Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues singer and guitarist Fenton Robinson. Enjoy!

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

-- Primo Levi

News and Opinion

The FBI Says a 'Third Party' May Know How to Unlock the iPhone Without Apple’s Help

The US government postponed a major hearing on Tuesday in the court battle to get Apple to unlock an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, claiming at the last minute that an unidentified "third party" has presented a possible method for opening it.

The news was greeted with skepticism by many in the tech community, who have always insisted there were other ways to get into the phone. Former prosecutors and lawyers supporting Apple said the move suggested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) feared it would lose the legal battle, or at minimum would be forced to admit that it had not tried every other way to get into the phone. ...

A federal judge in Riverside, California, [...] agreed to the government's request to postpone a hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon so that the FBI could try the newly discovered technique. The DOJ said it would update the court on April 5. ...

George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former DOJ computer crime prosecutor, said the government was likely only postponing the fight.

"The problem is not going away, it's just been delayed for a year or two," he said.

Brussels Attacks - Iraqi Intel says attacks revenge for Abdeslam capture

Two explosions ripped through Brussels airport Tuesday during the morning rush hour as hundreds of passengers were trying to check in. Airport authorities said the explosions caused several injuries. ...

The explosions happened only days after the prime suspect in the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels. ...

No group has claimed responsibility for the three bombings Tuesday morning that killed at least 31 people and wounded nearly 200 in Brussels. ...

An Iraqi intelligence official says sources in the Syrian city of Raqqa have told them that the Islamic State group has been planning terrorist attacks in Europe for two months which would "target airports and train stations."

The official tells The Associated Press on Tuesday that Iraqi officials told European countries about the plans "but Brussels was not part of the plans" at the time.

He says IS militants changed the operation and moved it to Brussels "because of the detention of Salah Abdeslam" — the Paris attacks suspect arrested Friday in Brussels.

Attacks in Brussels & Paris Underscore Need to Address Crisis in Syria

More evidence of the melding of corporate entities with the government to create an ubiquitous surveillance state.

Hat tip to mimi:

New Clinton emails show how Google collaborated with US State Department to try to oust Assad

Newly released Hillary Clinton emails, published on Wikileaks,  show that Jared Cohen, head of Google Jigsaw, has been acting as a secret agent for the state department, turning the world’s most powerful tech company into a private arm of the US intelligence services. ...

In 2012, Cohen emailed Clinton deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, deputy secretary of state Bill Burns and senior Clinton adviser Alec Ross to tell them about the project. He asked that they keep a “close hold” on the information.

From: Jared Cohen [mailto Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 1:21 PM To: Burns, William J; Sullivan, Jacob J; alec.ross

Subject: Syria

Deputy Secretary Burns, Jake, Alec,

Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from.

Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition.

Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria. I've attached a few visuals that show what the tool will look like. Please keep this very close hold and let me know if there is anything eke you think we need to account for or think about before we launch. We believe this can have an important impact. Thanks,

Jared

After invading Iraq 13 years ago the US is still making the same mistakes

The US government celebrated the Iraq war anniversary by announcing that they were sending more troops to the country. Remember this is a war that supposedly “ended” more than three years ago, yet thousands of troops have been sent back there since late 2014 to fight Isis, a group whose creation can be directly tied to the first Iraq war – or I guess the second one, depending on how you count.

In all, the US has been bombing Iraq for 25 years, which includes the last four presidents (you can watch a montage of all four announcing their respective bombing campaigns here). And if you listen to the leading candidates for both political parties, you can bet that streak will reach five on their first day in office. ...

If Clinton learned anything from the Iraq war, it’s hard to tell. She has claimed her vote for the war as a senator was a “mistake”, but that didn’t prevent her from leading the charge into Libya in 2011 to overthrow another dictator only to see the country fall into the hands of terrorists. She has pushed for a similar strategy in Syria to deal with Bashar al-Assad. ...

With the Iraq invasion 13 years behind us, one thing is for sure: you can turn on Sunday morning television and see an Iraq war advocate – whether it’s a politician or pundit or a journalist – eagerly explaining why we should throw ourselves into our next war and no one will blink an eye.

The U.S. military has a lot more people in Iraq than it has been saying

The U.S. military has around 5,000 service members in Iraq, officials said on Monday, far more than previously reported, as the Obama administration quietly expands ground operations against the Islamic State.

