Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features soul singers Gil Scott-Heron and Marvin Gaye. Enjoy!

"Over the mountain
Down in the valley
Lives a former talk-show host
Everybody knows his name
He says, 'There’s no doubt about it
It was the myth of fingerprints
I’ve seen them all and, man,
They’re all the same'”

-- Paul Simon

News and Opinion

This is an excellent article, recommended by Glenn Greenwald. There's far too much in it to cover in an excerpt, but here is a taste:

Russia: The Conspiracy Trap

For more than six months now, Russia has served as a crutch for the American imagination. It is used to explain how Trump could have happened to us, and it is also called upon to give us hope. When the Russian conspiracy behind Trump is finally fully exposed, our national nightmare will be over. ...

The dream fueling the Russia frenzy is that it will eventually create a dark enough cloud of suspicion around Trump that Congress will find the will and the grounds to impeach him. If that happens, it will have resulted largely from a media campaign orchestrated by members of the intelligence community—setting a dangerous political precedent that will have corrupted the public sphere and promoted paranoia. And that is the best-case outcome.

More likely, the Russia allegations will not bring down Trump. ... Meanwhile, while Russia continues to dominate the front pages, Trump will continue waging war on immigrants, cutting funding for everything that’s not the military, assembling his cabinet of deplorables—with six Democrats voting to confirm Ben Carson for Housing, for example, and ten to confirm Rick Perry for Energy. According to the Trump plan, each of these seems intent on destroying the agency he or she is chosen to run—to carry out what Steve Bannon calls the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” ...

Imagine if the same kind of attention could be trained and sustained on other issues—like it has been on the Muslim travel ban. It would not get rid of Trump, but it might mitigate the damage he is causing. Trump is doing nothing less than destroying American democratic institutions and principles by turning the presidency into a profit-making machine for his family, by poisoning political culture with hateful, mendacious, and subliterate rhetoric, by undermining the public sphere with attacks on the press and protesters, and by beginning the real work of dismantling every part of the federal government that exists for any purpose other than waging war. Russiagate is helping him — both by distracting from real, documentable, and documented issues, and by promoting a xenophobic conspiracy theory in the cause of removing a xenophobic conspiracy theorist from office.

Here is an excerpt from Greenwald's article which is also worth a read:

Leading Putin Critic Warns of Xenophobic Conspiracy Theories Drowning U.S. Discourse and Helping Trump

Masha Gessen has a new article in the New York Review of Books – entitled “Russia: the Conspiracy Trap” – that I cannot recommend highly enough. Its primary purpose is to describe, and warn about, the insane and toxic conspiracy-mongering about Russia that has taken over not the fringe, dark corners of the internet that normally traffic in such delusional tripe, but rather mainstream U.S. media outlets and the Democratic Party. Few articles have illustrated the serious, multi-faceted dangers of what has become this collective mania in the U.S. as well as Gessen’s does. ...

The crux of her article is the point that has been driving everything I’ve been writing and saying about this topic for months: that this obsession with Russia conspiracy tales is poisoning all aspects of U.S. political discourse and weakening any chance for resisting Trump’s actual abuses and excesses. Those who wake up every day to hype the latest episode of this Russia/Trump spy drama tell themselves that they’re bravely undermining and subverting Trump, but they’re doing exactly the opposite. ...

I’ve been asked often why I’ve written so much against the prevailing sentiments on Russia and Trump. It’s not just because this obsessive narrative distracts from Trump’s genuinely consequential actions or from the need to find an effective vessel for activism against über-right-wing nationalism. It’s not just because it’s driven by ugly and historically familiar anti-Rusisan xenophobia, nor because it dangerously ratchets up tensions between two nuclear-armed, traditionally hostile countries. Those things are all true, but that’s not the main impetus.

Above all else, it’s because it’s an offensive assault on reason. This kind of deranged discourse is an attack on basic journalistic integrity, on any minimal obligation to ensure that one’s claims are based in evidence rather than desire, fantasy, and herd-enforced delusions. And it’s emanating from the most established and mainstream precincts of U.S. political and media elites, who have processed the severe disorientation and loss of position they feel from Trump’s shock election not by doing the work to patiently formulate cogent, effective strategies against him, but rather by desperately latching onto online “dot-connecting” charlatans and spewing the most unhinged Birther-level conspiracies that require a complete abandonment of basic principles of rationality and skepticism.

