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“Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

-- Tacitus

News and Opinion

This is an interesting piece worth a full read. Here's a taste to get you started:

How Putin Derailed the West

“Nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

-- Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Between Two Ages: The Technetronic Era”, 1971

Why is Hillary Clinton so eager to intensify US involvement in Syria when US interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have all gone so terribly wrong? ...

First, we have to acknowledge that the decimation and de facto balkanization of these countries is part of a plan. If it wasn’t part of a plan, than the decision-makers would change the policy. But they haven’t changed the policy. The policy is the same. The fact that the US is using foreign-born jihadists to pursue regime change in Syria as opposed to US troops in Iraq, is not a fundamental change in the policy. The ultimate goal is still the decimation of the state and the elimination of the existing government. This same rule applies to Libya and Afghanistan both of which have been plunged into chaos by Washington’s actions.

But why? What is gained by destroying these countries and generating so much suffering and death?

Here’s what I think: I think Washington is involved in a grand project to remake the world in a way that better meets the needs of its elite constituents, the international banks and multinational corporations. Brzezinski not only refers to this in the opening quote, he also explains what is taking place: The nation-state is being jettisoned as the foundation upon which the global order rests. Instead, Washington is erasing borders, liquidating states, and removing strong, secular leaders that can mount resistance to its machinations in order to impose an entirely new model on the region, a new world order. The people who run these elite institutions want to create an interconnected-global free trade zone overseen by the proconsuls of Big Capital, in other words, a global Eurozone that precludes the required state institutions (like a centralized treasury, mutual debt, federal transfers) that would allow the borderless entity to function properly.

Deep state powerbrokers who set policy behind the smokescreen of our bought-and-paid-for congress think that one world government is an achievable goal provided they control the world’s energy supplies, the world’s reserve currency and become the dominant player in this century’s most populous and prosperous region, Asia. This is essentially what Hillary’s “pivot” to Asia is all about.

The basic problem with Washington’s NWO plan is that a growing number of powerful countries are still attached to the old world order and are now prepared to defend it. This is what’s really going on in Syria, the improbable alliance of Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have stopped the US military juggernaut dead in its tracks. The unstoppable force has hit the immovable object and the immovable object has prevailed…so far.

Gareth Porter debunks the Obama administration's lies about arms smuggling to Yemen's Houthis.

Justifying the Saudi Slaughter in Yemen

The Obama administration has carried out a deliberately deceptive campaign accusing Iran of covertly sending arms to the Houthis by sea, a claim that Washington cites to help justify the Saudi massive air attack against the Houthis that began last year.

By repeating the accusation over and over, the administration has been largely successful in turning a dubious allegation into accepted fact, even though it is contradicted by evidence that is well-documented on the public record.

Secretary of State John Kerry introduced the new variant of the Obama administration’s familiar theme about Iran’s “nefarious activities” in the region two weeks after Saudi Arabia began its bombing in Yemen on March 26, 2015. Kerry told the PBS NewsHour, “There are obviously supplies that have been coming from Iran,” citing “a number of flights every single week that have been flying in.” Kerry vowed that the United States was “not going to stand by while the region is destabilized.”

Later, the administration began accusing Iran of using fishing boats to smuggle arms to the Houthis. The campaign unfolded in a series of four interceptions of small fishing boats or dhows in or near the Arabian Sea from September 2015 through March 2016. The four interceptions had two things in common: the boats did have illicit weapons alright, but the crews always said the ship was bound for Somalia – not Yemen and the Houthis.

But instead of acknowledging the obvious fact that the weapons were not related to the Iran-Houthi relationship, a U.S. military spokesman put out a statement in all four cases citing a U.S. “assessment” that the ultimate destination of the arms was Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen.

The choice of wording was significant. The intelligence community says that it “assesses” that something is true only when it does not have clear-cut proof on the matter. In the case of the alleged Iranian use of fishing dhows to smuggle arms to the Houthis, the U.S. spokesmen did not cite a single piece of evidence for that “assessment” in any of the four cases. In fact, when asked for some justification for it, the military spokesman refused.

