance, some delusional grievance, a desire for profit. None of that is relevant to the journalist, whose only concern should be reporting on newsworthy material, regardless of why it was made available.

For extra credit, compare the above Greenwald piece to this steaming propaganda turd served up by The Guardian:

Entire US political system ‘under attack’ by Russian hacking, experts warn

The world watched this week as accusations and counter-accusations were thrown by the American and Russian governments about documents stolen during a hack of the Democratic National Committee and the email account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta.

The notion that public figures have any right to privacy appears to have been lost in the furore surrounding the story, stolen correspondence being bandied around in attempts to influence the outcome of one of the nastiest, most vitriolic US presidential campaigns in history. ...

The hacks have created a dilemma for American voters, according to Rob Guidry, CEO of social media analytics company Sc2 and a former special adviser to US Central Command. He says voters seem to want the information that has been leaked by the hackers but don’t feel entirely comfortable with the hacks that have brought the information to light.

“What I find most intriguing about this is that many establishment outlets – including Fox News – are now actively turning to WikiLeaks and others for information that used to be provided by freedom of information requests,” he said. “It’s a rather strange turn of events.”

Malcolm Nance, a former naval intelligence officer and author of The Plot to Hack America: How Putin’s Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election, suggests there is a deliberate strategy behind the timing of release of the hacked emails. The latest leaks mix false information with text extracted from real, stolen emails, he said. “This is a slow-roll political attack on the entire political infrastructure of America. It is Watergate – it’s literally Watergate. They did what Nixon couldn’t do.”

Colombia's president extends ceasefire with FARC through yearend

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos on Thursday extended his ceasefire with Marxist FARC rebels through the end of the year as he seeks to revive a peace accord to end five decades of war after voters rejected the hard-fought deal in a referendum.

The original ceasefire, which was put in place in August, was nullified when the peace accord was rejected in plebiscite earlier this month. He had already extended it to Oct. 31.

The decision comes as Santos and his team hear proposals from representatives of those who voted against the accord - rejected by a razor-thin margin of less than half a percentage point - as too lenient on the Marxist rebels.

He will take the proposals to the FARC leadership in Havana, who have said they are willing to discuss new ideas.

Santos said he decided to extend the ceasefire further after meeting with student leaders who had organized two huge marches through Bogota to show support for a peace accord.

An excellent article, worth reading in full:

‘End of Growth’ Sparks Wide Discontent

Raul Ilargi Meijer, the long-standing economics commentator, has written both succinctly – and provocatively: “It’s over! The entire model our societies have been based on for at least as long as we ourselves have lived, is over! That’s why there’s Trump.

“There is no growth. There hasn’t been any real growth for years. All there is left are empty hollow sunshiny S&P stock market numbers propped up with ultra-cheap debt and buybacks, and employment figures that hide untold millions hiding from the labor force. And most of all there’s debt, public as well as private, that has served to keep an illusion of growth alive and now increasingly no longer can.

“These false growth numbers have one purpose only: for the public to keep the incumbent powers that be in their plush seats. But they could always ever only pull the curtain of Oz [Wizard of Oz] over people’s eyes for so long, and it’s no longer so long.

“That’s what the ascent of Trump means, and Brexit, Le Pen, and all the others. It’s over. What has driven us for all our lives has lost both its direction and its energy.”

Meijer continues: “We are smack in the middle of the most important global development in decades, in some respects arguably even in centuries, a veritable revolution, which will continue to be the most important factor to shape the world for years to come, and I don’t see anybody talking about it. That has me puzzled.

“The development in question is the end of global economic growth, which will lead inexorably to the end of centralization (including globalization). It will also mean the end of the existence of most, and especially the most powerful, international institutions.

“In the same way it will be the end of -almost- all traditional political parties, which have ruled their countries for decades and are already today at or near record low support levels (if you’re not clear on what’s going on, look there, look at Europe!)

“This is not a matter of what anyone, or any group of people, might want or prefer, it’s a matter of ‘forces’ that are beyond our control, that are bigger and more far-reaching than our mere opinions, even though they may be man-made.

