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This evening's music features blues harmonica player and singer George "Wild Child" Butler. Enjoy!

“A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”

-- Theodore Roosevelt

News and Opinion

Panama Law Firm’s Leaked Files Detail Offshore Accounts Tied to World Leaders

A group of news media outlets published articles on Sunday based on what they said were 11.5 million leaked documents from a Panama law firm that helped some of the world’s wealthiest people — including politicians, athletes and business moguls — establish offshore bank accounts.

The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung said its reporters had obtained the documents from a confidential source. The newspaper then shared the files with other media organizations, like The Guardian and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

In an article, the investigative journalism organization said the documents revealed the offshore accounts of 140 politicians and public officials, including a dozen current and former world leaders and several individuals with close ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The organization said reporters at 100 news media outlets working in 25 languages had used the documents to investigate the law firm, Mossack Fonseca, and its clients, including political figures in countries like Iceland, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

It is not illegal in many cases to have offshore bank accounts. But they are used in some instances by wealthy individuals and criminals to hide money and business transactions, and to avoid paying taxes. ...

The media organizations looking into Mossack Fonseca are expected to publish many more articles based on the new documents in the coming days.

The Panama Papers: how the rich and famous hide their money

Global Investigations Begin Following Damning Tax Haven Revelations

Global investigations have begun into the tax arrangements of rich and powerful people around the world, following a massive data leak from a Panama-based law firm which revealed a vast network of offshore companies set up for clients including world leaders.

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) said on Monday it was investigating more than 800 wealthy clients of Mossack Fonseca, the firm from whose files more than 11.5 million documents were leaked, and the British HM Revenue and Customs asked for a copy of the leaked data so it could "closely examine" the information and act on any possible tax evasion "swiftly and appropriately." ...

In Iceland, Prime Minister Sigmundur Davîo Gunnlaugsson is facing calls to step down due to the revelation he co-owned a shell company with his wife that stored some of her wealth, and did not disclose this on Iceland's parliamentary register of MPs' financial interests. When questioned about the company on camera by journalists from Swedish television company SVT he walked out of the interview. ...

Offshore companies linked to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Syrian President Bashar al Assad, and family members of Chinese President Xi Jinping and British Prime Minister David Cameron were also revealed by the files. Poroshenko has in the past "positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals," noted the ICIJ, while Cameron has repeatedly made public statements denouncing tax havens and claiming his government will take action against those who use them.

A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal Is What’s Been Legalized

Illegality was never the crux of the scandal triggered by those NSA revelations. Instead, what was most shocking was what had been legalized: the secret construction of the largest system of suspicionless spying in human history. What was scandalous was not that most of this spying was against the law, but rather that the law — at least as applied and interpreted by the Justice Department and secret, one-sided FISA “courts” — now permitted the U.S. government and its partners to engage in mass surveillance of entire populations, including their own. ...

Yesterday, dozens of newspapers around the world reported on what they are calling the Panama Papers: a gargantuan leak of documents from a Panama-based law firm that specializes in creating offshore shell companies. The documents reveal billions of dollars being funneled to offshore tax havens by leading governmental and corporate officials in numerous countries (the U.S. was oddly missing from the initial reporting, though journalists vow that will change shortly).

Some of these documents undoubtedly reveal criminality: either monies that were illegally obtained (and are being hidden for that reason) or assets being concealed in order to criminally evade tax debts. But the crux of this activity — placing assets offshore in order to avoid incurring tax liability — has been legalized. That’s because Western democracies, along with overt tyrannies, are typically controlled by societies’ wealthiest, and laws are enacted to serve their interests.

Russian media responds to the Panama papers revelations:

Panama Papers: Massive leak shows how rich hide wealth, MSM focus on Putin

Russia says Putin is main target of Panama Papers

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, told Russian news agency Interfax that it was "obvious" the aim of the anonymous release of more than 11 million documents belonging to a law firm in Panama — Mossack Fonseca — was to undermine the president ahead of parliamentary elections expected in September. Peskov said Putin had not committed any crime.

While Putin's name does not appear on any of the records published Sunday by a massive coordinated investigation with dozens of media groups, the paper trail does show that many of his associates and close friends including musician Sergei Roldugin, godfather to his daughter Maria and the man who introduced him to his wife Lyudmilla, made millions from deals that would have been hard to do without his knowledge. Ahead of the leak, the Kremlin said it was aware that an organization was trying to smear the president.