[There's lots more at the link. - js]

US Calls on Saudis to End Airstrikes Against Yemen - No Sign US Is Going to Slow Arms Sales to Saudis

After a solid 19 months of endorsing the Saudi war in Yemen, selling the Saudis massive amounts of arms, and refueling Saudi bombers over Yemen’s airspace, the Obama Administration today called on the Saudis to halt airstrikes against Yemen, and accept that there is no military solution.

A top Human Rights Watch director noted that the call would’ve carried a lot more weight if the US wasn’t providing the bombs the Saudis are dropping on Yemen in the first place, though former US officials say its almost certain this won’t include any dial back in US arms sales.

US “opposition” to the air war is slim indeed, with the US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, insisting even in the announcement of their opposition to further strikes that the US supports Saudi Arabia’s right to “self-defense,” which in this case included an outright invasion of a neighboring country.

Um, I wonder if Ben Cardin has noticed what some of the US's other allies do with the weapons the US sells them... cough Saudi Arabia cough, cough Israel...

US halts sale of 26,000 assault rifles to Philippines police amid human rights concerns

The US state department halted the planned sale of 26,000 assault rifles to the Philippines’ national police amid concerns about human rights violations there, Senate aides told Reuters on Monday.

Aides said Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said he would oppose the transaction with the long-time ally of the US.

The relationship between the two countries has been complicated lately by President Rodrigo Duterte’s angry reaction to Washington’s criticism of his violent and controversial war on drugs.

The US state department informs Congress when international weapons sales are in progress. Aides said foreign relations committee staff informed the department that Cardin would oppose the deal during the department’s pre-notification process for the sale of 26,000-27,000 assault rifles, stopping the deal.

Only Making Matters Worse in Syria

Middle East policy has reached an inflexion point, a moment when Official Washington seems to be caught in the middle between escalation and retreat.

On one hand, the rhetoric has not been more militant since Hillary Clinton’s famous “we came, we saw, he died” moment in October 2011. With Barack Obama halfway out the door and Clinton all but crowned, Washington’s laptop bombardiers are rejoicing that the half-measures are over and judgment day nearly at hand.

Thus, The New York Times assures us that that the Middle East is “desperate for American leadership” while the Washington Post reports that “the Republicans and Democrats who make up the foreign policy elite are laying the ground work for a more assertive American foreign policy.” ...

But reading between the lines, a very different picture emerges, a realization that the U.S. has painted itself into a corner and that there is little it can do after all.  Thus, the Times observes that while the Middle East is clamoring for U.S. leadership, it is not clamoring for Bush-style intervention but for some mythical “middle ground” in between him and Obama.

While reporting that pro-escalation sentiment is unanimous in Washington’s vast foreign-policy establishment – sometimes known as “the blob” – the Washington Post notes that “even pinprick cruise-missile strikes designed to hobble the Syrian air force or punish [President Bashar al-]Assad would risk a direct confrontation with Russian forces” and wonders whether a war-weary public will support any intervention at all.

“My concern is that we may be talking to each other and agreeing with each other,” it quotes one expert as saying, “but that these discussions are isolated from where the public may be right now.”

Thus, even the Establishment worries that it lives in a bubble. Washington wants war, it needs war, and yet it admits in practically the same breath that it can’t have it. So what will it do? ...

The mood in Official Washington is the opposite of 2003 when all the “experts” agreed that an invasion of Iraq would be a walk in the park. Now they’re filled with trepidation. But they’re still trying to talk themselves into an escalation and may succeed. If the election goes as expected, the Clinton II presidency will be an interesting one.

Morocco: Massive Protests Against Neoliberalism, Privatization Follow Death of Fish Seller

US airstrike that killed Iraqi family deepens fears for civilians in Mosul

Eight civilians from one family, three of them children, were killed by a US airstrike on their home a few kilometres outside Mosul, relatives, officials and Kurdish troops fighting in the area say.