Sen. Warren Urges Obama to Fire 'Unapologetic' SEC Chief for 'Brazen Conduct'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Friday called on President Barack Obama to remove one of his top hand-picked financial regulators, saying the current chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had driven the agency off its course.

In a 12-page letter (pdf) to Obama, Warren took aim at SEC chief Mary Jo White, a Republican-leaning Independent who has refused to work on a rule that would enforce transparency in corporate political donations. The Massachusetts senator wrote that White has consistently engaged in "extraordinary, ongoing efforts to undermine the agency's central mission" since her appointment in 2013, and urged Obama to use unilateral authority to oust her and tap a more qualified SEC member.

"I do not make this request lightly," Warren wrote. "I have tried both publicly and privately to persuade Chair White to direct the agency's resources toward pressing matters of compelling interest to investors and the public, and toward completing those rules that Congress has required it to implement. But after years of fruitless efforts, it is clear that Chair White is set on her course. The only way to return the SEC to its intended purpose is to change its leadership."

Under White's leadership, the SEC has removed the political donation rule from its agenda, The Hill notes, describing Warren's call as "a remarkable step."

If she remains in charge, Warren continued, her "brazen conduct" would all but ensure the rule never moves forward.

She also noted that the SEC has yet to implement some lingering Dodd-Frank financial reforms.

FBI to begin collecting self-reported data on fatal police encounters in 2017

The Obama administration has announced details of an ambitious set of plans to collect comprehensive national data on fatal police encounters, and has said it will also attempt to collect records of non-lethal use of force incidents.

Since the fatal police shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the federal government has come under increasing pressure to collect accurate data on police use of deadly force. This pressure intensified in 2015 following the launch of the Guardian’s ongoing project, The Counted, which logs all officer-involved deaths through a model of verified crowdsourcing. ...

The FBI pilot scheme will begin in 2017 and is due to include around 178,557 officers in some of the nation’s largest police departments, as well as some federal and state law enforcement agencies. ...

The FBI’s expansive new system goes a step further than previous data collection attempts because it will track non-lethal force in addition to police killings. Every month, agencies will be asked to report each incident in which force caused death or serious bodily injury as well as every time officers fire a gun “at or in the direction of” a person.

The second phase of the trial program will include on-site visits to some of the involved agencies to “ascertain the level and source of underreporting of within-scope incidents”.

NBC Planned to Use Trump Audio to Influence Debate, Election

NBC execs had a plan to time the release of the Donald Trump audio to have maximum impact on both the 2nd presidential debate and the general election ... sources connected with the network tell TMZ.

Multiple sources connected with NBC tell us ... top network execs knew about the video long before they publicly said they did, but wanted to hold it because it was too early in the election. The sources say many NBC execs have open disdain for Trump and their plan was to roll out the tape 48 hours before the debate so it would dominate the news cycle leading up to the face-off.

As we reported, Billy Bush was bragging about the tape -- in front of NBC execs at the Rio Olympics -- in early August. NBC says it's only known about the tape for a little more than a week. ...

We've told you the plan got derailed by Hurricane Matthew. Execs decided the wall-to-wall coverage of the storm would mess up the plan to dominate the news with the Trump tape, so they were going to hold it until Monday. It didn't sit well with some staffers who wanted it out pre-debate, so it was leaked to the Washington Post.

[For more analysis, see also: NBC Planned to Use Trump Audio to Influence Debate & Election - js]

Hillary Clinton has finally discovered the piece of Trump's dirty laundry that she and her mainstream media supporters believe will make you forget everything that you know about her murderous, cheating, influence peddling, Wall-Street loving self. She now wants her biscuit. Give it to her, she says.

Hillary Clinton asks for landslide victory to rebuke Trump's 'bigotry and bullying'

Hillary Clinton hinted at a possible landslide in the 8 November election, exhorting several thousand supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser on Thursday to help her “have the kind of victory we need” to serve as a “rebuke” to Donald Trump. ...

