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This evening's music features delta blues singer and harmonica player Frank Frost. Enjoy!

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices."

-- C.S. Lewis

News and Opinion

Signing away online privacy

Internet service providers will soon be allowed to sell your browsing history, financial and health data, and other personal information to third-parties according to a bill passed by the House of Representatives Tuesday afternoon.

The Senate pushed the measure through in a party-line vote earlier in March, and the White House has signaled its support of the legislation, meaning that it will almost certainly become law. Though House Democrats mounted a last-minute stand against the rollback of Obama-era rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission last year, they came up 10 votes shy; the bill passed by a margin of 215 to 205. ...

“If the bill is signed into law, companies like Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements,” Electronic Frontier Foundation legislative counsel Ernesto Falcon wrote in a blog post.

Craig Aaron, president and CEO of the Free Press Action Fund, said in a statement that House Republicans “voted to take away the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of Americans just so a few giant companies could pad their already considerable profits.”

Republicans Gut Internet Privacy Rules

U.S. Senate backs Montenegro's membership in NATO

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly backed the expansion of NATO to allow Montenegro to join the alliance, hoping to send a message that the United States will push back against Russian efforts to increase its influence in Europe.

The long-delayed vote was 97-2 in favor of Montenegro's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That was well above the two-thirds majority needed in the 100-member Senate to ratify Montenegro's membership.

There was no immediate confirmation of whether President Donald Trump would formally deposit the instrument of ratification, the last step in the U.S. ratification process.

However, his administration had supported NATO membership for the tiny Balkan nation, one of Europe's smallest, despite Trump at times criticizing the alliance as he campaigned for president last year.

Heh, who wrote this headline? This is a question that is needless to ask. On the other hand, the article is excellent and worth a full read.

Does Washington Want to Start a New War in the Balkans?

With Monday’s procedural vote in the U.S. Senate to allow Montenegro into NATO, the Washington elite proved once more that heightening tensions with Russia might not just be inevitable, but actually desirable. With the exception of Rand Paul (R-KY) and Mike Lee (R-UT), the entire 100-strong body of the Senate rallied behind the motion that would see the tiny Adriatic state admitted into the Atlantic alliance over the objections of many Montenegrins . The vote set off a 30-hour countdown, during which Senators will debate before putting the issue to a final vote.

If you needed more proof that US foreign policy is misguided, just look to what happened to Rand Paul after his earlier decision to block Montenegro’s accession.  The Kentucky senator was subjected to a barrage of insults from fellow Republican John McCain, who flatly accused Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.” ... Correctly arguing that the U.S. is already spread far too thinly militarily in dozens of countries all over the world with little to show for it, Paul questioned the wisdom of expanding the monetary and military obligations of America at a time when it is already drowning in debt. He had previously voted against the matter in a vote last December.

McCain represents a mercilessly hawkish wing of the Republican Party that would be quite happy to risk war with Russia and harm to U.S. interests over such a strategically irrelevant country. Paul, on the other hand, takes a more pragmatic position on the country’s NATO ambitions, as should anyone in full possession of the facts. To begin with, the Montenegrin people themselves display little interest in their country joining NATO. Polls there consistently show that no more than 40% of the public favor NATO membership, with support for accession dropping considerably below that figure among older people. Many remain suspicious of the alliance after it bombed Yugoslavia, of which Montenegro was part, in 1999. Distrust for the military alliance is so strong that anti-NATO demonstrations regularly take place across the country. To press ahead with Montenegro’s NATO accession would fly directly in the face of the will of its people.

Worse, Montenegro’s October parliamentary election was marred with exaggerated charges that a Russian coup was in the works. If it hadn’t been for some last minute intelligence from Serbia and the country’s own agencies, so the story goes, Russian GRU spies would have assassinated Djukanovic and would have installed a puppet government. In fact, the pro-Western Podgorica government has successfully used the specter of Russian influence in order to detain and unlawfully harass opposition leaders. Just last week, Marko Milacic, a pro-neutrality campaigner, was “pre-emptively detained” after campaigning in favor of a referendum that would have allowed Montenegrins to vote on whether they want indeed to join NATO.

