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This evening's music features Los Angeles harmonica player and songwriter Harmonica Fats. Enjoy!

"No matter how many times a privileged straight white male technology executive pronounces the death of privacy, Privacy Is Not Dead. People of all ages care deeply about privacy. And they care just as much about privacy online as they do offline."

-- danah boyd

News and Opinion

Apple Wins Major Court Victory Against FBI in a Case Similar to San Bernardino

Apple scored a major legal victory in its ongoing battle against the FBI on Monday when a federal magistrate judge in New York rejected the U.S. government’s request as part of a drug case to force the company to help it extract data from a locked iPhone. The ruling from U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein was issued as part of the criminal case against Jun Feng, who pleaded guilty in October to drug charges. It is a significant boost to Apple’s well-publicized campaign to resist the FBI’s similar efforts in the case of the San Bernardino killers.

In the case that gave rise to Monday’s ruling, the Drug Enforcement Administration had seized — but, even after consultation with the FBI, claimed it was unable to access — Feng’s iPhone 5. The DEA and FBI said they could not overcome security measures embedded in Apple’s operating system. The government thus filed a motion seeking an order requiring “Apple to assist” the investigation “under the authority of the All Writs Act” — the same 1789 law the FBI is invoking in the San Bernardino case — by “help[ing] the government bypass the passcode security.” Apple objected, noting that there were nine other cases currently pending in which the government was seeking a similar order.

Judge Orenstein applied previous legal decisions interpreting the AWA and concluded that the law does not “justif[y] imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government’s investigation against its will.” In a formulation extremely favorable to Apple, the judge wrote that the key question raised by the government’s request is whether the AWA allows a court “to compel Apple — a private party with no alleged involvement in Feng’s criminal activity — to perform work for the government against its will.”

The court ruled that the law permits no such result — both because relevant law contains limits on what companies like Apple are required to do, and because Congress never enacted any such obligations. Moreover, the judge said of the government’s arguments for how the AWA should be applied: “The implications of the government’s position are so far-reaching — both in terms of what it would allow today and what it implies about congressional intent in 1789 — as to produce impermissibly absurd results.”

Summoned to Capitol Hill, Apple Comes Armed With Questions for Congress

Bruce Sewell, Apple’s top lawyer and senior vice president, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. In the prepared text of his opening statement, Sewell calls for public debate around three questions in particular.

“The American people deserve an honest conversation around the important questions stemming from the FBI’s current demand,” Sewell wrote.

“Do we want to put a limit on the technology that protects our data, and therefore our privacy and our safety, in the face of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks?”

“Should the FBI be allowed to stop Apple, or any company, from offering the American people the safest and most secure product it can make?”

And: “Should the FBI have the right to compel a company to produce a product it doesn’t already make, to the FBI’s exact specifications and for the FBI’s use?”

California Courts Demand Total Access to Email and Social Media Accounts

[A] new law, the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (CalECPA), requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant before searching a person’s cellphone, laptop, or any digital storage device. At issue is whether the law covers people on probation, parole, and other forms of supervised release who’ve agreed to what’s known as a “Fourth waiver,” a condition that allows law enforcement to search their person and property at any time.

CalECPA took effect on January 1, 2016. Three days later, San Diego County prosecutors and Superior Court judges began asking defendants who were eligible for probation to sign a form giving “specific consent” to county probation officers “and/or a law enforcement government entity” to collect information that would be otherwise protected under CalECPA.

The consent form described everything that could be searched and seized:

Call logs, text and voicemail messages, photographs, emails, and social media account contents contained on any device or cloud or internet connected storage owned, operated, or controlled by the defendant, including but not limited to mobile phones, computers, computer hard drives, laptops, gaming consoles, mobile devices, tablets, storage media devices, thumb drives, Micro SD cards, external hard drives, or any other electronic storage devices, by probation and/or a law enforcement entity seeking the information.

The defendant shall also disclose any and all passwords, passcodes, password patterns, fingerprints, or other information required to gain access into any of the aforementioned devices or social media accounts.

Defense attorneys immediately protested, arguing that the form had been drawn up without input from the defense bar and that the language was vague and overly broad.

“Folks on parole, probation, even supervised release, they have a reduced expectation of privacy while they’re under supervision,” said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, criminal justice and drug policy director for the ACLU of California, “but that’s not the same as no right to privacy online or offline.”