So It Turns Out The CIA Collects Programs For Forging Russian Hacking Fingerprints…

If you needed any more reason to doubt the completely unproven claims of the US intelligence community that the Russian government manipulated the 2016 US elections by hacking American political parties, now you have it. WikiLeaks has released a trove of data from an anonymous insider whose effort to reveal the US government’s Orwellian domestic espionage upon its citizens may end up paralleling Edward Snowden’s 2013 NSA leaks in terms of impact and importance, or perhaps even greater.

In light of a pressing threat I’ve been writing about a lot lately, I’d like to point out one specific part of WikiLeaks’ press release that definitely needs a whole, whole lot of attention drawn to it, namely that the CIA “collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.” With this collection, WikiLeaks reports, the CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group is able to “misdirect attribution by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints' of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.”

If you’ve been paying attention to the media coverage on the irritatingly opaque government accusations of Russian election meddling, you’ll know right away why this is a big deal. Here’s a CBS News report from July of last year titled “Russian ‘fingerprints' left behind on DNC hack,” which reports that “The U.S. believes that people working for the Russian government are behind the hack of internal emails at the Democratic National Committee,” because “A U.S. intelligence official told CBS News that the signature of the breach is Russian and the U.S. government has identified methods and techniques used by Russia in past hacks that mirror those used in the DNC incursion.” Many mainstream media outlets covered this story, and in the following months new reports citing Russian hacking “fingerprints” have surfaced. Here’s one from December by the New York Times. Here’s another by Fox 6 News from January. Here’s an interesting one from February by The Hill titled “Ukraine: Russian fingerprints all over power grid hack,” detailing another Russian hacking allegation made by the US-backed Ukrainian government.

CIA providing raw intelligence as Trump-Russia probes heat up

Lawmakers are trekking to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to review classified evidence on Russia’s involvement in the presidential election. The House has scheduled its first public hearing on the issue. And the Senate is preparing to interview witnesses. ...

The CIA is now providing raw intelligence documents to committee members, according to multiple senators. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) visited CIA headquarters on Monday to view the documents underlying the intelligence community’s unclassified assessment that Russia sought to sway the election in favor of Trump.

At Langley, Cornyn said Tuesday, he viewed “four large binders full of classified information that’s been made available to the committee to conduct” its wide-ranging investigation.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said members of his panel had also made visits to CIA headquarters and that there will be “more trips out there.” He said he was close to reaching an agreement with the intelligence community on whether evidence would be turned over to Congress or continue to be housed within the agencies.

Nunes also said Tuesday that his panel’s first public hearing on the issue would be held March 20 and that former members of the Obama administration had been asked to testify — including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump in January after refusing to defend his travel ban executive order in court.

Well now, here's a potential silver lining:

Trump v US intelligence: growing feud puts NSA's legislative priority at risk

The escalating feud between Donald Trump and US intelligence is now putting the top 2017 legislative priority of the intelligence agencies at risk.

At the end of the year, a broad legal authority permitting sweeping surveillance is set to expire. The National Security Agency considers the authority, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), pivotal to fighting terrorism and stopping espionage. Civil libertarians consider the measure – the wellspring of the NSA’s Prism and “upstream” mass communications-data collection – unconstitutional.

The typical balance of power on Capitol Hill over surveillance is such that opponents of renewing Section 702 face strong political headwinds. The measure was reauthorized with minimal challenge in 2012.

Now the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee has thrown reauthorization into question after extensive leaking about Trump and Russia that the president and his Capitol Hill allies have blamed on the US intelligence community.

Asked at a Tuesday press conference about the renewal of section 702 in light of ongoing leaks concerning Trump and Russia, Devin Nunes said, “I think it’s very problematic.”