War and Propaganda

For a decade now, the influential media has been building fear of and animosity against Russia and its president Vladimir Putin. For example, the media spread the establishment’s story that NATO’s buildup of weapons and forces near the Russian border is a reaction to Russian aggression. In its coverage, the media downplayed the U.S. violation of its pledge not to expand NATO ‘one inch’ to the east if the Soviet Union would allow Germany to be reunited. Unfortunately, the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations all violated that pledge. Perhaps the media didn’t think NATO’s expansion to Russian borders might have been viewed as a provocation to Russia.

However, a key insider saw things very differently. In 1996 George Kennan, architect of the containment policy towards the Soviet Union, warned that NATO’s expansion into former Soviet territories would be a “strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions.” In 1998, Thomas Friedman solicited Kennan’s reaction to the Senate’s ratification of NATO’s eastward expansion. Kennan said: ”I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”

The mainstream U.S. media also downplayed the importance of the U.S. supported 2014 Ukrainian coup, a major provocation that caused Russia to react as Kennan had predicted. Even George Friedman, CEO of Stratfor, a U.S. firm involved in analyzing intelligence, spoke about this coup that the media hailed as a revolution: “It really was the most blatant coup in history.”

The media continues the campaign against Russia by hyping the unsubstantiated claim that the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails and somehow provided the emails to Wikileaks. This problematic charge further bolsters the perception of Russia as our enemy, making the idea of war more palatable.

U.S. ‘Probably Had a Role’ in Mosul Deaths, Commander Says

The senior United States commander in Iraq said on Tuesday that an American airstrike most likely led to the collapse of a building in Mosul that killed scores of civilians this month.

But the commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, indicated that an investigation would also examine whether the attack might have set off a larger blast from explosives set by militants inside the building or nearby.

It was the fullest acceptance of responsibility by an American commander since the March 17 airstrike.

“My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties,” said General Townsend, who commands the American-led task force that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But he asserted that “the munition that we used should not have collapsed an entire building.”
Continue reading the main story

“That is something we have got to figure out,” he added.

U.N. Urges Iraq and Allies to Rethink Tactics as Airstrikes Kill Civilians

Airstrikes against Islamic State fighters are killing so many civilians that Iraq and its American-led coalition of allies should reconsider their tactics, the top human rights official at the United Nations said on Tuesday.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said he did not underestimate the difficulty of rooting out the Islamic State forces from their remaining strongholds in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. But he urged Iraq and the coalition to “undertake an urgent review of tactics to ensure that the impact on civilians is reduced to an absolute minimum.”

There were clear indications that the militants were using large numbers of civilians as human shields, he said, and under those conditions, airstrikes on densely populated areas can have “a lethal and disproportionate impact on civilians.”

The United Nations reported that as of March 22, at least 307 people had been killed and an additional 273 had been wounded in Mosul in a little more than a month, as Iraqi troops pressed their attack on Islamic State forces entrenched in the city.

Russian general claims US-led coalition hit dam in Syria

A senior Russian general on Tuesday accused the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State of targeting Syria's infrastructure — including a key dam — in territory held by the Sunni extremist group. Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the military's General Staff said the coalition was trying to "completely destroy critical infrastructure in Syria and complicate post-war reconstruction as much as possible."

A U.S.-backed Syrian opposition force has insisted it is taking care to preserve vital infrastructure as it steps up military operations in northern Syria ahead of a push on Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS group's self-styled caliphate.

Rudskoi further claimed that coalition jets had destroyed four bridges over the Euphrates River in Syria and hit the Tabqa dam to the west of Raqqa. The collapse of the dam would cause an "ecological catastrophe" and lead to "numerous" civilian deaths, he said.

On Monday, the U.S.-led coalition reiterated that it is taking every precaution to ensure the integrity of the dam. "To our knowledge, the dam has not been structurally damaged," it said on its Twitter account.

Guns silent as engineers work to ease pressure on Syrian dam

Syrian engineers worked on Tuesday to open spillways and ease pressure on a major dam across the Euphrates River during a pause in a U.S.-backed assault to capture it from Islamic State (IS) militants, a Reuters witness said. The Tabqa Dam is a key strategic target in the military campaign to isolate and capture the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa, Islamic State's biggest urban stronghold. Engineers arrived from the dam's northern entrance, which the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance captured last week. The dam's southern reaches remain in IS hands.