Assange supporters condemn UK and Sweden in open letter

Supporters of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have published an open letter signed by 500 prominent artists, Nobel prize winners and human rights organisations accusing the UK and Sweden of undermining the UN. ...

Assange, who has sought asylum in the Ecuador embassy, is wanted in Sweden for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations, which he denies. This month the UN working group on arbitrary detention (UNWGAD) formally found that he had been subject to arbitrary detention, partially on the grounds that Swedish prosecutors used disproportionate methods, including a European arrest warrant, rather than initially interviewing him in the UK. ...

The international letter declares: “We … condemn the reactions of the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom to the finding by UNWGAD that Julian Assange is arbitrarily detained. The governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom are setting a dangerous precedent that undermines the United Nations human rights system as a whole.

“We urge Sweden and the United Kingdom to respect the binding nature of the human rights covenants on which the decision is based, including the international covenant on civil and political rights; as well as the independence, integrity and authority of the office of the high commissioner for human rights and the working group on arbitrary detention.” ...

The letter was presented to a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday. The UK has said it will challenge the WGAD opinion.

Former Guantanamo Commander Ignores Summons From French Court Probing Torture

Retired U.S. Army General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, did not appear for questioning before a French court on Tuesday, after being subpoenaed last month.

Miller was summoned to answer questions about his role in the detention and torture of two former Guantanamo detainees, French citizens Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi. After being transferred to French custody, both were acquitted of terrorism-related charges in 2009.

Willaim Bourdon, Benchellali’s lawyer, confirmed to The Intercept that the plaintiffs will request an arrest warrant for Miller. It could only be enforced if he enters the country. ...

With Obama shielding U.S. officials from criminal and civil liability, former detainees are turning to international courts for justice – but the Obama administration is not cooperating. In 2012, the judge in Benchellali and Sassi’s case requested U.S. government documents related to the plaintiffs’ detentions, but got no response.

Cameron Talks Up ‘Brilliant’ Arms Sales to Saudis After EU Call to Stop

Visiting with employees of key arms-maker BAE Systems, British Prime Minister David Cameron bragged up growing British arms sales to Saudi Arabia, saying BAE and other nations were sending “brilliant” and advanced weapons like Typhoon warplanes to the Saudis. ...

Cameron’s comments come after months of human rights groups blasting arms exports to the Saudis, but were even more ill-timed coming just a day after the European Parliament voted 359-212 on a non-binding motion calling for all EU nations to impose an arms embargo on the Saudis.

The Saudis have faced widespread international condemnation for the massive number of civilians killed in their airstrikes against Yemen, with a UN report concluding the practice was deliberate and amounted to a war crime.

Pentagon Proposes Further Expansion of Role in Iraq War

Always on the look out to escalate their involvement in the war against ISIS, Defense Secretary Ash Carter today told reporters that the Pentagon is planning a series of proposals for the Obama Administration to approve more activities for the thousands of US troops on the ground in Iraq.

“We’re talking about more of the things that we did in Ramadi, but we are talking about additional things of the kind that we’ve offered previously,” Carter insisted. Though that seems deliberately vague, he is known to have pushed the idea of US attack helicopters and embedded US troops in Iraqi combat units previously, and those are likely among the proposals.

‘Turkish military actions on Syrian border could lead to truce disruption’

Syrian Troops Fight al-Qaeda, Seize Key Area Near Damascus

As the Syrian ceasefire continued to hold among the parties involved, the Syrian military pushed an offensive against al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which is not a party to the ceasefire, seizing territory from them just east of Damascus.

The land is in Eastern Ghouta, and located in an important area between a pair of neighborhoods in the mostly rebel-dominated Damascus suburbs. The rebels, as usual, were none too happy, insisting it amounted to a “nullification” of the ceasefire.

Yet the ceasefire explicitly excluded Nusra Front, as well as ISIS, so the fact that the Syrian military is still fighting those two factions, while galling for the rebels, isn’t a violation of the terms of the ceasefire. Rather, it was exactly what was intended, as the US and Russia hoped the ceasefire would shift everyone’s focus to the Islamist groups.