The attack came after a week of heavy fighting in Fadhiliya village, where Iraqi and Kurdish forces backed by coalition airpower were battling Isis militants as part of the push to recapture Iraq’s second largest city.

Pictures showed villagers uncovering bodies from a pile of rubble that had been a home. The house was hit twice, and some of the rubble and shrapnel was thrown up to 300 metres.

“We know the difference between, airstrikes, artillery and mortars, we have lived for over two years surrounded by fighting,” said Qassim a brother of one of the dead, speaking by phone from the village. Troops fighting in the area and a local MP also said the deaths were caused by an airstrike. ...

The US says it did conduct strikes “in the area described in the allegation” on 22 October.

The deaths are intensifying concerns about risks to ordinary Iraqis now trapped in the city. Officials and aid agencies have been warning for months that the effort to dislodge Isis from their last major stronghold in Iraq could have a high humanitarian cost, both for hundreds of thousands of civilians expected to flee the fighting, and those unable to leave areas under the militants’ control.

US General: Warplanes Will Kill Fleeing ISIS Fighters Around Mosul

According to Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigan, the commander of US air forces in the Middle East, the anti-ISIS coalition is now planning on carrying out airstrikes against any fleeing ISIS fighters around Mosul, trying to prevent escape from the massive city with aerial surveillance and targeted strikes.

This appears to be a response to growing concerns, both within the region and internationally, that the fall of Mosul will mean thousands of seasoned ISIS fighters popping up elsewhere around the world, destabilizing the Middle East and Europe.

Preventing them from escaping Mosul, however, raises a major concern that the relative lack of US intelligence on who it is targeting, and determination to shoot first and ask questions later is going to lead to US warplanes attacking groups of fleeing civilians that they come across.

The “solution” to this appears to be preventing civilians from fleeing the city as well, despite it being an open combat zone that will likely be facing months of combat. Iraqi officials are now said to be warning Mosul civilians not to try to escape, insisting they will be safer if they stay put.

US State Dept claims comparing Mosul with Aleppo is 'insulting'

China unveils J-20 stealth jet fighter in show of military might

China showed its Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter in public for the first time on Tuesday, opening the country’s biggest meeting of aircraft makers and buyers with a show of its military clout. ...

Bradley Perrett of Aviation Week, a veteran China watcher, said: “It is clearly a big step forward in Chinese combat capability.”

Analysts say it is too early to say to what extent the new Chinese fighter can match the radar-evading properties of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor air-to-air combat jet – developed for the US Air Force and the J-20’s closest lookalike – or the latest strike jet in the US arsenal, Lockheed’s F-35.

Unofficial shots of a J-20 prototype fuelled discussion about the region’s power balance when first glimpsed by planespotters in 2010. Experts say China has been refining designs in the hope of narrowing a military gap with Washington.

Cao Qingfeng, an aircraft engineer watching the flypast, said the “stunning” display was a show of China’s strengthening aircraft industry and manufacturing – and western officials agreed.

“This shows they now have confidence to put it out in public,” said a western industry official who has monitored the biennial show from its inception 20 years ago.

Turkish media fights back as journalists are detained by police

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is carrying out an unprecedented clamp-down on opposition voices in the country, arresting tens of thousands of people, firing even more, and shutting down the few media outlets that still dare to be critical of the Turkish leader.

But on Tuesday one of Turkey’s oldest newspapers vowed to continue to protest against Erdoğan’s rule, despite having at least 12 members of its staff arrested Monday, including its editor-in-chief. The left-leaning Cumhuriyet was accused of supporting a failed coup attempt in July.

After the editor, a cartoonist, and several columnists were arrested, Cumhuriyet’s Tuesday edition ran with the headline “We won’t give in” and left two columns blank, in solidarity with the detained staff.