U.S.-led coalition aircraft could be heard overhead as SDF forces manned positions on the dam. Coalition forces in armored vehicles were also seen in the area. Inspections at the dam were being carried out after the Syrian government on Sunday said it had been damaged by U.S. air strikes and could collapse, with the risk of catastrophic flooding. Islamic State said the dam's operating systems were not working properly and it was vulnerable to collapse. ... The main operations buildings for the dam along with its technicians are located on the southern bank controlled by Islamic State.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley Doubled Down on Threats to Punish Criticism of Israel

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley repeated her prior threats to punish criticism of Israel on Monday, boasting about creating a climate of fear at the U.N. in which other diplomats are frightened to speak to her about recent efforts to condemn Israel’s illegal colonization of the West Bank.

Haley was addressing the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – the powerful Washington, D.C. lobby whose self-described goal is to “strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship.” Each year, thousands of delegates and students descend on D.C. for the forum, where the most senior politicians of both parties — from presidential candidates to Congressional leadership – often speak.

Haley received thunderous applause and a standing ovation from the crowd, a reception rivaled only by what they gave Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, when he spoke to the conference by satellite. ...

Since her confirmation Haley has moved quickly to silence any criticism of Israel at the U.N. In her first speech at U.N. headquarters in New York, Haley promised to “have the backs of our allies,” and added that “for those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.”

Former Democratic Senators Advised Group Funding Anti-Muslim Extremist Frank Gaffney

America's powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, enlisted the help of one of the nation’s most prominent and extreme anti-Muslim activists, Frank Gaffney, during its 2015 push to sink the Iran nuclear deal. And it did so through an organization staffed by some of the country’s most prominent Democratic consultants and advised by a group of four ex-Senate Democrats.

AIPAC’s funding of Gaffney was uncovered earlier this month by LobeLog’s Eli Clifton. He noticed that a 501(c)(4) dark-money organization called Citizens For a Nuclear Free Iran, or CNFI, which AIPAC created to oppose the Iran deal, gave $60,000 to “Secure Freedom,” a group whose tax ID number identifies it as belonging to Gaffney’s think tank, the Center for Security Policy, or CSP. AIPAC later confirmed to Haaretz that it offered the funding to Gaffney to run ads opposed to the Iran deal. ...

During its failed campaign to sink diplomacy with Iran, CFNI enlisted a gamut of top Democrats. Its advisory board included four Democratic senators-turned-lobbyists: Mark Begich of Alaska, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu. Former Nevada Democratic congresswoman Shelley Berkley also advised the group.

In addition to Gaffney’s accusations [that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is a covert operative of the Muslim Brotherhood], he has claimed that officials in the U.S. government are waging a “civilizational jihad” to undermine the country from within. Gaffney was even briefly banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference after he accused anti-tax activist Grover Norquist of being part of a purported plot to bring Islamic law to America. His sham polling was also used by then-candidate Donald Trump to justify his call for a total ban on Muslim migration to the United States.

Theresa May has triggered Article 50, and it's anyone's guess what happens next

Nine months after Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union, the big day is finally here. British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered the formal process of removing her country from the E.U. Wednesday, which means that Brexit begins now – but what exactly that will mean for the U.K. is still anyone’s guess.

Wednesday marked the beginning of a two-year period of complicated negotiations on the departure, casting the country of 64 million people into the unknown. If no deal is reached on the terms of Britain’s exit and its future relationship with the bloc, the U.K.’s membership will lapse anyway on March 29, 2019. ...

May now faces a formidable challenge in negotiating an exit deal with the remaining 27 E.U. member states on issues like trade and security within a two-year timeframe, while fending off a fresh push for Scottish independence that could fracture the United Kingdom itself.

Anti-abortion activists charged over undercover Planned Parenthood videos

California prosecutors have charged two anti-abortion activists who made undercover videos of themselves trying to buy fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood with 15 felonies, saying they invaded the privacy of medical providers by filming without consent.