Syria ceasefire holds in its fourth day despite accusations of violations

Justice at last for Guatemalan women as military officers jailed for sexual slavery

As the packed supreme court in Guatemala City cheered the historic guilty verdicts against two military officers in a precedent-setting sexual slavery case, the surviving Mayan Q’eqchi’ victims simply raised their right arms in unison to acknowledge justice had finally been served.

After 20 days of dramatic testimony, a retired army officer and a former paramilitary were convicted on Friday of sexually enslaving 15 indigenous women during the country’s civil war. ...

On Tuesday, the women will be awarded compensation for the long-term physical, psychological and economic harm suffered as a consequence of being systematically raped and forced into bondage for up to six years.

But after more than 30 years of shame, the women had perhaps already received a form of justice when the court declared: “We believe you … it wasn’t your fault … the army terrorised you in order to destroy your community.”

Throughout Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, rape was widely used as a weapon, according to human rights groups. But last week’s ruling marked the first time, anyone had faced justice for sexual violence during the conflict – and the first time anywhere in the world that sexual slavery perpetrated during an armed conflict had been prosecuted in the country where the crimes took place.

And while the plight of Filipino and Korean “comfort women” forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during the second world war remains the subject of high-level diplomatic disputes, similar crimes committed by the US’s cold war allies in Central America have until now gone unpunished.

Utilities Cautioned About Potential for a Cyberattack After Ukraine’s

The Obama administration has warned the nation’s power companies, water suppliers and transportation networks that sophisticated cyberattack techniques used to bring down part of Ukraine’s power grid two months ago could easily be turned on them.

After an extensive inquiry, American investigators concluded that the attack in Ukraine on Dec. 23 may well have been the first power blackout triggered by a cyberattack — a circumstance many have long predicted. Working remotely, the attackers conducted “extensive reconnaissance” of the power system’s networks, stole the credentials of system operators and learned how to switch off the breakers, plunging more than 225,000 Ukrainians into darkness. ...

Officials have found it intriguing that the attack did not appear designed to shut down the entire country. “This appears to be message-sending,” said one senior administration official with access to the intelligence, who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing inquiry.

Equally interesting to investigators was the technique used: The malware designed for the Ukrainian power grid was directed at “industrial control systems,” systems that act as the intermediary between computers and the switches that distribute electricity and guide trains as they speed down the track, the valves that control water supplies, and the machinery that mixes chemicals at factories.

The most famous such attack was the Stuxnet worm, which destroyed the centrifuges that enriched uranium at the Natanz nuclear site in Iran. But that is not an example often cited by American officials — largely because the attack was conducted by the United States and Israel, a fact American officials have never publicly acknowledged.

What could possibly go wrong with this?

Guns now allowed in Texas’ state-run psychiatric hospitals

Licensed gun owners can now bring their firearms into Texas’ 10 state psychiatric hospitals.

Until this year, guns were banned at the state-run facilities, which house people with serious mental illnesses. No one — visitors, delivery people and the like — could bring firearms anywhere on the hospitals’ campuses. Even local law enforcement officers, who were allowed to bring their weapons into the facilities, regularly lock up their guns before entering Austin State Hospital out of an abundance of caution. That isn’t expected to change.

But state officials say two new laws made it clear to them that they can’t keep guns off the hospitals’ campuses. The open carry law allows gun license holders to openly carry their firearms. A second law fines state agencies for wrongly hanging “no guns” signs.

New Study Confirms: Private 'Trade' Courts Serve the Ultra-Wealthy

A new study confirms what many activists have suspected for a long time: The private courts set up by international “trade” deals heavily favor billionaires and giant corporations, and they do so at the expense of governments and people.

Smaller companies and less-wealthy individuals don’t benefit nearly as much from these private courts as the extremely rich and powerful do. Other interested parties – whether they’re governments, children, working people, or the planet itself – are unable to benefit from these private courts at all. ...

Activists have been arguing for a long time that this process is unfairly skewed toward powerful corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals. Now there is data to back up that opinion. A new study published by York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto has concluded that “the beneficiaries of ISDS … have overwhelmingly been companies with more than $1 billion per year in annual revenue – especially extra-large companies with more than $10 billion – and individuals with more than $100 million in net wealth.”

Report authors Gus Van Harten and Pavel Malysheuski point out that the “legitimacy” of the ISDS concept “appears to depend in part on an expectation that it benefits smaller businesses, not just large multinationals and the super wealthy.”