Columns of detained #Cumhuriyet journalists appear blank in today's edition of the paper. Main headline: "We won't surrender." pic.twitter.com/d26xcOU4Ul

— Seref Isler (@seref_i) November 1, 2016

Meet Birgitta Jónsdóttir: The Ex-WikiLeaks Volunteer Who Has Helped the Pirate Party Reshape Iceland

Critics Decry Surveillance of Canadian Journalist as Part of 'Horrifying' Culture Shift

Canadian free speech advocates slammed recent revelations that Montreal police tracked a journalist's cell phone calls, text messages, and locations in an attempt to identify one of his sources, who was leaking details of an internal police investigation.

La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé, the target in the case, called the move "indefensible," stating in an interview on Monday that the approval of a warrant to spy on a journalist was "incredibly aggressive."

"To me, this was a great pretext to try to investigate a reporter who has done numerous stories in the past that have embarrassed the service," he said. "This is a big thing in a country like Canada. Police were permitted to spy on a journalist under very, very thin motives on a secondary part of a criminal investigation."

Supporters of press freedom in Canada said it is part of a worrying "culture shift" brought about by the so-called anti-terror bill approved by Parliament last year, which gave extraordinary new powers to law enforcement agencies, including their ability to spy on civilians.

Tom Henheffer, executive director of Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, told CBC News, "The new powers that the police have to survey Canadians are absolutely horrifying, they're basically limitless, there's very little oversight, and when that happens the system will be ripe for abuse, and this is just an example of how it's abused."

Surveillence of journalist Patrick Lagacé by Montreal police raises questions

Palantir, A CIA-Backed Data Mining Company Wins Court Battle Against the U.S. Army

Palantir, a data mining behemoth that received startup funding from the CIA, just got its foot in the door to a lucrative U.S. military contract following a months-long legal battle with the Army.

On Monday the software company won the chance to pitch its data services, the Gotham Platform, to help build out an upgrade to the Distributed Common Ground System — an Army program “that gathers intelligence spanning all echelons from space to mud,” according to the service’s website.

The contracts for the project could eventually total in the billions of dollars.

Once called “the war on terror’s secret weapon,” Palantir’s software helps users, whether law enforcement officials or businesspeople, understand and track relationships in data. The company’s proprietary algorithms are designed to sift through massive troves of data — whether bank transactions, social media interactions, weather calculations, or crime reports — and spit out conclusions about everything from terrorist cells to car thieves.

The Shadow Brokers dump more intel from the NSA's elite Equation Group

The leakers called themselves The Shadow Brokers, and they sought bTc1,000,000 for access to the remainder of The Equation Group, an elite, NSA-affiliated hacking squad's files. The Shadow Brokers have had no takers for their auction, and so they're now dumping more files, presumably to stir up interest.

The new leak purportedly reveals IP addresses of NSA controlled servers in 49 countries that are used to launch offensives against NSA targets. If the leaks are to be believed, they show that the NSA uses hacked servers in China and Russia to attack other countries.

The dump contains some 300 folders of files, all corresponding to different domains and IP addresses. Domains from Russia, China, India, Sweden, and many other countries are included. ... If accurate, victims of the Equation Group may be able to use these files to determine if they were potentially targeted by the NSA-linked unit.

“Single-Digit Millionaires” Have “No Effective Access to Our Legal System”

Paypal co-founder and tech billionaire Peter Thiel on Monday offered a jaw-dropping defense of his decision to bankroll wrestling icon Hulk Hogan’s invasion of privacy lawsuit against Gawker for publishing a sex tape featuring him.

“If you’re a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to our legal system,” he said. “It costs too much. This was the modus operandi of Gawker in large part it was to go after people who had no chance of fighting back.” ... Thiel spent at least $10 million supporting Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker. ...

Fordham Law School professor and criminal justice expert John Pfaff was quick to note that in 2007, many states’ entire budgets for indigent defense — money allotted to provide legal counsel to those who cannot afford it — is in the single-digit millions.