State attorney general Xavier Becerra announced the charges on Tuesday against David Daleiden of Davis, California, and Sandra Merritt of San Jose. The two operate the Irvine-based Center for Medical Progress. The allegations say the pair filmed 14 people without permission between October 2013 and July 2015 in Los Angeles, San Francisco and El Dorado counties. One felony count was filed for each person. The 15th was for criminal conspiracy to invade privacy. Becerra says they used a fictitious bioresearch company to meet with women’s healthcare providers and covertly record them. ...

Daleiden and Merritt had previously been indicted in Texas on similar charges in January 2016, but all of the charges were eventually dropped by July as prosecutors said a grand jury had overstepped its authority. The grand jury had originally been convened to investigate Planned Parenthood, but after finding no wrongdoing indicted Daleiden and Merritt instead.

Keiser Report: 'The New Detroit'

The beauty pageant to build Trump's border wall is beginning

Wednesday marks the deadline for the hundreds of companies interested in building Donald Trump’s signature campaign promise – a “great, great wall” on the US-Mexico border – to submit concept papers detailing their proposals. It is the first step in a process that promises to combine three of Trump’s most successful ventures: beauty pageants, reality TV competitions and xenophobia.

After an initial elimination round, the remaining contestants will submit more detailed technical proposals. Another round of cuts will ensue, and then a group of finalists will convene in San Diego, California, to construct both a 30ft-long prototype of their design and a 10ft by 10ft “mock-up” that will be used by the government to “test and evaluate the anti-destruct characteristics” of the design.

Think of it as a swimsuit competition followed by a high-stakes Apprentice challenge. Those who can withstand the battering ram for at least 90 minutes while also being “aesthetically pleasing” (on the US-facing side) have a shot at winning a lucrative piece of one of the US government’s largest infrastructure projects in decades.

Senate Republicans pour cold water on talk of reviving healthcare bill

Senate Republicans and the White House sounded ready to abandon efforts to repeal and replace the nation’s healthcare law, at least for now, even as House Republicans insisted on Tuesday they were not ready to give up on their years-long quest.

The intra-party dispute came in the wake of last Friday’s collapse of healthcare legislation in the House, a GOP humiliation at the climactic moment of seven years of promises to get rid of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, made his views clear after a closed-door lunch with fellow Senate Republicans and Vice-President Mike Pence.

“It’s pretty obvious we were not able, in the House, to pass a replacement. Our Democratic friends ought to be pretty happy about that because we have the existing law in place, and I think we’re just going to have to see how that works out,” McConnell said. “We believe it will not work out well, but we’ll see.”

Trumptax might split Republicans just like Trumpcare did

Trumpcare is out, Trumptax is in. That’s the message from the Trump administration and most Republicans in Congress this week in an effort to move on from their failure to achieve consensus on a plan to replace Obamacare last week. ...

Already there is sniping within the Republican conference over House Speaker Paul Ryan’s tax reform proposal. The criticism centers on the border-adjustment tax that would levy a 20 percent tax on imports from all countries, a protectionist measure that would also help pay for other tax cuts. While most members of Congress have yet to take a position, outlines like we saw in the health care debate are already appearing.

Speaker Ryan and some of his close allies, like Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, are again on one side of the debate supporting the tax as President Trump shows openness and mild support. Brady is convening Republicans on his committee Tuesday in the hopes of achieving some consensus.

That may be difficult since conservative groups aligned with GOP mega-donors the Koch brothers, like Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, are against the tax. Republican senators are openly hostile to it. And Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a member of the Freedom Caucus, has said he has a “natural hesitancy” to support the tax.

Democrats, emboldened by Trump’s defeat on health care, again look poised to be unified against Trump tax reform, making Republican unity critical for passage.

Cyber Firm Rewrites Part of Disputed Russian Hacking Report

U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year's American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.

In December, CrowdStrike said it found evidence that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, contributing to heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine's war with pro-Russian separatists. VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened.

After CrowdStrike released its Ukraine report, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch claimed it provided added evidence of Russian election interference. ... On Thursday, CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report.