But that doesn’t appear to be the case. Virtually all of the financial benefits of the ISDS have gone to the rich and powerful. Nearly 95 percent of all award money went to giant corporations or extremely wealthy individuals.

Some Real Costs of the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Nearly Half a Million Jobs Lost in the US Alone

The Trans-Pacifc Partnership (TPP) Agreement, recently agreed to by twelve Pacifc Rim countries led by the United States, promises to ease many restrictions on cross-border transactions and harmonize regulations. Proponents of the agreement have claimed significant economic benefits, citing modest overall net GDP gains, ranging from half of one percent in the United States to 13 percent in Vietnam after fifteen years. Their claims, however, rely on many unjustified assumptions, including full employment in every country and no resulting impacts on working people’s incomes, with more than 90 percent of overall growth gains due to ‘non-trade measures’ with varying impacts.

A recent GDAE Working Paper finds that with more realistic methodological assumptions, critics of the TPP indeed have reason to be concerned. Using the trade projections for the most optimistic growth forecasts, we find that the TPP is more likely to lead to net employment losses in many countries (771,000 jobs lost overall, with 448,000 in the United States alone) and higher inequality in all country groupings. Declining worker purchasing power would weaken aggregate demand, slowing economic growth. The United States (-0.5 percent) and Japan (-0.1 percent) are projected to suffer small net income losses, not gains, from the TPP.

Optimistic claims about the TPP’s economic impacts are largely based on economic modeling projections published by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics.

[The Peterson Institute is known for both its hostility to the interests of the 99% and for cooked research. - js]

Oil Giant Cuts Budget By 80 Percent And Suspends Fracking

Whiting Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:WLL), the largest oil producer in North Dakota, has announced that it will suspend all fracking in the state and cut its budget for this year by 80 percent in a move that sent its shares up 9 percent on Wednesday, back down to a record low on Thursday, and $4.02 Friday morning.

Across the E&P patch, it’s a volatile game of craps right now that has investors torn between responding positively to spending cuts to weather the oil price downturn, and negatively to the notion that all these companies are doing is narrowly avoiding bankruptcy.

As of 1 April, Whiting will halt all fracking and stop completing its wells at 20 Bakken and three Forks sites. By this summer it will cut spending to $160 million for the rest of year to fund maintenance.

These are some of the biggest spending cuts in the industry so far, and investors have responded positively to Whiting’s strategy for waiting out low oil prices.

“We believe this conservative strategy should help us to maintain our liquidity position and leave us well positioned to capitalize on a rebound in oil prices,” Whiting Chief Executive Jim Volker said in a statement carried by Reuters.

The news comes along with Whiting’s fourth-quarter results, which posted a net loss of $0.80 per share and revenues of $2.05 billion compared with 2014 EPS of $4.15 and revenues of $3.09 billion.

Corporate defaults expected to rise 30% in 2016, says Moody’s

The default rate for all corporate issuers rated by Moody’s Investors Service is expected to rise more than 30% in 2016 to its highest rate since the 2008-09 crisis.

Moody’s is expecting the rate to climb to 2.1% from 1.7% in 2015. That implies 138 defaults in the year, which would be almost a third more than in 2015.

World's 20 richest people are $70bn poorer, says Forbes

More than $70bn (£50bn) has been wiped off the wealth of the world’s 20 richest people following a slump on global financial markets, according to the latest annual ranking of billionaires by Forbes.

The combined wealth of the top 20 has fallen from $899bn last year to $827bn. The Forbes report also shows that the number of billionaires has fallen from a record 1,826 in 2015 to 1,810.

The list continues to be dominated by men. Out of 1,810 billionaires, just 190 are women, a fall from 197 in 2015.

The biggest loser was Carlos Slim, the Mexican telecoms tycoon, who has seen his fortune drop from $77.1bn to $50bn in a year.

Bill Gates has been crowned the richest man in the world for the third year in a row, although the Microsoft founder’s fortune also dipped from $79.2bn to $75bn.

The biggest gainer was Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, whose wealth grew by $11.2bn to give him a total net worth of $44.6bn.

While I would argue with some of the peculiar historical notions in this article (well, actually, pretty much reject them out of hand) - there is this, fairly good observation:

Why are there suddenly millions of socialists in America?