Another Western intervention in Libya looms

The shaky debut last week of a new unity government in Libya brings Western nations, including the United States, much closer to a renewed military mission there, and to a host of obstacles that will test their ability to secure a country gripped by Islamist extremism and civil war. ...

The tentative political progress comes as the United States moves forward with plans to launch intensified attacks against the Islamic State’s Libyan branch, which has up to 8,000 fighters and is the group’s strongest affiliate outside Iraq and Syria.

Planners at the U.S. Africa Command are now developing dozens of targets across Libya that American or European warplanes might strike. They range from the coastal city of Sirte, where the extremist group has established a refuge, to Ajdabiya, Sabratha and the militant stronghold of Derna. U.S. jets have carried out strikes against the group there twice since last fall.

The Pentagon is also seeking to improve coordination between U.S. Special Operations forces and their French and British counterparts, which have established small cells on the ground, seeking in part to line up friendly militias that can take on the extremist fighters.

Cleaning Up Hillary’s Libyan Mess

Hillary Clinton’s signature project as Secretary of State – the “regime change” in Libya – is now sliding from the tragic to the tragicomic as her successors in the Obama administration adopt increasingly desperate strategies for imposing some kind of order on the once-prosperous North African country torn by civil war since Clinton pushed for the overthrow and murder of longtime Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The problem that Clinton did much to create has grown more dangerous since Islamic State terrorists have gained a foothold in Sirte and begun their characteristic beheading of “infidels” as well as their plotting for terror attacks in nearby Europe.

There is also desperation among some Obama administration officials because the worsening Libyan fiasco threatens to undermine not only President Barack Obama’s legacy but Clinton’s drive for the Democratic presidential nomination and then the White House. So, the officials felt they had no choice but to throw caution to the wind or — to mix metaphors — some Hail Mary passes.

The latest daring move was a sea landing in Tripoli by the U.S./U.N-formulated “unity government,” which was cobbled together by Western officials in hotel rooms in Morocco and Tunisia. But instead of “unity,” the arrival by sea threatened to bring more disunity and war by seeking to muscle aside two rival governments.

The sea landing at a naval base in Tripoli became necessary because one of those rival governments refused to let the “unity” officials fly into Libya’s capital. So, instead, the “unity” leaders entered Libya by boat from Tunisia and are currently operating from the naval base where they landed.

With this unusual move, the Obama administration is reminding longtime national security analysts of other fiascos in which Washington sought to decide the futures of other countries by shaping a government externally, as with the Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s and the Iraqi National Congress in 2003, and then imposing those chosen leaders on the locals.

Vietnam seizes Chinese vessel in South China Sea

Vietnam has seized a Chinese ship and detained its captain and two sailors, accusing the crew of illegally intruding on its waters, state media said on Monday.

China has overlapping claims with Vietnam and other south-east Asian countries to waters in the South China Sea, thought to have vast oil and gas reserves and which is a route for roughly £3.17tn ($4.5tn) in trade. The area is also rich in fish.

The seizure, which state-run Thanh Nien News said occurred on Saturday, is a rare move from Vietnam against its powerful northern neighbour and could increase hostility between Beijing and Hanoi. ...

Thanh Nien News reported that the Vietnam coastguard seized the vessel, which it said carried more than 100,000 litres of diesel oil. It said the crew “admitted that they had entered deep [into] Vietnamese waters to refuel several other Chinese boats which were fishing illegally there”.

In Dikili, Turkey, as First Deported Migrants Arrive From Greece

Police wearing masks and gloves led the new arrivals one by one from the boat to a newly-constructed reception center consisting of two large tents surrounded by high metal railings. For around 200 people sailing into Turkish port towns on Monday, the dream of starting a new life in Europe was over.

The asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan and Pakistan, had been ushered about three ferries chartered by European border agency Frontex at dawn by Greek authorities on the islands of Lesbos and Chios. The migrants were the first to be targeted by a controversial new deal between the European Union (EU) and Turkey which aims to see all those who enter the continent illegally be sent back to Turkey — a deal which rights groups say will not work and violates international law.