Putin spokesman: 'Hysteria' hurting U.S.-Russia relations

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told CNN Monday that “hysteria" in the media and in Washington is hurting the relationship between the two countries.

“(It’s) high time for someone in the States to think, 'Are we that weak that a country can interfere in our domestic affairs and influence our electoral system?'” said Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov. "This is unimaginable and someone has to say, all this is not true. We have to be sober, let's come to our minds.” ...

Russia wants a “predictable partner” to address world issues, Peskov said.

"We're really sorry about the situation that we are facing now," he said. "It is emotional extremism, of trying to make a toxic country out of Russia, to make a toxic ... ambassador out of Russia's ambassador."

US media suddenly concerned about ‘evidence’ as Trump claims wiretapping

America’s Homegrown Assault on Democracy

For months now, our country has endured the tacit denigration of American ingenuity. Countless statements — from elected officials, activist groups, journalists and many others — have ignored our nation’s superb blend of dazzling high-tech capacities and statecraft mendacities.

Fortunately, this week the news about release of illuminating CIA documents by WikiLeaks has begun to give adequate credit where due. And not a moment too soon. For way too long, Russia has been credited with prodigious hacking and undermining of democracy in the United States.

Many Americans have overlooked the U.S. government’s fantastic hacking achievements. This is most unfair and disrespectful to the dedicated men and women of intelligence services like the CIA and NSA. Far from the limelight, they’ve been working diligently to undermine democracy not just overseas but also here at home.

Today, the massive new trove of CIA documents can help to put things in perspective. Maybe now people will grasp that our nation’s undermining of democracy is home-grown and self-actualized. It’s an insult to the ingenious capacities of the United States of America to think that we can’t do it ourselves.

The Left’s great Russian conspiracy theory

The chattering classes have officially lost it. On both sides of the Atlantic. Of course they’d been teetering on the cliff edge of sanity for a while, following the bruising of their beloved EU by 17m angry Brits and Hillary’s loss to that orange muppet they thought no one except rednecks would vote for. But now they’ve gone over. They’re falling fast. They’re speeding away from the world of logic into a cesspit of conspiracy and fear. It’s tragic. Or hilarious. One or the other.

Exhibit A: this week’s New Yorker. It’s mad. It captures wonderfully how the liberal-left has come to be polluted by the paranoid style of McCarthyist thinking since Trump’s victory. It’s a New Yorker for a future, dystopian America that’s been captured by the Evil Empire. The mag’s masthead is in Cyrillic and its famous dandy mascot — Eustace Tilley — has morphed into Putin. It’s now ‘Eustace Vladimirovich Tilley’. Inside the mag it’s even more feverish. A 13,000-word report, ‘Trump, Putin and the New Cold War’, is accompanied by a drawing of a deep-red, UFO-style Kremlin hovering over the White House and firing lasers into it. It’s CGI Hollywood meets House Un-American Activities in an orgy of liberal dread over Ruskies ruining the nation. ...

This week's cover, “Eustace Vladimirovich Tilley,” by Barry Blitt: https://t.co/P43URkCLMy pic.twitter.com/sUunrilCf3

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 2, 2017

You have to get deep into the New Yorker’s prolix report to discover that US officials still haven’t provided evidence for their claim that Putin ordered the hacking of Democrat emails in order to hurry Trump to power: ‘The declassified report [on Putin’s meddling] provides more assertion than evidence.’ ...

The very people who for years talked about the problem of conspiracy theories have become the keenest spreaders of conspiracy theories. The people who spent the past few months banging on about the ‘post-truth’ politics of Brexit and Trump have shown they don’t have the first clue what truth is. The people who posed as champions of logic have revealed themselves as peddlers of paranoia.

China says the U.S. and North Korea are on track for a nuclear “head-on collision”

Describing the U.S. and North Korea as trains set for a “head-on collision,” China proposed Wednesday that, in order to defuse escalating tensions in the region, Pyongyang abandon future missile tests in return for Washington scrapping joint military exercises with Seoul.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the suggestion at a news conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, days after North Korea fired four missiles it said were practice runs for strikes on American military bases in Japan. In response to the tests, the U.S. began the rollout of a controversial missile defense system on South Korean soil, drawing a warning from China, which sees the system as a threat. ...