Walter Scott shooting: officer Michael Slager's trial begins in South Carolina

The trial of a white former police officer captured on dramatic cellphone video shooting an unarmed black motorist began Monday at the county courthouse in Charleston’s historic district.

The first of almost 200 potential jurors began reporting for duty, with individual jury questioning set to begin later in the day. The jurors seated will have to decide if 34-year-old Michael Slager is guilty of murder in the shooting death of 50-year-old Walter Scott as he ran from a traffic stop in April 2015. If convicted, Slager faces 30 years’ to life imprisonment.

Court officials say jury selection is expected to take at least two days and the trial could then last two to three weeks.

CNN: 'Completely uncomfortable' with Brazile-Clinton campaign contacts

Donna Brazile warned Hillary Clinton’s campaign that she would be asked about lead poisoning in Flint, Mich., ahead of a primary debate, according to an email released by WikiLeaks Monday.

The group has been posting hacked emails from Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta.

The email, originally sent March 5, 2016, warned that “One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash.”

“Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,” Brazile wrote.

CNN spokeswoman Lauren Pratapas responded to Monday's release in a statement.

"On October 14th, CNN accepted Donna Brazile’s resignation as a CNN contributor. (Her deal had previously been suspended in July when she became the interim head of the DNC.) CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate. We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."

Democrats Sue Trump & GOP Under 1871 KKK Act for Threatening Voters of Color

Goodbye, Tea Party, Hello, Trump Party

When the tea party movement came to prominence in the summer of 2009, adherents proclaimed they were guided by conservative principles forgotten in the big-spending years of George W. Bush. ... In 2016 after a divisive GOP primary, the tea party vote has unified behind nominee Donald Trump, even though he in many ways defies the ideological purity that once defined the movement. But Trump and his big-government populism isn’t just winning their votes; he’s also winning their donations, a sign that the money behind the movement will remain a force in American politics long after Election Day. ...

According to Crowdpac, a nonpartisan political crowdfunding startup, more than 6,400 of Trump’s financial backers previously gave to one of the six main tea party PACs since 2009, more than any other candidate in the race including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a favorite of the movement. ... Trump’s ability to galvanize these grassroots donors extends beyond his own candidacy. Surveying all of the country’s congressional races, the candidate with donors most like Trump’s was Paul Nehlen, last summer’s conservative challenger to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

The money devoted to oust Ryan reflects how much Trump has changed the tea party. In 2010, Ryan was a rising star in the conservative movement, proposing an ambitious and controversial overhaul of the government program Medicare and repeatedly criticizing the Obama administration for the ballooning debt.

Now the tea party is supporting a candidate who says Medicare and Social Security should not be reformed or overhauled. Trump doesn’t specify how he would pay for his expensive policy proposals. When Trump and Ryan clashed this election year over everything from policy proposals to a video featuring Trump bragging about groping women, the grassroots often sided with Trump. At an event in his home state of Wisconsin, Ryan was booed for disinviting Trump after the video leaked to the press. And a crowd at a recent Trump rally in Green Bay chanted “Paul Ryan sucks.”

Trump campaign denies report of Trump Organization tie to Russian bank

The Trump campaign has denied a report that a Trump Organization server was used to send or receive communications with a Russian bank.

The denial on Monday night came in response to a Slate article that said activity on the server indicated “a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank”, the largest private commercial bank in Russia.

The report is the latest allegation during this election season of questionable links between Trump and Russia. The Clinton campaign quickly pounced on the report, declaring the story proof of “the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow”.

The Guardian has been unable to independently confirm Slate’s report. Rumors of an internet connection between the bank and a web address linked to the Trump Organization have been circulating in Washington for a number of weeks.

However, the New York Times reported on Monday that “the FBI ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts”.