Even as the first boats set sail to return migrants to Turkey, more arrived on smugglers' boats into Greece — 339 of them by 7.30am Monday morning alone, according to Greek authorities. ...

The arrivals in Dikili were processed then packed on to a number of white buses. It was not immediately clear where they were being taken. Turkish officials have said Syrians will be sent to refugee camps or allowed to reunite with relatives in Turkey, while other nationalities will ultimately be deported.

Mexico tortures migrants – and citizens – in effort to slow Central American surge

A growing number of indigenous Mexicans are being detained and threatened with expulsion by immigration agents looking for undocumented Central American migrants.

The trend comes amid a crackdown on migrants driven in part by political pressure and financial aid from the US. Deportations have already risen exponentially since summer 2014 when Barack Obama declared the surge in Central American child migrants a humanitarian crisis. Campaigners say that Mexico migration officials are running a secret quota system to increase the number of expulsions.

Activists say that Mexico’s National Immigration Institute is increasingly operating like an unchecked police force – and say that that like the country’s security forces, it appears to be systematically using torture against detainees. ...

The scale of US financial support for Mexican immigration control is opaque. At least $100m has been spent or pledged for training, new equipment and canine teams, according to Congressional Research Service. There are no human rights conditions attached to this aid. Department of Defence aid is separate and unknown. The INM said it has “never received a peso” from the US.

Netanyahu Uses Same Fill-in-the-Blanks Response to Criticism as ISIS and Al Qaeda

All perpetrators of extreme political brutality tend to react to criticism from their own side in exactly the same way, just with different nouns. It’s like a special edition of Mad Libs (an American fill-in-the-blank word game) for violent radicals:

[Person on My Side] criticizes us for [Atrocity by Our Side]!

But where was [Person on My Side]’s condemnation of [Atrocity by the Other Side]?!?

[Click link for examples of Al-Qaeda and ISIS using this template. - js]

Sen. Patrick Leahy and 10 House members wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry this week asking him to assess the credibility of reports that U.S. military aid to Israel and Egypt might violate U.S. law prohibiting such aid to governments that commit any “gross violation of human rights.” Netanyahu responded in a brief, official written statement:

Where is the concern for the human rights of the many Israelis who’ve been murdered and maimed by these savage terrorists?

The Empire Files: Abby Martin with Dr. Jill Stein - A Sick Society

Secret Service Objects to Protesters Carrying 50-Foot Inflatable Joint Outside White House

Hundreds of protesters advocating for marijuana legalization in Washington, DC got into a 30-minute standoff with police and members of the Secret Service after they tried to carry a 50-foot inflatable joint near the White House on Saturday.

The demonstration called for President Barack Obama to remove marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances, a classification reserved for drugs with no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Although 23 states and Washington, DC now allow some form of medical marijuana, weed remains listed alongside heroin, LSD and other hard drugs in the Schedule I category.

The dispute over the massive fake joint began early in the day as the protesters marched near the White House at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street. Adam Eidinger, the founder of DCMJ, a medical marijuana advocacy group that organized the demonstration, told VICE News that several police officers were "wedged" between protesters and the large joint during negotiations over whether or not they could proceed.

The cops eventually yielded and passed the situation off to members of Secret Service, who blocked the giant fake doob from entering Lafayette Park in front of the White House for security reasons. Eidinger said the Secret Service claimed the inflatable, which had the words "Obama, deschedule cannabis now!" written on the side, created a "sniper issue." ... The protesters complied by deflating the joint and then holding it up as a banner while they continued their rally outside the White House.

The SS tried to stop our protest prop from getting in front of White House. We prevailed! #Reschedule420 @DCMJ2014 pic.twitter.com/cvuBCuyDc3

— Paige McCormick (@MuseAmicK) April 2, 2016

FBI to help US law enforcement unlock iPhones, report says

The FBI has told other US law enforcement agencies that it will help them to unlock the iPhones of suspected criminals.

In a memo sent to law enforcement agencies, published by BuzzFeed, the FBI said that following the successful unlocking of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5C without Apple’s help, it will consider any tool that will aid its “partners”. ...

Since the San Bernardino case, the FBI has reportedly been inundated with requests for assistance in various local cases. It had previously rebuffed claims that it was helping in local cases, including a murder in Arkansas. The FBI has yet to widely divulge how it accessed the data on the iPhone 5C.