“Everything we care about is at risk,” she said. “If you can help me to have the kind of victory we need, that stands as a rebuke of all the bigotry and bullying we’ve seen, then together, together we will build the future that all of us, particularly the children of our country, deserve to have.”

Just one day earlier, the floodgates began to open up on Trump, as women accused him of putting his hands up a woman’s skirt on an airplane, shoving his tongue down a reporter’s throat at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, bursting into beauty pageant dressing rooms and ogling the semi-clad contestants. ...

During the San Francisco fundraiser, Clinton rued that “the disturbing stories just keep coming”.

[Oh yes, she was just freaking mortified to hear the tidal wave of sleaze that was launched by her oppo people. - js]

One of The Guardian's many resident Hillary shills plops out this piece suggesting that maybe we only pay attention to women's claims of assault when they are raised by high-status individuals or large numbers of women at once. Alternately, it may not be so much that "we" are listening so much as it is that the media are saturation broadcasting these claims against Trump now as they were not before. Perhaps sexism is more compelling when it is a cynically-wielded campaign weapon.

While it seems quite plausible that all of the accusations against Trump are true - and there is little reason to doubt that he is a total sexist, sleazebag participant in rape culture - the sudden wall-to-wall coverage of his (possibly criminal) actions along with the chorus of denunciations by famous and powerful personages does not appear out of nowhere. These sorts of campaigns are orchestrated and the crescendo of concern is not available to the average victim of sexual harrassment or assault, indicating that this is a special situation which will change nothing for most women.

Trump assault allegations aren't new. Why are we only listening now?

When I first reported the story of Jill Harth’s sexual assault accusation back in July, I didn’t get a single interview request to talk about it. The radio show I’d already been booked to go on engaged me only briefly, during an hour-long interview, on the matter of a woman accusing the Republican nominee of grabbing her crotch in a child’s bedroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate, before changing the subject.

Even Democratic opposition organizations had made a calculation early in the campaign that it wasn’t strategic to get into personal matters with Trump. Because he had said so many damning things out in the open, it hardly seemed necessary to skewer his personal life.

Harth’s story is a complicated one and her character, like the characters of most living, breathing women, is also complex. But her accusation against Trump was always plausible. She has stood by it for 20 years. Now, finally, Harth’s account and those of women like her are not just gaining traction. They have been placed center stage in the campaign.

This is an issue that’s come up before this year, and not just on the presidential campaign trail. We didn’t need one woman to come forward against Bill Cosby in order to get society’s attention – we didn’t even need 10 of them to. We needed male comedian Hannibal Buress to make a joke about it. For a lone woman to be heard she seems to require special status. Numerous women have now come out to accuse Roger Ailes, former Fox boss – and current Trump surrogate – of sexual harassment. But they were only empowered to do so after one of the country’s most famous female anchors filed a lawsuit.

It’s to be expected then, that what it actually took for the country to take Harth and other women’s stories of sexual assault seriously was not their own complaints, or a female reporter airing them: it was Trump himself bragging about sexual assault on video.

[The release of which video was organized by NBC - a powerful media organization. - js]

Wall Street Journal Finally Lashes Out "The Press Is Burying Hillary Clinton's Sins"

Even the Wall Street Journal is now fed up with the biased media coverage of the 2016 Presidential election as revealed by a scathing article written by Kimberly Strassel, a member of their editorial board. As Strassel points out, it's almost impossible to turn on the TV without hearing about Trump's "lewd" comments while coverage of Hillary "uniformly ignores the flurry of bombshells" inherent in the various WikiLeaks, FOIA releases and FBI interviews.

If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.

But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.

It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story.

...

Strassel also takes direct aim at the press and admits that the "leaks also show that the press is in Mrs. Clinton’s pocket." ...

Finally, Strassle concludes by saying that "Voters might not know any of this, because while both presidential candidates have plenty to answer for, the press has focused solely on taking out Mr. Trump. And the press is doing a diligent job of it."