FBI Director Comey's Catch-22

Comey’s October Surprise

Beginning with the DNC scandal in July which revealed a host of pre-meditated efforts to undermine the Bernie Sanders campaign and steal the nomination, the question remains whether a candidate nominated as a result of a flawed, if not legally flawed, Democratic primary process could be considered a politically legitimate candidate for the general election and the office of US President. The Clinton campaign apparently never felt the need to resolve that question.

Since the Wikileaks emails were not a total surprise, it would now appear that the real October Surprise is FBI Director James B. Comey’s dramatic turn-around announcement on October 28th that the Clinton email investigation was being re-opened due to new information as a result of its investigation into Carlos Danger. ...

As if to throw oil on a bonfire, it was reported over the weekend that Comey’s decision to reopen the Clinton investigation was done against Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s recommendation. You may recall in July, Lynch participated in a highly controversial tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton – just days prior to Comey’s announcement that there would be no criminal charges against Hilary Clinton. ...

Immediately after the July announcement when Clinton drew the Home Free card, Comey was the object of much Democratic adulation and praise for his exemplary record and trustworthiness.  However, over the weekend, the Clinton campaign launched a ferocious attack giving its media benefactors and Democratic bigwigs the green light to dump on Comey with an arsenal of steamrollers. In keeping with the Democratic strategy of irrational verbal assaults, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nv) wrote  asserting Comey’s violation of the Hatch Act which “bars FBI officials from using their official authority to influence an election” while former DNC Chair Howard Dean declared that “Comey put himself on the same side as Putin.”

Inexplicably there has been no hint by Democrats that Anthony Weiner may be responsible for providing the FBI with the latest batch of emails, late breaking news is that Weiner, who is looking at a possible fifteen years in the slammer, is ‘cooperating’ with the FBI and might have traded his wife’s emails for a deal.

Perhaps liberals should pay a little closer attention to the people that they vote for and whom they promote to high offices. Just sayin'.

James Comey has been abusing his power for years

During his stints in the Bush and Obama administration Comey has continually taken authoritarian and factually dubious public stances both at odds with responsible public policy and sometimes the law. The Clinton case is not an aberration, it’s part of a clear pattern.

Liberals were once enthralled when Obama appointed the Republican as FBI chief in 2013. They talked about Comey as if he was above reproach because of his role as acting attorney general under George W Bush, when he threatened to resign over an aspect of the president’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program.

As Glenn Greenwald explained at the time of Comey’s confirmation in 2013, this story is incredibly misleading. Yes, Comey did curtail a small part of the NSA’s sprawling surveillance program in 2004, however, that occurred before the public ever knew of the existence of any NSA domestic program. The version of illegal warrantless wiretapping that the New York Times revealed in 2005, which sparked a firestorm of liberal criticism and widespread accusations of illegal conduct, was the program that Comey was totally fine with and signed off on.

Why he is celebrated as anything close to the hero is baffling. During the Bush administration, Comey also aggressively defended the arrest and due process-free imprisonment of a US citizen, Jose Padilla, on US soil. He was held as an “enemy combatant”, tortured, and refused a lawyer for three and half years – to this day, one of the most egregious violations of the constitution by the Bush administration. In addition, Comey also gave his legal sign-off on torture techniques during the Bush administration, despite harboring personal doubts.

Since taking over at the FBI, speaking up without all – or any – of the facts has become a Comey specialty. He has led a high-profile two-year fight to essentially outlaw end-to-end encryption, a vital tool that protects citizens’ privacy and security. He has done so freely admitting he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, while his demands fly in the face of the opinions of many prominent computer scientists, who have argued mandating backdoors in encryption is impossible to do safely and a recipe for disaster.

[... and there's plenty more at the link. - js]

Thousands of people are “checking in” at Standing Rock on Facebook to throw off cops

Protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota, believe the local Morton County sheriff’s department is monitoring Facebook “check-ins” at the Indian reservation to get a sense of who’s protesting. And someone’s apparently trying to mess with that monitoring.