North Korea has itself previously proposed such a deal, but the U.S. has not taken them up on the offer. This is the first time that such a suggestion has been made since President Donald Trump took office.

The CIA Didn’t Break Signal or WhatsApp, Despite What You’ve Heard

There’s been one particularly misleading claim repeated throughout coverage of CIA documents released by WikiLeaks today: That the agency’s in-house hackers “bypassed” the encryption used by popular secure-chat software like Signal and WhatsApp.

By specifically mentioning these apps, news outlets implied that the agency has a means of getting through the protections built into the chat systems. It doesn’t. Instead, it has the ability, in some cases, to take control of entire phones; accessing encrypted chats is simply one of many security implication of this. Wikileaks’ own analysis of the documents at least briefly acknowledges this, stating that CIA “techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the ‘smart’ phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”

The claim was then taken out of what little context WikiLeaks provided and repeated by widely read outlets.

The Wikileaks dump also includes information about CIA malware that can hack, and remotely spy on and control, computers running Windows, macOS, and Linux. Which means that it’s also true that the CIA can bypass PGP email encryption on your computer. And the CIA can bypass your VPN. And the CIA can see everything you’re doing in Tor Browser. All of these things can be inferred by the documents, but that doesn’t mean using PGP, VPNs, or Tor Browser isn’t safe. Basically, if the CIA can hack a device and gain full control of it — whether it’s a smartphone, a laptop, or a TV with a microphone — they can spy on everything that happens on that device. Saying Signal is bypassed because the CIA has control of the entire device Signal is installed on is akin to saying the diary you keep in your bedside table is vulnerable because the CIA has the ability to break into your house.

WikiLeaks says the CIA can use your TV to spy on you. But there's good news

While many of the headlines accompanying these documents will send a shiver down the spine of readers, there is some good news in the WikiLeaks documents. Contrary to early reports suggesting that the CIA can “defeat” popular end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp, the WikiLeaks release is further evidence that encryption does work to protect people’s privacy.

The documents do purport to show is that the CIA has a host of exploits to attack the operating systems of popular mobile devices like iPhones and Androids – a deeply worrying prospect, to be sure – but to “defeat” secure messaging apps, government hackers essentially have to gain access to your phone itself before they can read your messages.

So if you’re using an app like Signal, the content of those communications are at least still likely protected from their vast surveillance nets that otherwise indiscriminately capture billions text messages and emails per day.

This is encouraging news. The Snowden revelations were so offensive to so many people because the government was secretly using mass surveillance to spy on hundreds of millions of people at once – the vast majority of them innocent. With countless users switching over to end-to-end communications in recent years, it means intelligence agencies like the CIA must target individuals one by one, which, in turn, means the cost for each surveillance target goes up, and forces them to prioritize a much smaller number of people.

Encrypted App Used By White House Staffers Suffered From Serious Security Flaws

Confide, a three-year-old messaging app reportedly favored by White House official, and supposedly boasting “military-grade end-to-end encryption,” was so insecure it allowed attackers to impersonate friendly contacts, spy on contact information, and even alter messages in transit, according to a cybersecurity firm.

While Confide, dubbed the “Snapchat for business”, has since mostly fixed these insecurities after the firm, IOActive, contacted the company with its research, an attacker could have taken full advantage before this month, according to a report from IOActive security researchers Mike Davis and Ryan O’Horo.

Axios last month reported that paranoid White House staffers and top Republicans were shielding their communications using the app, which offers a disappearing message feature. The application also requires the user to scroll over each line of text individually to see the hidden message beneath—making it hard to screenshot the full text. Buzzfeed confirmed that White House press secretary Sean Spicer and White House director of strategic communications Hope Hicks had downloaded the app at some point in time.

Women in More Than 50 Countries Set to Strike Today on International Women's Day

Women unite in global strike

Women in more than 50 countries will go on strike from paid and unpaid labour on Wednesday while millions more will be taking part in direct action on what is set to be one of the most political International Women’s Days in history.