Devin Nunes rejects Democrats' calls to quit Trump-Russia investigation

The embattled House intelligence committee chairman, Devin Nunes, has refused to recuse himself from the committee’s investigation into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, despite calls from Democrats.

“Why would I?” asked Nunes, who has lost the confidence of the Democrats on the intelligence committee after a series of allegations that they consider a cover-up for the White House. “It’s the same thing as always around this place: a lot of politics, people get heated, but I’m not going to involve myself with that.”

The speaker of the House gave Nunes his full confidence on Tuesday. Asked at a press conference whether he should step down, Paul Ryan, the most senior Republican in Congress, responded simply: “No.”

The Surveillance State Behind Russia-gate

Although many details are still hazy because of secrecy – and further befogged by politics – it appears House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was informed last week about invasive electronic surveillance of senior U.S. government officials and, in turn, passed that information onto President Trump. This news presents Trump with an unwelcome but unavoidable choice: confront those who have kept him in the dark about such rogue activities or live fearfully in their shadow. (The latter was the path chosen by President Obama. Will Trump choose the road less traveled?)

What President Trump decides will largely determine the freedom of action he enjoys as president on many key security and other issues. But even more so, his choice may decide whether there is a future for this constitutional republic. Either he can acquiesce to or fight against a Deep State of intelligence officials who have a myriad of ways to spy on politicians (and other citizens) and thus amass derogatory material that can be easily transformed into blackmail. ...

So, were Trump and his associates “wiretapped?” Of course not. Wiretapping went out of vogue decades ago, having been rendered obsolete by leaps in surveillance technology. The real question is: Were Trump and his associates surveilled? Wake up, America. Was no one paying attention to the disclosures from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 when he exposed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as a liar for denying that the NSA engaged in bulk collection of communications inside the United States.

The reality is that EVERYONE, including the President, is surveilled. The technology enabling bulk collection would have made the late demented FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s mouth water.

At his evening meeting on March 21 at the Old Executive Office Building, Nunes was likely informed that all telephones, emails, etc. – including his own and Trump’s – are being monitored by what the Soviets used to call “the organs of state security.” By sharing that information with Trump the next day – rather than consulting with Schiff – Nunes may have sought to avoid the risk that Schiff or someone else would come up with a bureaucratic reason to keep the President in the dark.

Blacksnake engorging:

Oil is now flowing into the Dakota Access Pipeline under Lake Oahe

Oil is flowing into the Dakota Access Pipeline below Lake Oahe, the main point of contention in a monthslong battle against the controversial project.

“Dakota Access is currently commissioning the full pipeline and is preparing to place the pipeline into service,” the company behind the project states in a status update filed late Monday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“We estimate that the line-fill process will be complete in the next several weeks, which allow us to put the Dakota Access Pipeline into service,” a spokesperson for Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the pipeline, told VICE News. Once complete, the $3.8 billion pipeline will move up to 570,000 barrels of oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

Jan Hasselman, a lawyer for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, says the fight isn’t over yet. “There is still very active litigation and we will be asking the Court to shut it back off,” she told VICE News on Tuesday.

“Regarding the question as to climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward – we’re not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money.”

-- White House budget director Mick Mulvaney

Trump Dismantles U.S. Climate Rules, Virtually Ensuring U.S. Will Break Paris Accord Promises

Donald Trump Rewards Fossil Fuel Industry By Signing Climate Denial Executive Order

Trump's executive order issued Tuesday doesn’t just knock over the centerpiece of Obama administration’s efforts to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the Clean Power Plan. It also includes a list of disastrous concessions that the fossil fuel industry and its front groups have worked for years to win.

It orders the Interior Department to end a moratorium on new coal mine leasing on federal land; directs agencies to reconsider rules limiting emissions from hydraulic fracturing; kills guidance requiring climate change be considered in environmental reviews for infrastructure projects; and calls for a re-calculating of the social cost of carbon, which puts a dollar value on what greenhouse gas emissions cost society. Trump’s order also demands federal agencies rethink any policy that stands in the way of energy development and cancels other Obama-era climate efforts such as his Climate Action Plan. ...