The number of American forces in Iraq has come under increased scrutiny following the death over the weekend of a Marine staff sergeant, the second combat casualty in renewed U.S. operations in Iraq. He was killed when militants launched rockets at a small U.S. base around the city of Makhmour. The existence of the Marine detachment had not been known prior to Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin’s death.

Officials at the Pentagon have declined to specify how Marines are serving at the outpost in northern Iraq, which they described as a satellite base positioned to protect American trainers at a nearby, larger base. Their presence in Iraq highlights the use of forces from Navy ships already in the Middle East.

The Defense Department has also reversed an earlier position and are now declining to confirm how many forces are presently in Iraq, saying only that the number of officially assigned forces is below the current cap of 3,870.

How wrong can a person be?

This article points out a fascinating email from the Hillary Clinton Designer Catastrophe Collection at Wilileaks. It contains some beautiful whoppers, like, "the Libyan operation had no long-lasting consequences for the region," and, "Some argue that U.S. involvement risks a wider war with Russia. But the Kosovo example shows otherwise. In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don't exist between Russia and Syria, and even then Russia did little more than complain. Russian officials have already acknowledged they won't stand in the way if intervention comes."

I recommend reading the email. You'll have to decide afterwards if Hillary is a total moron or if she wrote this documentation, fully aware of the dangers of the war plan she wanted the US to embark on and chose to ignore and elide them.

Clinton Email Shows US Sought Syria Regime Change for Israel’s Sake

Insisted Russia Wouldn't Dare Interfere

It is rare for a succinct foreign policy platform paper to so fully encapsulate a candidate’s thinking process. A State Department email of Hillary Clinton, available on WikiLeaks, lays out the Democratic front-runner’s strategy as an architect of US intervention in Syria, shows the flawed reasoning that beget the scheme. Perhaps most importantly, the document shows utter blindness to the huge problems that the war ultimately led to.

As with so many US wars in the Middle East, it all starts with Israel, and then-Secretary of State Clinton saw the US imposing regime change in Syria as primarily about benefiting Israel and spiting Iran, a position that closely mirrors that of several Israeli officials.

The Clinton ideal was that the US would impose regime change by supplying arms, but without US troops, and that Russia wouldn’t dare oppose America (noting Russia did nothing during Kosovo), that the new US-backed Syrian government would abandon ties with Iran, turn against Hezbollah, and potentially negotiate a peace settlement with Israel, while the rest of the Arab world cheers America “as fighting for their people.” ...

While the paper reveals Clinton’s interventionist leanings, it may also be elucidative regarding interventionist mentality in general, showing how quickly the notion of a “low cost” war becomes official policy, and that policymakers are ultimately blind not just to the reality on the ground, but also to the bigger risks of their schemes.

U.S. Is Whitewashing the Kunduz Massacre

American troops were responsible for one of the worst tragedies of the Afghan war. The Pentagon has chosen to give them only a slap on the wrist.

Human rights advocates denounced the U.S. military’s decision not to file criminal charges against troops responsible for a disastrous airstrike on a Doctor Without Borders hospital last year, calling it an outrage that could inflict lasting damage to America’s credibility and raise questions about Washington’s commitment to humanitarian law.

U.S. Defense Department officials said Thursday that more than 12 service members involved in the airstrike in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which left 42 people dead and dozens more wounded, will face various disciplinary measures for their roles in the raid, including administrative penalties that will effectively end some of their military careers. The officer who led a U.S. commando unit on the ground is among those being reprimanded, officials told Foreign Policy.

But none of the troops are due to face a court martial for their actions, even though Doctors Without Borders and other rights groups said their negligence led to the wrong target being bombed from the air by an American gunship — a mistake, they say, that constitutes a potential war crime. ...

In the wake of Kunduz and other airstrikes on Doctor Without Borders hospitals across Syria and in Yemen, some aid workers have started to rethink the policy of providing their locations to military forces. But it might not always make a difference. In February, one Doctor Without Borders-supported hospital in Syria refused to share its coordinates with government authorities but was hit by four missiles fired from a Syrian or Russian jet anyway. At least 25 people — including nine staff members and one child — were killed. The strike underscored the violence being visited on medical workers in conflict zones around the world, with attacks against hospitals and clinics from Afghanistan to South Sudan becoming increasingly common, killing hundreds and shutting down numerous medical facilities in places that need them the most.

Lip Service?

US and Nato commander apologizes for Médecins Sans Frontières bombing

The new commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan has apologized for the American attack on a hospital last year that killed 42 people and wounded 37 more.

General John W Nicholson met family members of victims and the staff of the now-closed Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, which was captured by Taliban insurgents for several days last year, to express his condolences.

