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Sunday news dump and music by Blue Highway.

Thousands Mobilize in France Against 'Headlong Rush into Authoritarianism'
'It is urgent to clearly demonstrate our refusal of this obnoxious policy'

Thousands of people in Paris and other French cities hit the streets on Saturday to protest the controversial state of emergency that one organization says is an indication of a "headlong rush into authoritarianism."

The measure, imposed following the November attacks in Paris, is set to expire February 26. Debate in the bicameral parliament is forthcoming, as Agence France-Presse reports, with "Senate [...] to vote on the proposal on February 9, followed by a vote in the National Assembly on February 16."

At the action in Paris, police said 5,000 took part, while organizers said the turnout was 20,000. Dozens of similar protests also took place Saturday in other cities across the nation.

Corporate Crime Runs Rampant Thanks to 'Rigged' System: Elizabeth Warren
Report suggests 'some giant corporations—and their executives—have decided that following the law is merely optional'

"Corporate criminals routinely escape meaningful prosecution for their misconduct."

This is the damning verdict of Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) report released Friday, Rigged Justice: How Weak Enforcement Lets Corporate Offenders Off Easy (pdf).

Described as "the first in an annual series on enforcement," the 12-page booklet "highlights 20 of the most egregious civil and criminal cases during the past year in which federal settlements failed to require meaningful accountability to deter future wrongdoing and to protect taxpayers and families," according to a press statement from Warren's office.

Take the Education Management Corporation, the nation's second-largest for-profit college, for example.

Spies in the Sky

AMERICAN AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE secretly tapped into live video feeds from Israeli drones and fighter jets, monitoring military operations in Gaza, watching for a potential strike against Iran, and keeping tabs on the drone technology Israel exports around the world.

Under a classified program code-named “Anarchist,” the U.K.’s Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, working with the National Security Agency, systematically targeted Israeli drones from a mountaintop on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. GCHQ files provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden include a series of “Anarchist snapshots” — thumbnail images from videos recorded by drone cameras. The files also show location data mapping the flight paths of the aircraft. In essence, U.S. and British agencies stole a bird’s-eye view from the drones.

Several of the snapshots, a subset collected in 2009 and 2010, appear to show drones carrying missiles. Although they are not clear enough to be conclusive, the images offer rare visual evidence to support reports that Israel flies attack drones — an open secret that the Israeli government won’t acknowledge.

Syria's Base Wars

Since 2011, Syria has fought desperately to hold itself together as a single, unified nation. Threatened from the beginning by the "Libya precedent," Washington and its regional allies have openly conspired to divide up Syria as a consolatory objective upon failing to topple Damascus outright.

US policymakers, some of whom had previously played a role in laying out invasion and occupation plans for Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, have published numerous op-eds and entire policy papers regarding the planned partition of Syria.

It was hoped that the Syrian government could be pushed from Damascus and sent fleeing to Syria's western provinces of Latakia and Tartus. From there, the US hoped to create a Saudi-Qatari-Turkish dominated central state with a Kurdish territory linked up with US-backed Kurds in northern Iraq. Forever divided against itself, Syria would never again function as a powerful ally of nearby Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah or Russia and distant China.

‘Cut-out’ Anti-Drone Protest Brings Arrests

The U.S. government’s lethal drone program continues to spark protests from anti-war activists, including a novel “blockade” outside upstate New York’s Hancock air base where a dozen protesters arrayed life-size cut-outs of the late anti-war activist Jerry Berrigan and faced arrest.

On Jan. 28, 30 life-size cutouts of the late anti-war activist Jerry Berrigan – brother of Dan and Phil Berrigan – blockaded the main entrance of Hancock Air National Guard Base outside Syracuse, New York, where Jerry Berrigan lived. The cutouts of Jerry Berrigan were accompanied by 12 live nonviolent drone resisters, who were arrested after blockading for an hour and a half.

Jerry Berrigan, who died on July 26, 2015 at the age of 95, dedicated his life – as did his brothers Dan and Phil Berrigan – to Jesus’s command to love one another. Jerry Berrigan came to the base on a bi-weekly basis whenever he was able, in his words, “to remind the base commander of our government’s pledge under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, a treaty to safeguard non-combatant’s well-being in any warzone in which U.S. forces are engaged in combat.”

The Dangerous Ideology of Religion

Ideologies are pre-set forms of thinking that shape people’s worldviews and, supposedly, help to order and simplify reality. While this supposition is always flawed to one extent or another, ideologies can be very seductive. In part this is because they free their adherents from the hard work of critical thinking. Thus, they are often held onto tenaciously.

Because ideologies distort reality, they are particularly unsuited for those aspiring to power as well as their devoted supporters. History is full of examples of politically powerful ideologies that underscore this fact: fascism, communism, various military cults (particularly popular in South America and the Middle East) and even the ideology of democracy as manipulated by corrupt elites, who play the Pied Piper to the masses.

Yet there is still one more ideology out there which, even now, wreaks havoc by either claiming for itself the trappings of secular power or attaching itself in some influential advisory way to the institutions of power. That ideology is religion in its various institutional manifestations.