Why, then, this embrace of a socialist identity by millions of Americans who in earlier times might have been content to call themselves liberal? Sanders’s campaign, for one, has doubtless removed some of socialism’s stigma. The collapse of Soviet communism has allowed younger Americans to identify socialism with the social democratic nations of Western Europe, all of which suffer from less economic inequality and its attendant woes than the United States.

But the prime mover of millions of Americans into the socialist column has been the near complete dysfunctionality of contemporary American capitalism. Where once the regulated, unionized and semi-socialized capitalism of the mid-20th century produced a vibrant middle class majority, the deregulated, deunionized and financialized capitalism of the past 35 years has produced record levels of inequality, a shrinking middle class, and scant economic opportunities (along with record economic burdens) for the young.

Holy shit! Right-wing economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin has had an epiphany - right in the middle of a Bloomberg(!?!!) article about angry working class people!!!

Angry Americans: How the 2008 Crash Fueled a Political Rebellion

The one story about the U.S. economy that has virtually no traction among American voters right now is that it’s doing OK.

Anyone inclined to tell that story, as President Barack Obama did in his final State of the Union address in January, can find headline data to back it up. But primary-season revolts -- the Donald Trump mutiny against the Republican establishment, and the fiercer-than-expected challenge from Bernie Sanders against a Democratic frontrunner with all the advantages -- are driven by fed-up Americans saying it isn’t so. And looking behind the headlines, the numbers might be on their side.

["might be on their side?" wake up and smell your own bullshit numbers bloomies! - js]

Unemployment at an eight-year low? Yes, but by most measures of the labor force, participation is down. More than six years of almost uninterrupted growth? Better than much of the industrialized world, for sure, but at a pace that won’t see the economy closing its output gap until 2026 at the earliest. Wage growth finally edging higher? Maybe so, in the aggregate, but not by much -- and anyway, whose wages? ...

[There's a chart demonstrating that only the wages of the top 10% have increased since 2006 embedded in the article. - js]

“For families who are hearing everyone say, ‘The recession is over, we’ve recovered, it’s all good,’ they’re like, ‘Wait a minute, I haven’t recovered at all -- in fact it’s gotten worse’,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “That’s a big inconsistency between what they’re seeing in their day-to-day lives and what they’re hearing. That’s the kind of thing that makes people angry.”

Thank you Bill and Hillary Clinton for "the end of welfare as we know it." Your kindness and caring are just overwhelming.

In One Month We Will Begin Intentionally Starving Poor People

At the end of March, 22 states will begin imposing work requirements on people who want food stamps. Hundreds of thousands of people will likely lose their food aid.

The Wall Street Journal reports that starting on April 1, all of those states plan to reinstate a rule that had been set aside after the financial crisis led to mass unemployment: that adults with no dependents or disabilities are limited to “three months of food stamps in any three-year period—unless they work at least 80 hours a month, or meet education and training or volunteer benchmarks.” ...

So now, hundreds of thousands of people will go hungry, so that some other, smaller number of better-off people can believe that they are not being ripped off by people they do not know and will never see.

More Than 500,000 Adults Will Lose SNAP Benefits in 2016 as Waivers Expire

Affected Unemployed Childless Individuals Are Very Poor; Few Qualify for Other Help

More than 500,000 and as many as 1 million of the nation’s poorest people will be cut off SNAP (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) over the course of 2016, due to the return in many areas of a three-month limit on SNAP benefits for unemployed adults aged 18-49 who aren’t disabled or raising minor children. These individuals will lose their food assistance benefits after three months regardless of how hard they are looking for work. The impact will be felt in the 23 states that must or are choosing to reimpose the time limit in 2016. ...

The indigent individuals at risk are diverse. More than 40 percent are women. Close to one-third are over age 40. Among those who report their race, about half are white, a third are African American, and a tenth are Hispanic. Half have only a high school diploma or GED, and one-quarter have not completed high school. They live in all areas of the country, and among those for whom data on metropolitan status are available, close to 40 percent live in urban areas, 40 percent in suburban areas, and over 20 percent in rural areas.