A call went out for Facebook users over the weekend to falsely check in at Standing Rock to confuse the police regarding protester identities and numbers. But it isn’t clear whether the directive came from organizers on the ground at the Camp of the Sacred Stone, who call themselves Water Protectors because of the purported threat that the planned pipeline poses to Standing Rock’s water supply, or whether it’s a hoax.

Hoax or not, the social media campaign had gone viral by Monday.

Dakota Access pipeline protests: UN group investigates human rights abuses

A United Nations group is investigating allegations of human rights abuses by North Dakota law enforcement against Native American protesters, with indigenous leaders testifying about “acts of war” they observed during mass arrests at an oil pipeline protest.

A representative of the UN’s permanent forum on indigenous issues, an advisory group, has been collecting testimony from Dakota Access pipeline protesters who have raised concerns about excessive force, unlawful arrests and mistreatment in jail where some activists have been held in cages.

“When you look at what the international standards are for the treatment of people, and you are in a place like the United States, it’s really astounding to hear some of this testimony,” said Roberto Borrero, a representative of the International Indian Treaty Council.

Borrero, a Taino tribe member who is assisting the UN forum in its interviews, told the Guardian on Sunday night that the activists’ stories of human rights violations raised a number of serious questions about police response. “A lot of it was just very shocking.”

Exposing 'Inherent Danger,' Alabama Pipeline Blast Kills One, Injures More

#ColonialPipeline explosion underscores the inherent danger of pipelines. Explosions, leaks, spills... that's what pipelines do. #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/Ji3Di66yxM

— Fight Climate Denial (@fightdenial) October 31, 2016

A major southern gas pipeline exploded Monday afternoon in Alabama, killing one worker and injuring five others.

The explosion occurred in rural Shelby County when a contract crew hit the pipeline with a trackhoe, igniting gasoline, pipeline operator Colonial told Reuters in an e-mailed statement late on Monday. The blast "sent flames and thick black smoke soaring over the forest," the Associated Press reported. The resulting fires consumed 31 acres and continue to burn, according to a statement from the company, which shut down its two mainlines after the explosion.

Local station WBRC cited Gov. Robert Bentley in reporting that "forestry crews have helped set up a three-mile perimeter around the explosion site and authorities are evacuating all civilians within that perimeter." ...

The explosion happened about five miles west from the site of a recent Colonial Pipeline gasoline leak, as Al.com noted. That September incident, too—the fifth in the state this year—forced Colonial to shut down its lines, making this the second time in as many months that the company has done so.

It is also the latest in a series of pipeline incidents, which come amid intense debate over pipeline safety and fossil fuel infrastructure.

Also of Interest

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

The Danger of War From a Declining Hegemon

The ruthlessly effective rebranding of Europe’s new far right

Chris Hedges: American Irrationalism

Ukrainians shocked as politicians declare vast wealth

If You Remove Trade Secrets from Goldman Sachs You’re Prosecuted; If You Remove Top Secret Files from the Government, You’re Good to Go

FBI Director Comey’s Disclosures Set Stage for a Public Interest Exception to Secrecy

The Story About Judicial Dysfunction Behind the Comey Whiplash

Shawn Lucas, Process Server for Bernie Sanders’ Supporters Lawsuit Died of Powerful Mix of Drugs

When the FBI Has a Phone It Can’t Crack, It Calls These Israeli Hackers

Freaked Out Yet by Huge Credit Outflows?

Don't settle for the lesser of two evils in this election. Vote for the Green party

Bomb-detecting spinach – the new weapon against terrorist plots

Zen Dogs – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Baby Face Leroy Trio - Rollin' And Tumblin'

Baby Face Leroy - My Head Can't Rest Anymore

Leroy Foster - Locked Out Boogie

Baby Face Leroy Trio - Red Headed Woman

Baby Face Leroy Trio - Boll Weevil 1950 unissued alternate take

Leroy Foster - Louella

Leroy Foster - Take A Little Walk With Me

Leroy Foster - Pet Rabbit

Little Walter Trio - Just Keep Lovin' Her