Princeton will keep Woodrow Wilson's name on building despite controversy

Woodrow Wilson’s name will remain on Princeton University’s public policy school, despite calls to remove it because the former US president was a segregationist, the Ivy League university announced on Monday.

Princeton was challenged to take a deeper look into Wilson’s life in the fall, when a group of students raised questions about his racist views and their impact on his policy. ...

The school has borne Wilson’s name for more than eight decades. It will remain, but Princeton pledged to adopt other changes, including establishing a pipeline program to encourage more minority students to pursue doctoral degrees and diversifying campus symbols and art.

Wilson was president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910, and the 28th US president from 1913 until 1921. He won the Nobel peace prize in 1919, for being the architect of the League of Nations.

But he also supported segregation – including in the federal government – rolling back progress for the emerging black middle class in the nation’s capital.

The Battle Over What to Pay Teachers in the US May Come Down to One Painful Decision

Teachers think they deserve special treatment.

That will be the response of many Americans to the Chicago Teachers Union April 1 strike, which is motivated in part by the state of Illinois and city of Chicago suggesting that the teachers should contribute more to their retirement pensions.

After all, only 11 percent of American workers are in unions (down from nearly a third of workers 50 years ago), and only 18 percent have pensions (as recently as 1998, more than half of Americans over age 60 received pension payments). Nationwide, the average teacher salary is $56,000, but in Chicago, average pay is more than $70,000, about on par with other jobs that require master's degrees. Add in summers off and tenure protections, which make it difficult for veteran teachers to get fired, and Windy City teachers seemingly have it easy compared to the typical worker in our increasingly unforgiving economy.

In fact, the Chicago Tribune editorial board dubbed the proposed strike "Tantrum Day." ...

Like 40 percent of teachers nationwide, those in Chicago are not eligible for Social Security. ...

The Chicago Board of Education has suggested ending the city's pension contributions in exchange for a future pay raise for working teachers. The union objected, saying that because of the system's $6.2 billion in debt, they don't trust members would ever see the promised salary gains. Looming over all of this is a threat from Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner to force the city school system into bankruptcy, which would trigger a state takeover and more draconian budget cuts.

This is an excellent essay worth reading in full:

I worked on Wall Street. I am skeptical Hillary Clinton will rein it in

I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary – implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Democratic economic agenda, turning it from a party against Wall Street to a party of Wall Street.

That is why when I recently went to see Hillary Clinton campaign for president and speak about reforming Wall Street I was skeptical. What I heard hasn’t changed that skepticism. The policies she offers are mid-course corrections. In the Clintons’ world, Wall Street stays at the center, economically and politically. Given Wall Street’s power and influence, that is a dangerous place to leave them. ...

The administration’s economic policy took shape as trickle down, Democratic style. They championed free trade, pushing Nafta. They reformed welfare, buying into the conservative view that poverty was about dependency, not about situation. They threw the old left a few bones, repealing prior tax cuts on the rich, but used the increased revenues mostly on Wall Street’s favorite issue: cutting the debt.

Most importantly, when faced with their first financial crisis, they bailed out Wall Street.

[See article for a description of the Clinton's Mexican bailout. - js]

Wall Street now had both political parties working for them, and really nobody holding them accountable. Now, no trade was too aggressive, no risk too crazy, no behavior too unethical and no loss too painful. It unleashed a boom that produced plenty of smaller crisis (Russia, Dotcom), before culminating in the housing and financial crisis of 2008.

The response to that crisis was Mexico 1995 writ large: bailout the banks and save Wall Street. This time executed by an Obama administration filled with veterans of the Clinton administration, including Hillary Clinton and Larry Summers. Prior to joining Obama’s administration as a senator, Hillary Clinton voted to bail-out the banks, a vote she still defends.

Hillary Clinton continues to receive large donations from top bankers.

Obama's HUD doesn't want any damned happy campers.

HUD Wants to Make Living in a Tiny House or RV Illegal

The tiny house movement has taken America by storm, in part because our economy is in the toilet. People are striving to reduce their expenses by embracing minimalism. They’re breaking free from the corporate grind because, as I’ve always advised, they are learning to live with less and radically reducing their expenses.