Many in this population, which generally has limited education and skills and limited job prospects, struggle to find employment even in normal economic times. And although the overall unemployment rate is slowly falling, other labor market data indicate that many people who want to work still cannot find jobs, while others who want to work full-time can find only part-time employment. Cutting off food assistance to poor unemployed and underemployed workers doesn’t enable them to find employment or secure more hours of work.

Brokered Conventions and Party Breaks Ups Would Make Tuesday Truly Super

The Clintons and Wall Street: 24 Years of Enriching Each Other

For twenty four years the Clintons have orchestrated a conjugal relationship with Wall Street, to the immense financial benefit of both parties. They have accepted from the New York banks $68.72 million in campaign contributions for their six political races, and $8.85 million more in speaking fees. The banks have earned hundreds of billions of dollars in practices that were once prohibited—until the Clinton Administration legalized them. ...

Wall Street’s gratitude [to the Clinton's for Bill Clinton's many favors to the industry while in office] quickly found expression. When the Clintons left the White House, they bought a 7-bedroom house near Embassy Row in Washington, with a $1.995 million mortgage. It must have been the prototype “subprime,” because the Clintons “…were not only dead broke, but in debt,” as Ms. Clinton later recalled. Robert Rubin, however, had moved on from the Treasury Department to Citigroup, where the nearly $2 million in credit was quickly extended

The Clintons did manage the mortgage payments. Sixteen days after leaving the White House, Mr. Clinton delivered a speech to the Wall Street firm of Morgan Stanley, for which he was paid $125,000. That was the first of many speeches he presented to Wall Street banks in following years. By May of 2015, Mr. Clinton had earned $1,550,000 from Goldman Sachs, $1,690,000 from UBS, $1,075,000 from Bank of America, $770,000 from Deutsche Bank,, and $700,000 from Citigroup. In total, $5,910,000. ...

The Clinton Administration, with a Treasury Secretary from Wall Street, passed laws enabling the banks to launch a financial skyrocket. The Bush Administration, with a Treasury Secretary from Wall Street, covered their losses with taxpayers’ money when the rocket fell to earth. The Obama Administration, with a Treasury Secretary from Wall Street and a Wall Street Attorney General as well, granted vast financial favors to the banks and absolved them of criminal behavior.

During all of those years the Clintons benefited immensely from Wall Street’s political contributions: $11.17 million for Bill’s 1992 campaign; $28.37 million for his 1996 re-election; $2.13 million for Hillary’s 2000 run for the Senate; $6.02 million for her 2006 re-election; and $14.61 million for her first presidential campaign. And they’ve been paid $8.85 million by the financial industry in speaking fees.

The intimate interplay of ambition and greed between the Clintons and Wall Street has continued for nearly a quarter century. It is a tawdry history, ignored or trivialized by the Clintons, anxious to obscure it.

Pro-Clinton union threatens labor official to back out of Sanders event

A union supporting Hillary Clinton reportedly pressured a labor official to back out of speaking at an event held by Bernie Sanders, the former secretary of State's rival in the Democratic presidential race.

Jeff Johnson, the head of the Washington State Labor Council, was scheduled to speak in Seattle during a "Labor for Bernie" rally, the Huffington Post reported Tuesday. But an international labor union threatened to take away funding from Johnson's group if he spoke at the event, an emcee told the audience at the event. ...

Sources told the Huffington Post that the the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) — a member of the AFL-CIO that has endorsed Clinton — pressured Johnson. The AFSCME was not named during the rally.

Melissa Harris-Perry and the Fall of the "Negro Whisperers

The Final 1,700 Hillary Clinton Emails Were Just Released — And One Was Not

The State Department completed its release of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails Monday, posting the final 3,800 pages to its website just hours before Super Tuesday, when voters in 12 states will vote for a potential presidential candidate.

State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that one email was being withheld at the request of an unnamed law enforcement agency, but that no other emails were classified Top Secret. He noted that one email, previously classified Top Secret by the Intelligence Community Inspector General, was downgraded to Secret. The July 2009 email pertains to North Korea's nuclear program. ...

But Kirby said 261 other emails released Monday were marked Secret and "confidential," bringing the total to 2,115 emails that contain classified information. Twenty-two of Clinton's emails were previously classified Top Secret, meaning the correspondence contains information that would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if disclosed.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Endorsing Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders campaign facing stern test on Super Tuesday

The Bernie Sanders campaign is bracing for a difficult national debut across the 11 states that vote for a Democratic presidential nominee on Tuesday, despite a record-breaking haul of small donations that could give it the money to keep fighting against Hillary Clinton regardless of the result. ...