From Thailand to Poland, the United States to Australia, the first International Women’s Strike will see action on both the industrial and domestic fronts, with participants keen to show solidarity with an energised global women’s movement. ...

Organisers of the International Women’s Strike have joined forces with coordinators of the Women’s March and hundreds of human rights and women’s campaigners to capitalise on momentum in the movement in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. Up to 2 million people around the world marched for equality in January the day after his inauguration.

The Women’s March – which now has organisers across 200 cities in 80 countries – has called on supporters not to engage in paid or unpaid labour and only spend money in small and female-owned businesses. ...

Recognising that the poor financial situation and rigid work laws mean many will not be able to take part in a physical strike, organisers are urging supporters to wear red, a colour historically associated with the labour movement, in solidarity.

'A Day Without a Woman' faces a pivotal question – what woman is it for?

International Women’s Day has never had the kind of robust presence in the United States it enjoys abroad. For years, while foreign leaders made speeches and citizens of other countries held rallies, the main signal to many in the US that 8 March was any different might have been that day’s Google Doodle.

Then Donald Trump was elected president.

Now, organizers aided by the people behind the 21 January Women’s March on Washington are calling for US women on 8 March to stage a general strike. Under the hashtag #DayWithoutAWoman, thousands have pledged to take part by missing work or refusing to spend their money.

The goal is to keep the momentum of the Women’s March building, the organizers have said. But it is also to spotlight the kinds of women who haven’t always been permitted to stand at the center of large feminist movements. ...

The strike is about more than Trump, said the organizers. It comes at the end of a brutal recession and recovery that did not touch all communities equally, and amid a long-term trend of increasing inequality and wage stagnation for those who already earned less. Marginalized groups of women, such as trans women, seem to be under a growing threat of violence. Feminism is having a mainstream moment, but it is, in the opinion of the organizers and many others, corporatized.

“Especially surrounding Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, there’s been this idea that feminism is somehow about women becoming powerful and successful CEOs,” [Tithi Bhattacharya said]. “The goal of 8 March is to make feminism a threat to the system and to talk about the feminism about the 99% rather than the 1%.”

[See also: "Privilege" Politics and the Women's Strike - js]

Airport security pat-downs are about to become so invasive cops have been told to expect 911 calls

The TSA is instituting new regulations for airport security pat-downs, and the techniques are reportedly so invasive that the agency preemptively warned local police to expect calls from concerned travelers.

The transportation agency has so far declined to explain what exactly the new procedures entail, with a spokesperson saying that publicizing details could “aid those who wish to do travelers harm.” The agency did, however, describe the new procedures as more “comprehensive,” and according to Bloomberg, which reported that it obtained a relevant memo from an airport trade association, the procedures involve a shift from agents using the back of the hand during pat-downs to using the front of the hand on passengers who test positive for explosives during routine swab screenings.

The agency previously said the shift is “intended to reduce the cognitive burden on [employees] who previously had to choose from various pat-down procedures depending on the type of screening lane.” The memo reportedly said that the TSA anticipated the changes could prompt passengers to call 911 and report “abnormal” frisking.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz Is Wrong. A $700 iPhone Can’t Cover Your Health Insurance.

Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz said in a CNN interview on Tuesday morning that low-income Americans will be able to afford health insurance under a Republican plan to replace Obamacare — as long as they don’t spend so much on things like iPhones. ...

“You know what, Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice,” he said. “And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own health care.”

GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz: Low-income Americans will have to choose health care over iPhones https://t.co/orZVA7OoCS pic.twitter.com/Lt5vnKAPeg

— CNN (@CNN) March 7, 2017

While iPhones are among the priciest smartphones, they don’t come anywhere close to the cost of health insurance. Even the newest iPhone, off-contract, will cost someone around $700. The online health insurance dealer eHealth estimates that the average individual premium is currently about $393 a month — which means the cost of the brand new iPhone will on average net you less than two months worth of health insurance premiums.