“As commander, I wanted to come to Kunduz personally and stand before the families, and people of Kunduz, to deeply apologize for the events” that led to the bombing, Nicholson said.

“I grieve with you for your loss and suffering; and humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness,” added Nicholson.

The US-led Coalition Bombed the University of Mosul for Being an Islamic State Headquarters

The US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and Syria targeted the University of Mosul in a series of airstrikes over the weekend. It had designated the functioning university — which is, like the rest of Mosul, occupied and controlled by the terror insurgency — an "Islamic State headquarters."

The university was bombed as part of a massive daytime barrage against the IS-occupied city on Saturday. While the civilian death toll is impossible to verify, the Iraqi outlet NRN News reported that as many as 25 civilians had been killed. Activists on the ground told VICE News that a dozen civilians were killed and 87 wounded. ...

On Monday, the Pentagon told VICE News that the IS headquarters was "on Mosul University." On Tuesday, the Pentagon clarified that it had not designated the entire university itself an IS headquarters, but rather just some buildings that are part of the university. "Specific buildings the Coalition struck have been turned into a headquarters building by ISIL since late in 2014 or early 2015," the Pentagon said using an alternative acronym for IS.

Chris Woods, the director of Airwars.org, a UK-based organization that tracks civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria, called the weekend bombing "ferocious" and "horrific."

Here's your daily irony supplement:

Cuban dissidents ask the man who runs a stinking torture gulag in Cuba to rebuke the Cuban government for human rights abuses.

Obama in Cuba under pressure to criticise human rights violations

Cuban dissidents are calling on Barack Obama to sharply rebuke his “totalitarian” government hosts when he makes what is billed as one of the most important foreign policy speeches of his administration in Havana on Tuesday.

The US president, whose address to the Cuban people is expected to be carried live on state television, is under new pressure to ramp up his criticism of the island’s human rights record following awkward scenes at a joint press conference on Monday.

After berating the US for its own civil rights record, Cuban president Raúl Castro moved to hoist Obama’s arm in the air, forcing the American president to let his hand go limp to show non-compliance in a photo opportunity that would have lent much credibility to the communist regime.

Despite repeated White House calls for the release of remaining political prisoners in Cuba, activists are concerned that images of the trip – which have included Obama standing in front of a giant image of Che Guevera in Revolution Square – have overshadowed US calls for political reform on the island.

[For extra irony, see: Dissident deems speech 'terrible' - js]

Castro to Obama: U.S. Has Double Standards When it Comes to Human Rights

RAUL CASTRO: There are profound differences between our countries that will not go away. Since we hold different [concepts] on many subjects, such as political systems, democracy, the exercise of human rights, social justice, international relations, and world peace and stability. We defend human rights. In our view, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights are indivisible, interdependent, and universal. Actually, we find it inconceivable that a government does not defend and ensure the right to healthcare, education, social security, food provision, and development, equal pay, and the rights of children. We oppose political manipulation and double standards in the approach to human rights.

Ireland to Prosecute Top Banker Who Destroyed Their Economy — Guess Where He Was Hiding

A former head of a major Irish bank has been extradited from the U.S. and brought before Dublin District Court to face several charges stemming from the bank’s role in the 2008 financial crisis.

David Drumm, former chief executive of Irish Anglo Bank from 2005 until 2008, had been arrested in Boston in October 2015, and originally attempted to fight extradition — but he recently withdrew the objection and was returned to Ireland early on Monday.

Drumm faces 33 charges in Ireland, which echoes Iceland’s unprecedented move to hold its bankers criminally accountable for their role in that country’s economic meltdown. Though Drumm predictably denied wrongdoing, his charges include “fraud, forgery, misleading management reporting, unlawful lending, falsifying documents, and false accounting, linked to financial transactions prior to the collapse of Anglo,” according to the Irish Times. ...

The former banking executive has not yet entered a formal plea. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if found guilty.

Iceland, and now Ireland, have taken action to hold criminal bankers accountable for their direct role in the economic devastation which enveloped most of the world beginning in 2008 — the exact opposite of what the US does.

Goldman Sachs probed in alleged Treasury rigging

Washington’s probe into the alleged rigging of the $13 trillion US Treasurys market by Wall Street banks has narrowed its focus to a handful of firms — including Goldman Sachs, The Post has learned.

In addition, European authorities have opened their own investigation into possible Treasurys bid-rigging, sources said.