Medicine Crow, one of the last links to Battle of Little Bighorn, dies at 102

Joseph Medicine Crow, the acclaimed Native American historian, second world war veteran and last surviving war chief of Montana’s Crow tribe, has died aged 102.

Medicine Crow, who was raised by his grandparents in a log house in a rural area of the Crow Reservation near Lodge Grass, Montana, wore his war paint beneath his second world war uniform.

As a child, Medicine Crow listened to stories about the Battle of Little Bighorn – the conflict that pitted federal troops led by Lt Col George Armstrong Custer against native Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors. He translated for his great uncle, White Man Runs Him, when white reporters came to interview him about the battle, and would go on to become a lifelong emissary between the Crow community and white Americans.

His grandfather, Yellowtail, raised Medicine Crow to be a warrior. ... As Crow tradition had it, in order to become a chief a man had to command a war party, enter an enemy camp at night and steal a horse, wrestle a weapon away from his enemy and touch the first enemy fallen, without killing him.

Thousands of miles from where the code was conceived, on the battlefields of Europe, Medicine Crow became the last person to meet the conditions. Wearing a yellow eagle feather tucked inside his helmet, he fought hand-to-hand combat with a German soldier, whose life was spared, and set off a stampede of 50 horses from a Nazi stable, while singing a traditional Crow song as he rode away.

This is a very interesting article with far more detail than can be fairly excerpted. It is an essential tale of party corruption and how Hillary T. Rainmaker uses her wealthy funders to purchase the ardor of state parties and their superdelegates. Well worth a full read.

How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties

In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33 democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington.

The idea was to increase how much one could personally donate to Hillary by taking advantage of the Supreme Court ruling 2014, McCutcheon v FEC, that knocked down a cap on aggregate limits as to how much a donor could give to a federal campaign in a year. It thus eliminated the ceiling on amounts spent by a single donor to a presidential candidate.

In other words, a single donor, by giving 10,000 dollars a year to each signatory state could legally give an extra $330,000 a year for two years to the Hillary Victory Fund. For each donor, this raised their individual legal cap on the Presidential campaign to $660,000 if given in both 2015 and 2016. And to one million, three hundred and 20 thousand dollars if an equal amount were also donated in their spouse’s name.

From these large amounts of money being transferred from state coffers to the Hillary Victory Fund in Washington, the Clinton campaign got the first $2,700, the DNC was to get the next $33,400, and the remainder was to be split among the 33 signatory states. With this scheme, the Hillary Victory Fund raised over $26 million for the Clinton Campaign by the end of 2015. ...

One could reasonably infer that the tacit agreement between the signatories was that the state parties and the Hillary Clinton Campaign would act in unity and mutual support. And that the super-delegates of these various partner states would either pledge loyalty to Clinton, or, at the least, not endorse Senator Sanders. Not only did Hillary’s multi-millionaire and billionaire supporters get to bypass individual campaign donation limits to state parties by using several state parties apparatus, but the Clinton campaign got the added bonus of buying that state’s super-delegates with the promise of contributions to that Democratic organization’s re-election fund. ...

None of this is illegal. But it makes a mockery of Ms. Clinton’s pledge to further the cause of campaign finance reform.

Voter ID Nightmare: Up to 300,000 Wisconsin Voters Could Be Barred from Polls Thanks to Scott Walker

Please Recognize Your Privilege If You Can Afford 8 Years of Hillary Clinton and the Status Quo

Some people say Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are approximately the same on the issues. These people likely have a lifestyle and a level of income that is comfortable and that they're not too worried about losing. ...

If you're getting paid minimum wage or anything close to it, you might not be able to afford eight years of Hillary Clinton and the status quo. She has said recently she supports a $12 minimum wage, but she doesn't advocate for it with much commitment. ... If you're trying to obtain health care coverage, purchase prescription drugs, or deal with a serious health issue, you might not be able to afford eight years of Hillary Clinton and the status quo. ... If you're African American or hoping for police reform and a reduction in the mass incarceration and "modern slavery" system, you might not be able to afford eight years of Hillary Clinton and the status quo. She has a private prison lobbyist running her campaign. ...

If you're hoping for a long and healthy life on Earth for yourself, your children and your grandchildren, we as a society might not be able to afford eight years of a status quo that includes burning fossil fuels extensively and fracking for more. ...