And that’s assuming you don’t get sick. Especially with high-deductible plans, the cost of co-pays and deductibles can quickly become astronomical. Unfortunately, the refrain that if the poor can afford basic consumer goods then they should be able to afford necessities is common among right-wing ideologues in the United States.

A lot of Republicans hate the Republican plan to replace Obamacare

Conservatives in Congress, the media, and well-funded advocacy groups attacked the Obamacare replacement bill unveiled by House Republicans and President Trump late Monday night. And such immediate blowback from within Trump’s own party imperils his chances of replacing the law in the early months of his presidency. ...

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky called the plan “Obamacare Lite” and said the Republican Congress “should be stopping mandates, taxes, and entitlements, not keeping them.” Several House Republicans echoed Paul’s opposition and attacked the bill as creating another entitlement that would expand government. The bill would provide refundable tax credits to help people pay for health insurance and would keep many of the regulations on the insurance industry that Obamacare put in place.

Several conservative advocacy groups also attacked the bill. Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, released a statement from its CEO, Michael A. Needham, that essentially called on House Republicans to start over. “Rather than accept the flawed premises of Obamacare,” Needham said, “congressional Republicans should fully repeal the failed law and begin a genuine effort to deliver on longstanding campaign promises that create a free-market healthcare system that empowers patients and doctors.”

Opposition was voiced by the Club for Growth and Freedomworks, groups funded by Charles and David Koch. And Peter Suderman at the libertarian magazine “Reason” wrote Monday night that “it’s not clear what problem this particular bill would actually solve.”

GOP Lawmaker Shaping Obamacare Repeal to Address Delighted Insurance Lobbyists

The powerful trade group that lobbies on behalf of the health insurance industry, America’s Health Insurance Plans, has much to celebrate as it holds its national health policy conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington this week.

Among other changes long sought by the industry, the draft Republican proposal for a health care overhaul released on Monday would allow insurers to charge older American more for their premiums and rewrite tax law to make it easier for insurance firms to pay executives even higher pay.

Not surprisingly, one of the AHIP conference’s keynote speakers on Thursday will be Congressman Kevin Brady, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, which starts marking up the bill on Wednesday morning.

The trade group represents the largest health insurance companies in America, including Cigna, Humana, Kaiser, Blue Shield of California, and Anthem.

Tipis on National Mall Signal Days of Native Defiance and Action

Tipis began sprouting up on the National Mall on Tuesday as native communities and their allies descended on the nation's capital for a week of workshops and lobbying for Indigenous rights in anticipation of Friday's massive Native Nations Rising march.

The four-day demonstration was spurred by opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), the fight that galvanized native people, at one point drawing members of more than 300 federally recognized Native American tribes and thousands of other supporters to the Standing Rock Sioux's protest camps. ...

The two-mile march on Friday will begin at the headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers and culminate across from the White House in Lafayette Square, where a rally will "demand that Indigenous rights be respected," which includes rescinding President Donald Trump's recent executive order advancing construction of the 1,172-mile oil pipeline, which threatens Standing Rock sovereignty and threatens the tribe's sacred water source.

A number of sister marches are also being planned in cities across the U.S.

Dakota Access pipeline could open next week after activists face final court loss

A federal judge declined Tuesday to temporarily stop construction of the final section of the disputed Dakota Access pipeline, clearing the way for oil to flow as soon as next week.

The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux had asked the US district judge James Boasberg in Washington to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw permission for the Texas-based developer Energy Transfer Partners to lay pipe under Lake Oahe in North Dakota. ...

The tribes argued that construction under the lake violated their right to practice their religion, which relies on clean water, and they wanted the work suspended until the claim could be resolved. ...

Boasberg in his ruling Tuesday said the tribes hadn’t raised the religion argument in a timely fashion. ... Boasberg said he was likely to allow the tribes to continue making the religion argument, though he did not think it was likely to succeed. “Although the tribe’s members may feel unable to use the water from Lake Oahe in their religious ceremonies once the pipeline is operational, there is no specific ban on their religious exercise,” he said.