Investigators in the fraud division of the Justice Department have obtained chats and emails from Goldman that appear to implicate the company in manipulating the price of Treasury bonds, according to two sources familiar with the investigation.

Those chats and emails are being analyzed to determine if traders at other banks could be involved with any possible bid-rigging of US government debt, those two people said.

Major Research Findings: Sanders’ Tax Wall Street Plan Would Raise $300 Billion And Create Millions of New Jobs

A new report from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Economy Research Institute documents how a key Sanders proposal — a tax on Wall Street speculation -would bring at least $300 billion a year in new revenues from those who can most afford to pay it for the critical reforms the country so desperately needs.

Further, the report by Robert Pollin, lead author, and his colleagues James Heintz and Thomas Herndon, breaks new ground in documenting that the tax would be a huge boon to the economy in creating millions of new jobs in education beyond what the same spending creates on Wall Street.

And contrary to the critics would not dampen productive investment, which has fallen sharply under the reckless Wall Street behavior of recent decades.

Taxing Wall Street speculation to finance free public college tuition, as Sanders talks about on the campaign trail, and has introduced in legislation, S 1373, the College for All Act, could create a net expansion of 4.2 million jobs. Not to mention securing equal educational opportunity for everyone, regardless of background or ability to pay.

Investing in education produces more than 8 times the number of jobs created by the same spending in financial services, the authors explain.

This finding parallels a 2009 National Nurses United study that found conversion to a Medicare for all health care system, as Sanders also proposes, would create millions of new, good paying jobs, as would a green economy as Pollin documented in his 2012 book “Back to Full Employment.”

Simply put, a socially productive economy, from education to healthcare to renewable energy is also a job creation engine.

Forty millionaires ask New York to raise taxes on wealthy in '1% plan for fairness'

More than 40 millionaires on Monday asked New York state to raise taxes on the wealthy, under what they called a “1% plan for tax fairness”

“As New Yorkers who have contributed to and benefited from the economic vibrancy of our state, we have both the ability and the responsibility to pay our fair share,” the millionaires said in an open letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers.

Saying they were “deeply concerned that too many New Yorkers are struggling economically, and the state’s ailing infrastructure is in desperate need of attention”, the millionaires urged “the governor and the legislature” to pass “the 1% Plan for New York Tax Fairness”.

The letter was put together with the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, and the Responsible Wealth project, a network of hundreds of the wealthiest Americans who support “fair taxes and corporate accountability”. ...

The signees emphasized that funds are needed to address issues such as child poverty, homelessness and crumbling infrastructure.

Days of Revolt: How We Got to Junk Economics

Illinois cuts off funding for its public universities

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Democrats to Sanders: Time to wind it down

Nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers suggested in interviews that Sanders should focus more on stopping Donald Trump and less on why he believes Clinton’s stands on trade, financial regulation and foreign policy would make her a flawed president. ...

Over the past month, Clinton campaign staffers have bristled at the way Sanders is running. A Clinton campaign memo said Sanders has been “increasingly negative” and accused him of breaking his vows not to name Clinton in his ads, blaming his sweeping losses on a negative strategy that “backfired.” ...

Democrats privately believe Sanders is already calculating how to gradually shift toward a posture of unity by summertime. With Clinton favored to win the nomination and beat Trump in the general election, Sanders also has to think about his relationship with a potential future president and returning to the Senate, where he caucuses with Democrats. ...

At the same time, Democrats need to tread carefully in how they treat Sanders. His legion of followers will be critical to getting Clinton elected, not to mention scores of Democratic Senate and House candidates. It’s unknown how hard Sanders would campaign for Clinton, assuming she does prevail.

Hillary Wants a Crusade to Defeat Trump’s “Bigotry” – and Leave Her Bankers Alone

If Hillary Clinton can make the general election into a crusade against “bigotry” and “intolerance” as embodied by Donald Trump, she can win with an otherwise issue-less campaign, thus shielding the 1% from harm. Black folks will be happy, imagining the election is all about them. “The great task of independent Black politics is to pry Black folks loose from the Democratic Party’s lethal embrace.” For that, we need a movement in the streets.