Meanwhile, climate and environmental advocates are preparing to stand in the way of Trump via lawsuits and demonstrations. Organizers involved in resisting the Dakota Access pipeline have moved their fight to new spaces, starting a camp in Iowa branded as a “progressive think tank and resistance to the Trump administration.” Camps built to protest the Diamond Pipeline were recently established in Oklahoma. And the renewed fight against the Keystone XL will be infused with energy from Dakota Access veterans.

Ponca Nation member Mekasi Camp Horinek has fought all three pipelines. “I want to say thank you to the president for all the bad decisions that he’s making — for the bad cabinet appointments that he’s made and for awakening a sleeping giant. People that have never stood up for themselves, people that have never had their voices heard, that have never put their bodies on the line are now outraged,” he told The Intercept shortly after Trump signed his order reviving Keystone XL.

“I would like to say thank you to President Trump for his bigotry, for his sexism, for bringing all of us in this nation together to stand up and unite.”

Nuclear Power Suffers Major Blow With Westinghouse Bankruptcy

Major nuclear power company Westinghouse, a U.S. subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday in a massive blow to the industry. The filing marked "a defining moment in the decades-long downward spiral of the global nuclear power industry," wrote Greenpeace Japan in a statement.

"Toshiba/Westinghouse is responsible for building more nuclear reactors worldwide than any other entity," the group observed. "With the financial meltdown of Westinghouse, Toshiba also recently announced its plans to withdraw from foreign construction projects—a move that has far-reaching implications outside Japan and the U.S., such as the construction of three reactors in the U.K. at Moorside."

"We have all but completely pulled out of the nuclear business overseas," Toshiba president Satoshi Tsunakawa said at a news conference, according to the New York Times.

The Times further reports:

The filing comes as the company's corporate parent, Toshiba of Japan, scrambles to stanch huge losses stemming from Westinghouse's troubled nuclear construction projects in the American South. Now, the future of those projects, which once seemed to be on the leading edge of a renaissance for nuclear energy, is in doubt.

"This is a fairly big and consequential deal," said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. "You've had some power companies and big utilities run into financial trouble, but this kind of thing hasn't happened."

"Toshiba/Westinghouse find themselves a victim of their own hubris and a nuclear industry where financial prudence was never a strong point," Greenpeace Germany added in a brief (pdf).

Dead Sea evidence of unprecedented drought is warning for future

Far below the Dead Sea, between Israel, Jordan and Palestinian territories, researchers have found evidence of a drought that has no precedent in human experience.

From depths of 300 metres below the landlocked basin, drillers brought to the surface a core that contained 30 metres of thick, crystalline salt: evidence that 120,000 years ago, and again about 10,000 years ago, rainfall had been only about one fifth of modern levels. The cause in each case would have been entirely natural. But in the region where human civilisation began, already in the grip of its worst drought for 900 years, it is a reminder of how bad things could get and a guide to how much worse human-induced climate change could become.

“All the observations show this region is one of those most affected by modern climate change and it’s predicted to get dryer. What we showed is that even under natural conditions, it can become much drier than predicted by any of our models,” said Yael Kiro, a geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in the US. ...

Rainfall in the region has fallen by 10% since 1950, and could continue to fall this century. In Syria, 15 years of drought are thought to have played a part in triggering the cruel civil war that has displaced millions and created a refugee crisis for Europe, and even briefly masked the entire region in an unprecedented dust storm.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Trump Declares War on The Planet in Real-Life Remake of The Purge

Body Count for the American Century

Civilians in western Mosul are being shot at by Isis and Iraqi forces alike

How to protect your online history now that Republicans want to let internet providers sell it

Wells Fargo Gets An Additional $110 Million Wrist Slap Over Fake Accounts Scandal

Nearly extinct tigers found breeding in Thai jungle

The Lovings, a marriage that changed history – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Frank Frost - Jelly Roll King

Frank Frost - Pretty Baby

Frank Frost - Scratch My Back

Frank Frost - Ernest's Groove

Frank Frost - Now What You Gonna Do, My Back Scratcher, Never Leave Me At Home

Frank Frost - Unseen Eye

Frank Frost & Sam Carr - Love I Have Is True, Sittin' On Daddy's Knee

Frank Frost - Ride With Your Daddy Tonight

Frank Frost - Now Twist