Most working class people cannot afford eight years of the status quo, and they certainly cannot afford eight years of Republican rule.

If you are privileged enough not to worry about the status quo, perhaps you should consider the situation of others when you vote in this very important primary election.

Sanders and Trump Voters Are More Skeptical of War Than Clinton, Cruz Voters

A Pew poll released this week finds that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders voters share a more skeptical view of U.S. military adventurism than Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton supporters.

On most other issues, Democratic and Republican voters find themselves diametrically opposed, but this issue splits each party.

Only 25 percent of Cruz voters and 28 percent of Clinton voters say “U.S. global involvement makes things worse,” while 38 percent of Trump supporters and 45 percent of Sanders supporters take the same view.

Planned gas pipeline alongside troubled New York Indian Point nuclear plant stirs meltdown fears

Across a narrow swath cut by bulldozers and chainsaws through the woods of Westchester County, New York, triangular yellow flags are clotheslined between pairs of trees. The flags trace the eventual path of the gas pipeline that the energy giant Spectra is building through the area, escorted at times by police and harried by local residents worried by its proximity to a decaying nuclear power plant.

If that pipeline leaks or breaks, say experts, its contents could detonate and destroy the switchyard that sits 400ft from the gas line. Entergy, which runs the Indian Point power station, said the plant could be quickly shut down in such an event. Nuclear engineer Paul Blanch is not so sure. Blanch, who has previously consulted for Entergy and now assists an organization calling for the pipeline to be stopped, said that assertion is a best-case scenario. In the worst case, he said, the reactors could melt down. And he believes Entergy and Spectra have not fully considered that worst-case scenario.

“I’m not anti-nuke or anything like that. I’ve been in the business for 50 years and I’ve never seen anything as egregious as this,” he said. ...

The gas company has used eminent domain laws to acquire adjoining chunks of property in the countryside just north of New York City to place its pipes and compressor stations. Spectra has paid Entergy to build the pipeline on its property. Entergy said its “compensation from Spectra is nominal and in line with industry practice” but declined to give a dollar figure.

The payment creates a potential conflict of interest. Entergy’s primary regulator, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), commissioned Entergy to assess the safety of Spectra’s pipeline on its property. The NRC said the amount of the compensation paid for the easement was “out of our jurisdiction”. ...

Entergy’s assessment itself also has some experts worried. The safety of the pipeline is addressed in an eight-page document that includes a hand-drawn diagram of the property. Its brevity has some worried that risks have been overlooked.

Meet the Greenpeace Activist Who Confronted Hillary Clinton over Ties to Fossil Fuel Industry

How Much Money Has Hillary Clinton's Campaign Taken from Fossil Fuel Companies?

Oh my, 2.5 trillion dollars sounds like a lot of money. I wonder if it is enough to motivate the morons that rule the world.

Climate change will wipe $2.5tn off global financial assets: study

Climate change could cut the value of the world’s financial assets by $2.5tn (£1.7tn), according to the first estimate from economic modelling.

In the worst case scenarios, often used by regulators to check the financial health of companies and economies, the losses could soar to $24tn, or 17% of the world’s assets, and wreck the global economy.

The research also showed the financial sense in taking action to keep climate change under the 2C danger limit agreed by the world’s nations. In this scenario, the value of financial assets would fall by $315bn less, even when the costs of cutting emissions are included.

“Our work suggests to long-term investors that we would be better off in a low-carbon world,” said Prof Simon Dietz of the London School of Economics, the lead author of the study. “Pension funds should be getting on top of this issue, and many of them are.” He said, however, that awareness in the financial sector was low.

Mark Campanale of the thinktank Carbon Tracker Initiative said the actual financial losses from unchecked global warming could be higher than estimated by the financial model behind the new study. “It could be a lot worse. The loss of financial capital can be a lot higher and faster than the GDP losses [used to model the costs of climate change in the study]. Just look at value of coal giant Peabody Energy. It was worth billions just a few years ago and now it is worth nothing.”

Amid Climate-Fueled Food Crisis, Filipino Forces Open Fire on Starving Farmers

Police and army forces shot at about 6,000 starving farmers and Lumad Indigenous people demonstrating for drought relief in the Philippines on Friday, ultimately killing 10. Observers characterized the security forces' action as "a strafing."