Tuesday’s primary victories will allow Hillary Clinton to get busy planning her “big tent” general election crusade against racism and incivility, in the person of Donald Trump. It will be a corporate Democrat’s dream campaign, with the prospect of the party garnering majority white support for the first time since 1964. Clinton will allow Bernie Sanders’ delegates to craft much of the language of the party platform, in Philadelphia – a meaningless exercise designed to convince the Sandernistas that there is still hope to transform the Democratic Party “from below.” Clinton – who is permanently primed to lie on any subject, at any time, in the interests of the Lords of Capital – may give forked-tongue service to a Sanders-inspired platform, especially if Trump continues his hype on jobs losses to “China” because of “bad deals.” But, Wall Street will have little to worry about. Clinton’s central project will be to build an historic Democratic super-majority by appealing to all “decent” Americans to reject “bigotry” and embrace “fairness” and “tolerance” – by which she will mean nothing more than that they reject Trump. ...

Hillary Clinton hopes to build a super-party this election season, packed to overflowing with “moderate” Republicans fleeing the taint of Donald Trump, who will bring their otherwise conservative politics with them into the Democratic “big tent” – an ideal infusion to reinforce Hillary Clinton’s (and Barack Obama’s) corporate wing of the party. Black folks will emerge from this electoral process even more marginal to party policy than before. But, most will not realize it.

The great task of independent Black politics is to pry Black folks loose from the Democratic Party’s lethal embrace.

Is Clinton Moving to the Right of Trump on Israel-Palestine? A Debate on the Candidates & AIPAC

Critics Aghast at 'Disgusting Speech' Clinton Just Gave to AIPAC

Democratic presidential candidate speech praises "everything that is bad about Israeli policy and U.S. imperialism"

During the address, Clinton vowed to take the U.S.-Israel relationship to "the next level"—a level which seemingly includes more war and imperialism, few, if any, rights for Palestinians, and definitely no economic boycotts of Israel.

Striking a hawkish tone, Clinton warned the powerful lobby group against rival candidates who want to "outsource Middle East security to dictators" and "cede the mantle of leadership for global peace and security," and instead vowed even more "security and intelligence cooperation."

Expect many more hundreds of children to be massacred under a Hillary presidency.

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) March 21, 2016

The speech proved that, on matters of Israel, Clinton is "running to the right" of GOP front-runner Donald Trump, as noted by Mondoweiss' Philip Weiss, who wrote that the remarks were "filled with red meat for Israel supporters" and "contained scant reference to the peace process."

Later, Clinton doubled down on her previous pledge to dismantle the growing international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, linking the campaign against Palestinian apartheid to anti-Semitism, saying "we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people."

"I’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now," Clinton continued. "As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS."

Hat tip to dancing rabbit:

Sanders Outlines Middle East Policy

[Here are some excerpts, full video below. - js]

I am here to tell the American people that, if elected president, I will work tirelessly to advance the cause of peace as a partner and as a friend to Israel.

But to be successful, we have also got to be a friend not only to Israel, but to the Palestinian people, where in Gaza unemployment today is 44 percent and we have there a poverty rate which is almost as high. ...

The road toward peace will be difficult. Wonderful people, well-intentioned people have tried decade after decade to achieve that and it will not be easy. I cannot tell you exactly how it will look – I do not believe anyone can – but I firmly believe that the only prospect for peace is the successful negotiation of a two-state solution.

The first step in that road ahead is to set the stage for resuming the peace process through direct negotiations. ...

Peace has to mean security for every Israeli from violence and terrorism.

But peace also means security for every Palestinian. It means achieving self-determination, civil rights, and economic well-being for the Palestinian people. ...

Right now, Israel controls 80 percent of the water reserves in the West Bank. Inadequate water supply has contributed to the degradation and desertification of Palestinian land. A lasting a peace will have to recognize Palestinians are entitled to control their own lives and there is nothing human life needs more than water.

Peace will require strict adherence by both sides to the tenets of international humanitarian law. This includes Israeli ending disproportionate responses to being attacked – even though any attack on Israel is unacceptable.

Morally Bankrupt Establishment Dems Hobbling DNC Chair's Grassroots Challenger

Exposing a policy that he says hamstrings not only his own upstart campaign but the Democratic Party apparatus nationwide, Florida congressional hopeful Tim Canova is crying foul on the state Democratic Party for denying him access to a critical voter file database and software that could help him in his bid against incumbent Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  

Canova, a professor at Nova Southeastern University and former attorney, announced his campaign to unseat the six-term congresswoman and chair of the Democratic National Committee in January. He requested access to the database, known as VAN, earlier this month.

According to a letter seen by Common Dreams and being delivered Monday to state Democratic Party chair Allison Tant, Canova was told by another party official "that, as a matter of 'policy,' the Florida Democratic Party will not allow me access to our party's database and software because I am running against an incumbent Democrat." ...