The judge’s decision came as Native Americans from across the country gathered in Washington to protest Donald Trump’s policies encouraging oil pipelines. Native Americans are planning four days of activities, including lobbying lawmakers and culminating in a march on the White House. Tribal members and supporters plan to camp each day on the National Mall, with tipis, a ceremonial fire, cultural workshops and speakers.

Apparently there are places in the world that have managed to achieve a higher standard of justice than what is available in the court of Judge James Boasberg.

How climate change battles are increasingly being fought, and won, in court

The South African government has lost the country’s first climate change lawsuit after the hight court ruled against its plans for a coal-fired power station, the latest in a rising tide of international climate litigation. ...

The case comes shortly after a groundbreaking climate case decided last month in Austria. A federal court blocked the expansion of Vienna’s international airport because the increase in carbon emissions that a new runway would generate is inconsistent with Austria’s commitments to tackle climate change. The Austrian decision not only echoes controversies around airport expansions in the UK and France; it’s also the latest example of courts around the world stepping in to hold governments to account for escalating global temperatures.

Since a landmark Dutch climate change case, filed by my colleagues, resulted in an order that the government significantly reduce its carbon emissions, lawsuits challenging inaction on climate change have been filed in courtrooms in Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region. Some lawsuits target the inadequacy of policies intended to reduce carbon emissions (as in the US, New Zealand, Belgium and Switzerland) while others challenge individual projects that have potentially catastrophic consequences for the climate (as in Norway, where the government has permitted new drilling for oil in the Arctic).

Aside from highlighting the obligations of governments to protect their citizens from foreseeable harm, these cases have the considerable advantage of putting the facts of climate change on the public record. These facts, endorsed by governments through the adoption of scientific reports at the UN, include that climate change is real; that it is caused by human activity; that it will dramatically affect every region in the world; and that it is more cost-effective to act now than later. While it might be expedient for politicians to obfuscate these facts, it is another matter altogether to produce evidence to substantiate their position in court.

France: Poachers kill white rhino, hack off its horn after breaking into French zoo

Under Pruitt, Climate Deniers Flourish at EPA

Days after his confirmation, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt began stacking his department with conservatives, many of them climate deniers and all of them eager to axe environmental regulations—much like President Donald Trump himself, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

To start, there's Ryan Jackson, former chief of staff to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the most outspoken climate deniers in Congress, infamous for bringing a snowball into the chamber to illustrate that global warming was not real. Jackson will serve as Pruitt's chief of staff.

Then there's Byron Brown, another Inhofe staffer, who will now be Jackson's deputy.

Andrew Wheeler, formerly of Inhofe's team but now a fossil fuel lobbyist, is at the top of Pruitt's list to be deputy EPA chief, although he will require confirmation by the Senate.

And two Trump campaigners, Don Benton and Douglas Ericksen, are also taking on senior positions in the agency.

The Times' Coral Davenport writes:

To friends and critics, Mr. Pruitt seems intent on building an EPA leadership that is fundamentally at odds with the career officials, scientists, and employees who carry out the agency's missions. That might be a recipe for strife and gridlock at the federal agency tasked to keep safe the nation's clean air and water while safeguarding the planet's future.

Also of Interest

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

The Last Stand for Yellowstone’s Bison

Families of 9/11 victims might soon get day in court against Saudi officials

CIA Has an “Impressive List” of Ways to Hack Into Your Smartphone, WikiLeaks Files Indicate

Marcy Wheeler: Wikileaks Dumps CIA’s Hacking Tools

Intercepted Podcast: Ready to Lie

Why Trump Continues to Beat the Democrats

Official Washington Hails an Anti-Russia Hawk

The Republican Health-Care Bill Is the Worst of So Many Worlds

International Women's Day around the world – in pictures

Mosul: Iraqi troops find Assyrian treasures in network of Isis tunnels

A Little Night Music

Gil Scott Heron - We almost Lost Detroit

Marvin Gaye - Whats Going On

Gil Scott-Heron - Home Is Where The Hatred Is

Marvin Gaye - Trouble Man

Gil Scott-Heron - We Beg Your Pardon

Marvin Gaye - Ain't That Peculiar

Gil Scott-Heron - Work For Peace