"The government's response to hunger is violence," said Zeph Rapollo, Southeast Asia campaign coordinator for 350.org, in an email to Common Dreams. ...

The farmers and Indigenous people had been blockading a highway in the Cotabato province for four days in a desperate plea for government aid, after this winter's record-breaking temperatures produced a three-months-long drought that has destroyed their crops and now threatens their lives.

The demonstrators were asking the government to provide 15,000 sacks of rice to ease the hunger crisis. Provincial governor Emmylou Mendoza has refused to engage the protesters.

Ecuador drills for oil on edge of pristine rainforest in Yasuni

Ecuador has started drilling for oil on the edge of a controversial block of pristine rainforest inhabited by two of the last tribes in the world living in voluntary isolation.

The well platform known as Tiputini C, which is now operational a few kilometres from the Peruvian border in the Yasuni national park, is expected to be the first of nearly 200 wells needed to extract the 920m barrels of crude thought to lie below the Ishpingo Tambococha Tiputini (ITT) block.

The Tiputini field is just outside the ITT zone which the government has ordered oil companies to leave untouched. But indigenous people, rainforest campaigners and many Ecuadoreans said this week that they expect oil exploitation in Yasuni national park to lead to pollution, forest destruction and the decimation of the nomadic Tagaeri and the Taromenane tribes who have chosen to have no contact with the outside world. ...

Ecuador’s decision to allow oil companies to drill the ITT block, which contains around 30% of the country’s remaining reserves, has been hotly disputed since 2007 when the new Rafael Correa government pledged to permanently keep the oil underground in exchange for around $3.6bn from the international community. The “Yasuni initiative” was administered by the UN and hailed as one of the world’s most innovative conservation proposals.

But in August 2013, President Correa withdrew the proposal saying the pledges received from countries were minimal and that Ecuador had been failed by the international community.

Nicaragua's environment may have been saved from destruction by a Chinese canal developer due to the economic downturn in China.

Lost in Nicaragua, a Chinese Tycoon’s Canal Project

Chinese billionaire, Wang Jing, officially broke ground in a field outside [the] sleepy Pacific Coast village [Brito, Nicaragua] about a year ago [to build a canal].

And not a small one, either. Three times as long and twice as deep as the Panama Canal, it would slice 170 miles across the southern part of the country — bulldozing through fragile ecosystems, virgin forests and scenes of incredible beauty. It would allow for the passage of the world’s largest ships, vessels the length of skyscrapers that are too big for the Panama Canal.

Yet 16 months later, Mr. Wang’s project — it would be the largest movement of earth in the planet’s history — is shrouded in mystery and producing angry protests here. President Daniel Ortega has not talked about the canal in public for months. And there are no visible signs of progress. Cows graze in the field where Mr. Wang officially began the project.

Experts say they are baffled by Mr. Wang’s canal. It may be backed by the Chinese government, part of its growing interest in Latin America, or may simply be a private investment cast adrift by the convulsions of China’s stock markets and its slowing economy.

At the time of the groundbreaking in December 2014, the Chinese government said it was not involved with the project. This and Mr. Wang’s recent setbacks — he has reportedly lost about 80 percent of his $10 billion fortune — make some experts say the deal is probably dead.

Also of Interest

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

What are the Panama Papers? A guide to the biggest data leak in history

Panama Papers: a massive document leak reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance

Panama Papers The Power Players

Fighting Israeli Occupying Forces Is “Terrorism.” Boycotting Is “Anti-Semitism.” What’s Allowed?

Think nothing could be worse than a Trump presidency? Think again.

German Television Pulls Satire Mocking Turkey’s Erdogan

Behind Brazil’s ‘Regime Change’

#DemocracySpring Has Sprung, With 140-Mile March Before DC Sit-Ins, Arrests

How Washington is creating affordable housing – with recycled Canadian homes

A Little Night Music

George "Wild Child" Butler - Hold Me Baby

George (Wild Child) Butler - Jelly Jam

George (Wild Child) Butler - The Wind & The Axe

George 'Wild Child' Butler - These Mean Old Blues

George 'Wild Child' Butler - Stranger

George 'Wild Child' Butler - High IQ

George 'Wild Child' Butler - Rent Money Gone Again