“It’s a rough map for us,” conceded the senator’s wife, Jane Sanders, as the campaign team returned to their home in Burlington, Vermont, on Monday night from a 6,200-mile trip to eight states in three days. “I wish 11 states weren’t up tomorrow. I wish there were 48 hours in the day.”

“The national media didn’t really start covering Bernie that much until the beginning of 2016, so they are not as familiar with him in the south,” Jane Sanders added. “Time has been against us. We have had two months for people to be familiar with Bernie’s message.”

The senator himself appeared less daunted by expected heavy losses in places like Georgia and Virginia, and vowed to continue running until the Democratic national convention this July in the hope that more favourable states such as California and New York will eventually come into play.

“At the end of tomorrow I think 15 states will have spoken,” Senator Sanders said after landing for a final rally in Boston. “Last I heard, we have a lot more than 15 states in the United States of America. I think it is more than appropriate to give all of those states and the people in them a chance to vote for the candidate of their choice.”

Neoconservatives Declare War on Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican thinking for decades.

Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan — one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq War and an advocate for Syrian intervention — announced in the Washington Post last week that if Trump secures the nomination, “the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.”

Max Boot, an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, wrote in the Weekly Standard that a “Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power,” citing, among other things, Trump’s objection to a large American troop presence in South Korea.

Trump has done much to trigger the scorn of neocon pundits. He denounced the Iraq War as a mistake based on Bush administration lies, just prior to scoring a sizable victory in the South Carolina GOP primary. In last week’s contentious GOP presidential debate, he defended the concept of neutrality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is utterly taboo on the neocon right. ...

With Trump’s ascendancy, it’s possible that the parties will reorient their views on war and peace, with Trump moving the GOP to a more dovish direction and Clinton moving the Democrats towards greater support for war.

Donald Trump Wants to Commit War Crimes and Neocons Still Think He's Too Moderate

The 1% media screams for more Donald!

CBS CEO: “For Us, Economically, Donald’s Place in This Election Is a Good Thing”

Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, celebrated Donald Trump’s candidacy for the second time on Monday, calling it “good for us economically.” Moonves, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference at the Park Hotel in San Francisco, described the “circus” of a presidential campaign and the flow of political advertising dollars, and stated that it “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS, that’s all I got to say.”

“So what can I say? The money’s rolling in, this is fun,” Moonves continued, observing that the debates had attracted record audiences.

The CBS media executive also riffed briefly about the type of campaign advertising spending produced by such a negative presidential campaign. “They’re not even talking about issues. They’re throwing bombs at each other and I think the advertising reflects that.” Moonves added, “I’ve never seen anything like this and this is going to be a very good year for us. … It’s a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going.”

Sanders Hits Rivals on Climate, Declares Opposition to Enbridge Pipelines

During a campaign stop in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Monday, Bernie Sanders took decisive aim at the fossil fuel industry and his Republican colleagues who deny the science of climate change, telling the crowd: "I do not know what [they] are smoking."

Sanders launched into his speech with the declaration: "Climate change is real, climate change is caused by human activity, and climate change is already doing devastating harm in our country and all over the world."

"Now," he continued, "I don't know what my Republican colleagues are smoking, but they go around the country and they say, 'Well climate change is a hoax. It is not real.' It is a very dangerous thing for a nation when you reject science. I will not reject science. What the scientific community found is that—as serious and dangerous as the situation is today—it will only get worse in the coming years if we do not get our act together and transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency."

In Minnesota, which is among the states holding a presidential primary on Super Tuesday, oil giant Enbridge is currently seeking to build two new pipelines, the Sandpiper and the Alberta Clipper, which together would transport over 1.4 million barrels of oil per day.

During the rally, which was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Sanders declared his opposition to those projects.

"President Obama said when his administration was reviewing Keystone XL that he wouldn’t grant approval if the project made climate change significantly worse," Sanders said. "A Sanders administration would direct the State Department to apply that same test to the Alberta Clipper and the Sandpiper, because we need to ensure corporations don’t keep wrecking our climate and environment for their own profit." ...