Central Park Five's Yusef Salaam: Donald Trump Needs to Be Fired from Running for President

Heh, another way in which Clinton and Trump are alike:

In hacked emails, Clinton's staff and allies say she can't apologize

Apologies are not Hillary Clinton’s forte. At least that’s what Clinton’s allies and top campaign aides think, according to the hacked emails from campaign chairman John Podesta. The emails posted online by WikiLeaks this week show their frustration over her unwillingness to apologize for using a private email server to communicate while she was secretary of state, an issue that has plagued her campaign since it was made public in March 2015.

FBI Director James Comey said that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Clinton, but he called her handling of classified information “extremely careless.” While many Democrats have criticized Clinton’s campaign staff for their handling of the email server controversy, these messages make clear that the candidate herself was the one resisting apologizing for it.

In one email exchange from September 2015 between Podesta and Neera Tanden, a longtime Clinton ally and president of the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress, Podesta suggests that Tanden email Clinton to advise her to apologize. “Why get hung up on this,” he wrote. “Tell her to say it and move on.” Tanden seems completely baffled at Clinton’s resistance to say sorry publicly. “This apology thing has become like a pathology,” she wrote.

Neither Clinton Nor Trump Opposes Fracking

NYT goes off the rails:

New York Times Accuses Donald Trump of Anti-Semitism for His Reference to Banking Conspiracy

One would have had to have been in a coma for the past eight years not to realize there has been an ongoing Wall Street banking conspiracy in the United States. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) tallied it up and found it amounted to $16 trillion in secret loans from the Federal Reserve – an unfathomable bailout never approved by Congress. On May 20 of last year the U.S. Justice Department documented a vast conspiracy by global banks in the foreign currency markets with the banks admitting to the felony charges. The former heads of Federal regulatory agencies have written books about the conspiracy. Frontline and Sixty Minutes have produced documentaries on it. Banking whistleblowers have organized to fight it in an effort to save the country. A major motion picture, The Big Short, was released this year which put one aspect of the conspiracy into layman’s language and was based on a book by Wall Street veteran, Michael Lewis. Wall Street On Parade has chronicled the ongoing banking conspiracy for the past decade.

But yesterday, after Donald Trump made a reference to a banking conspiracy in his speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, a writer at the New York Times quickly pointed the anti-Semite finger at Trump, quoting Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League and others. The Times wrote:

“The remarks drew criticism from some who said they resembled prejudicial language used by anti-Semites. ‘Whether intentionally or not, Donald Trump is evoking classic anti-Semitic themes that have historically been used against Jews and still reverberate today,’ Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights discrimination, said in a statement.”

The full transcript of Trump’s speech was made available by Time Magazine. There is only one reference to the words “bank” or “banking.” Trump said the following:

“The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure. We’ve seen this first hand in the WikiLeaks documents, in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.”

Amy Goodman to Turn Herself In, Will Fight 'Clear Violation' of Press Freedom

Award-winning journalist and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman will turn herself in to police in North Dakota next Monday to face charges stemming from her coverage of a Dakota Access Pipeline protest last month.

Goodman, whose camera crew filmed a private security team attacking peaceful Native American protesters with dogs and pepper spray, faces charges of criminal trespassing—which many have said amounts to an assault on press freedom. The arrest warrant was issued on September 8.

In a media advisory issued Thursday, Goodman said, "I will go back to North Dakota to fight this charge. It is a clear violation of the First Amendment. I was doing my job as a journalist, covering a violent attack on Native American protesters."

Prominent journalists and rights advocates have called on North Dakota prosecutors to drop the charges against Goodman.

On Thursday, Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in a column that Goodman "was clearly acting as a reporter at the protest. Moreover, she's as close to the ideal of what it means to be a journalist as one can get in this business."

He noted that Democracy Now!'s video of the attack, which went viral with more than 14 million people viewing it on Facebook, helped secure support from the Obama administration—which halted construction on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land and asked the company to "voluntarily" stop building in the area.

Journalist Amy Goodman to Turn Herself in to North Dakota Authorities

Senators Urge Obama to Halt DAPL for 'Imperative' Review

Five U.S. lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on Thursday published an open letter (pdf) urging President Barack Obama to order an environmental and cultural review of the Dakota Access Pipeline before construction can continue, calling it an imperative measure for Indigenous rights and the climate.