In a blog post last week, Canova elaborated:

This is unfair and undemocratic. My opponent already has untold advantages against an insurgent progressive campaign like ours. We are refusing to take corporate money, while she has taken millions of dollars from Wall Street bankers, payday lenders, private prison companies, and other corporate special interests. How much more of an advantage does Wasserman Schultz need to silence the voices of grassroots voters in our district?

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Climate guru James Hansen warns of much worse than expected sea level rise

The current rate of global warming could raise sea levels by “several meters” over the coming century, rendering most of the world’s coastal cities uninhabitable and helping unleash devastating storms, according to a paper published by James Hansen, the former Nasa scientist who is considered the father of modern climate change awareness.

The research, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, references past climatic conditions, recent observations and future models to warn the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets will contribute to a far worse sea level increase than previously thought.

Without a sharp reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global sea level is likely to increase “several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years”, the paper states, warning that the Earth’s oceans were six to nine meters higher during the Eemian period – an interglacial phase about 120,000 years ago that was less than 1C warmer than it is today.

Global warming of 2C above pre-industrial times – the world is already halfway to this mark – would be “dangerous” and risk submerging cities, the paper said. A separate study, released in February, warned that New York, London, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai will be among the cities at risk from flooding by 2100.

Hansen’s research, written with 18 international colleagues, warns that humanity would not be able to properly adapt to such changes, although the paper concedes its conclusions “differ fundamentally from existing climate change assessments”.

The dashboard is blinking red. This time the terrorists are political leaders, corporate and financial elites.

After 'Unprecedented' Year of Warming, UN Warns We Must Curb Emissions Now

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the climate arm of the United Nations, said on Monday that climate change is occurring at an "alarming rate" and that world leaders must act to curb greenhouse gases now, "before we pass the point of no return."

After 2015 broke all previous global average surface temperature records, WMO is releasing its State of the Climate report with the dire warning that the year "will stand out in the historical record of the global climate in many ways."

According to Dr. Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, who spoke with the Guardian on Monday, the language of the report is unusually powerful for the WMO.

"We have to put this report in context," she said. "2014 was the hottest year on record to date too. We’ve had something like 15 out of the 16 hottest years on record since the turn of the millennium. Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting much much worse, and the tone of the report reflects this."

Details on this story are scarce, but it looks like Obama has not given up his big neoliberal plans to privatize water infrastructure:

White House enlists private sector for $4bn upgrade to water infrastructure

The White House has turned to the private sector in an attempt to mend America’s creaking water infrastructure system, securing $4bn in commitments from businesses and instituting a new plan to help deal with crises such as the Flint lead poisoning disaster and the California drought.

The first White House water summit, to be held on Tuesday, will see more than 150 businesses and other organizations, including GE, commit funding to upgrade “critical infrastructure”, including dams, canals and water pipes.

Barack Obama’s administration would not commit, however, to a goal of replacing all of the estimated three to six million miles of lead piping that brings water to Americans every day. If they are not carefully treated, the pipes can leach lead, a known neurotoxin, into drinking water. This occurred in Flint, Michigan, where an estimated 8,000 children could grow up with developmental difficulties due to the water not being treated.

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Also of Interest

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

Death by gentrification: the killing that shamed San Francisco

Saudi Arabia Continues Hiring Spree of Lobbyists, Retains Former Washington Post Reporter

“Israel is occupation-addicted”: Israeli journalist Gideon Levy blasts U.S. support for “apartheid” & rise of fascism

Michael Hudson on Debt Deflation, the Rentier Economy, and the Coming Financial Cold War

Lockheed Martin, Making Money the Old-Fashioned Way

The Oil and Gas Fire Sale: How Bad Will Losses to Banks and Investors Be?

The Internet of Things Is a Surveillance Nightmare

Sanders Declines To Pander To Israel Lobby In Speech Prepared For AIPAC

Wall Street on Parade: Why We Support Bernie Sanders Over Hillary Clinton for President

Elizabeth Warren Slams 'Loser' Donald Trump in Twitter Tirade

Video Shows Exactly How Donald Trump Incited Assault on Protester

Democratic Party is "in for a shellacking" If They Nominate Clinton

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A Little Night Music

Fenton Robinson - The Getaway

Fenton Robinson - I Hear Some Blues Downstairs

Fenton Robinson - I Believe

Fenton Robinson - Crazy Crazy Loving

Fenton Robinson - Mississippi Steamboat

Fenton Robinson - West Side Baby

Fenton Robinson - Too Many Drivers

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