Last week, his campaign also released an email criticizing Clinton for her support of fracking, as well as for attending a fundraiser hosted by a major fracking investor. "[J]ust as I believe you can't take on Wall Street while taking their money, I don't believe you can take on climate change effectively while taking money from those who would profit off the destruction of the planet," the email stated.

Revealed: Big Oil's Backroom Lobby Blitz to Drill in Arctic...Again

After the very public failure of a number of Arctic drilling attempts last year, Big Oil companies are lobbying the government of Canada to extend their drilling licenses and relinquish hundreds of millions in security deposits, reporting on Monday revealed.

The National Observer's Mike De Souza reports that the Trudeau administration is proceeding with a review of Canada's Petroleum Resources Act, which "internal federal briefing notes show" was initiated by the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper—a notorious "climate villain"—at the behest of oil industry lobbyists.

According to De Souza, as the law currently stands, companies including "Imperial Oil, Exxon Mobil Corp., BP Plc., and Chevron Corp. would be forced in the coming years to walk away from their proposed projects since they have not been able to convince federal authorities that they can drill for oil in the Arctic—before their licenses expire—without causing an environmental disaster."

Not only do those oil giants want an extension on their contracts, they are seeking repayment on the collective $500 million in security deposits to obtain those licenses—after they give Arctic drilling another shot.

"The changes to the law proposed by the oil industry lobbyists would allow them to extend exploration licenses beyond a maximum nine-year term so that they can pursue their projects without paying any new security deposits," De Souza reports. "At the same time, an extension of the licenses could allow companies to get refunds on the hundreds of millions of dollars that they already paid to the government, once they begin to drill for oil."

Days of Revolt: Sacrifice Zones

Damning Flint Emails Show Snyder Could Have Called Emergency 'at Any Time'

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder could have declared a state of emergency in Flint over its water contamination crisis months earlier than he did, according to new emails released Sunday that contradict the governor's defense of his delayed actions.

Snyder, who declared a state of emergency in Flint and Genesee County on January 5—months after acknowledging there was lead in the region's public water supply—has repeatedly said he could not take action until local officials made a request, which Genesee County did on January 4.

However, a November 13 email sent to Snyder's office from Michigan State Police (MSP) Captain Chris Kelenske, who also serves as the deputy state director of emergency management and homeland security, reads, "As you know, the Governor can declare at any time, for any reason."

"The state will formally own the event if we put a Governor's Declaration in place," Kelenske wrote to Snyder's deputy legal counsel, Paul Smith. "This could be viewed as the state having owned up to how the water issue was caused."

Previously released communications suggest that Snyder told state officials to suppress lead testing results and that the governor knew the water was toxic as far back as October 2014.

PVC Maker Offers Free Replacement of Flint Water Pipes

The world’s largest plastic pipe supplier says it will replace all the lead pipes that contributed to the public health catastrophe in Flint.

Los Angeles-based JM Eagle CEO Walter Wang made his magnanimous offer to the Flint City Council Monday. The city can keep its money, he said, and his company will replace all of the lead lines supplying water to Flint houses free of charge.

The offer, which hasn’t been formalized, comes with a 50-year guarantee on the pipe, designed to last a century.

Also of Interest

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

Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy is pure fantasy

Elif Shafak on Turkey’s turmoil: ‘Intimidation and paranoia dominates the land’

End Times for the Caliphate?

Donald Trump’s Appeal to White Nationalism

The New York Times’ Strange Behavior in the Controversy Over Trump’s Off-The-Record Comments

FBI vs. Apple is Really About Snowden

Slave Masters, Company Town Bosses, and 21st Century U.S. Politics

Clarence Thomas shocks supreme court by ending 10-year oral argument silence

Could Cthulhu trump the other Super Tuesday contenders?

A Little Night Music

Harmonica Fats - Tore Up (Over You)

Harmonica Fats - My Baby Didn't Come Home

Harmonica Fats - How Low Is Low

Harmonica Fats - Mama, Mama, Talk To Your Daughter For Me

Harmonica Fats - Drive Way Blues

Harmonica Fats With Joe Kincaid & Soul Brother Band - Harmonica Symphony Stomp

Harmonica Fats + Bernie Pearl - You got your mouth stuck out

Harmonica Fats - Long cool (Summertime) & Top show