US Building Boom Fuels Spike in Construction Worker Injury and Death

They fall from ladders, roofs and scaffolding, get electrocuted, and breathe in toxic chemicals and dust. They get hit by falling objects and find themselves on the receiving end of mechanical failures and equipment malfunctions. For 7.45 million construction workers - one-fourth of them foreign born - going to work as a bricklayer, carpenter, electrician, framer, mason, painter, plumber, or drywall or tile installer means facing acute dangers within their daily work.

Indeed, despite efforts by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to oversee workplaces, train workers and ensure that adequate precautions are taken, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that fatal injuries on construction sites increased by 5 percent in 2014, to 874. In addition, hundreds of thousands of workers are injured on the job, filing an incredible 1 million workers' compensation claims a year for both temporary conditions - such as broken bones and sprains - and permanent injuries, including paralysis and loss of limbs.

The reason, say experts, is a residential building boom in cities across the country, among them Phoenix, Arizona; San Francisco and San Jose, California; Miami, Florida; New York City; Nashville, Tennessee; and Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, Texas.

The True Inside Story of How a College Professor Sells Out to Monsanto
Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we now know the extent to which U.S. academics have been quietly supporting the food giant's propaganda.

Former University of Illinois food science professor Bruce Chassy is known for his academic gravitas. Now retired nearly four years, Chassy still writes and speaks often about food safety issues, identifying himself with the full weight of the decades of experience earned at the public university and as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. Chassy tells audiences that before he retired in 2012, he worked “full time” doing research and teaching.

What Chassy doesn’t talk much about is the other work he did while at the University of Illinois — promoting the interests of Monsanto Co., which has been trying to overcome mounting public concerns about the genetically engineered crops and chemicals the company sells. He also doesn’t talk much about the hundreds of thousands of dollars Monsanto donated to the university as Chassy was helping promote GMOs, or Monsanto’s secretive role in helping Chassy set up a nonprofit group and website to criticize individuals and organizations who raise questions about GMOs.

But emails released through Freedom of Information Act requests show that Chassy was an active member of a group of U.S. academics who have been quietly collaborating with Monsanto on strategies aimed at not just promoting biotech crop products, but also rolling back regulation of these products and fending off industry critics. The emails show money flowing into the university from Monsanto as Chassy collaborated on multiple projects with Monsanto to counter public concerns about genetically modified crops (GMOs) – all while representing himself as an independent academic for a public institution.

Argentine Social Movements Strike Back Against Monsanto

The world's largest GMO corporation never imagined that it would suffer one of its major setbacks in a small, rural town in central Argentina.

Popular opposition, irregularities in the company's environmental impact assessment, a protest blockade at the entry gate, and a court ruling stalled the construction of its seeds plant three years ago.

The most recent blow to the corporation occurred when it made a new attempt to enter the site in the municipality of Malvinas Argentinas, in the province of Cordoba. Protesters received an eviction notice, but local socio-environmental assemblies mobilized to strengthen the blockade, and a prosecutor suspended the order.

On Jan. 8 simultaneous marches were held in different cities across Argentina. The demand was one and the same: "Monsanto, get out of Latin America!"

Beekeeper Who Sounded Alarm on Colony Collapse Disorder Loses 90 Percent of His Hives

David Hackenberg, who first announced the phenomenon now known as 'Colony Collapse Disorder' (CCD) back in late 2006, has lost 90 percent of his bees. Again.

"We've lost our bees before, but it's never been this bad," says 43-year-old Davey Hackenberg who now runs Buffy Bee, his father's East Coast operation. The father-and-son team went from 1700 hives at the beginning of winter to a little less than 300. And for the first time in years, they're not driving cross-country to the Central Valley to pollinate almonds. They don't have enough bees. Many commercial beekeepers depend on the lucrative almonds – a 6.5 billion dollar crop that spans 500 miles—to stay in business.

Bret Adee, the biggest beekeeper in the world, also recently lost a massive amount of hives. He went from 90,000 hives to 40,000. This is not the first time Bret has lost a big part of his operation.

Cloud Blanket Is Warming Up a Melting Ice Cap

LONDON—Researchers have identified another piece in the climate machinery that is accelerating the melting of the Greenland ice cap. The icy hills are responding to the influence of a higher command system: the clouds.

An international research team led by scientists from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium report in Nature Communications journal that cloud cover above the northern hemisphere’s largest single volume of permanent ice is raising temperatures by between 2 degrees and 3 degrees C and accounting for 20-30% of the melting.

The conclusion, based on imaging from satellites and on computer simulations, is one more part of the global examination of the intricate climate systems on which human harvests, health and happiness ultimately depend.

El Niño Is Here, So Why Is California Still in Drought?

A parade of El Niño-fueled storms has marched over California in the last few weeks, bringing bouts of much needed rain and snow to the parched state. But maps of drought conditions there have barely budged, with nearly two-thirds of the state still in the worst two categories of drought.

So what gives?

The short answer, experts say, is that the drought built up over several years (with help from hotter temperatures fueled in part by global warming) and it will take many more storms and almost assuredly more than a single winter — even one with a strong El Niño — to erase it.

The issue for California comes down to this: there are short-term drought impacts and long-term ones.