"We are writing to respectfully request that you direct the Army Corps of Engineers to require a full environmental impact statement for the Lake Oahe crossing of the Dakota Access Pipeline that includes meaningful tribal consultation," the letter reads. In addition to Sanders, it was signed by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Edward Markey (D-Mass.).

"Over the past several weeks, hundreds of Native American tribes have mobilized in unprecedented solidarity to draw attention to the pipeline's encroachment on sacred lands. Nationally, there has been a groundswell of opposition to the project," the letter continues. "The pipeline's construction is not only a violation of tribal treaty rights, but has the potential to cause more damage to sacred land. Until there has been full and meaningful tribal consultation, all pipeline permits and easements should be revoked or denied."

As Flint Suffers, Big Pharma Slammed for Lead Poison Drug Price Hike of 2,700%

Outrage is growing this week amid revelations that the pharmaceutical company Valeant raised the price for its critical lead-poisoning treatment by more than 2,700 percent in a single year.

Before Valeant took control of the medication, known as Calcium EDTA, in 2013, the average price for a package of vials was stable at $950, the medical news outlet STAT reported. But once the notorious pharmaceutical company bought it out in a multi-billion dollar deal, it swiftly boosted the price to $7,116 in January 2014 and to $26,927 by December of that year.

"This is a drug that has long been a standard of care, and until recently it was widely accessible at an affordable price," Dr. Michael Kosnett, an associate clinical professor, told STAT. He also contacted U.S. Congress. "There's no justification for the astronomical price increases by Valeant, which limit availability of the drug to children with life-threatening lead poisoning."

And at least one person in Congress is listening. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) retweeted the STAT article this week and noted that the price remains high as Flint, Michigan suffers a very public lead poisoning crisis.

While kids in Flint are poisoned by lead, Valeant charges $27,000 for the leading treatment. https://t.co/aHekRjp5A7

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) October 11, 2016

Slow-motion wrecks: how thawing permafrost is destroying Arctic cities

Cracking and collapsing structures are a growing problem in cities like Norilsk – a nickel-producing centre of 177,000 people located 180 miles above the Arctic Circle – as climate change thaws the perennially frozen soil and increases precipitation. Valery Tereshkov, deputy head of the emergencies ministry in the Krasnoyarsk region, wrote in an article this year that almost 60% of all buildings in Norilsk have been deformed as a result of climate change shrinking the permafrost zone. Local engineers said more than 100 residential buildings, or one-tenth of the housing fund, have been vacated here due to damage from thawing permafrost.

In most cases, these are slow-motion wrecks that can be patched up or prevented by engineering solutions. But if a foundation shifts suddenly it can put lives at risk: cement slabs broke a doctor’s legs when the front steps and overhanging roof of a Norilsk blood bank collapsed in June 2015. Building and maintenance costs will have to be ramped up to keep cities in Russia’s resource-rich north running.

Engineers and geologists are careful to note that “technogenic factors” like sewer and building heat and chemical pollution are also warming the permafrost in places like Norilsk, the most polluted city in Russia. But climate change is deepening the thaw and speeding up the destruction, at the very same time that Russia is establishing new military bases and oil-drilling infrastructure across the Arctic. Greenpeace has warned that permafrost thawing has caused thousands of oil and gas pipeline breaks.

Global warming has been tied to more frequent forest fires and flooding across Russia, but its impact on permafrost, which covers two-thirds of the country’s territory, is also beginning to be felt. At least seven giant craters have been discovered in Siberia – reportedly caused by thawing permafrost allowing methane to explode out of the ground – and a 12-year-old boy in Salekhard died from anthrax in August after thawing released bacteria.

Arctic islands and the northern coastline – and scientific outposts there – are disappearing into the sea as permafrost thaws, sea ice melts and wave action increases. Valery Grebenets of Moscow State University’s department of cryolithology and glaciology teaches his students 13 “horror stories” about thawing permafrost, including buckling roads and railways, soil runoff killing fish and the release of toxic and radioactive pollutants contained by frozen dams.

Also of Interest

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

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