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This evening's music features jump blues singer and guitarist Jimmy Liggins. Enjoy!

“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it. Our children are still taught to respect the violence which reduced a red-skinned people of an earlier culture into a few fragmented groups herded into impoverished reservations.”

-- Martin Luther King Jr.

News and Opinion

Indigenous Youth to Canadian Politician: ‘Tell Me Why We Live in Third World Conditions’

A young member of the Aboriginal community at the center of a suicide crisis in Canada delivered a pointed question to a key member of Justin Trudeau's Liberal government on Monday.

"Tell me why we First Nations we live in Third World conditions," Robert Sutherland asked Carolyn Bennett, Canada's Indigenous affairs minister, as she toured Attawapiskat, a remote reserve in northern Ontario, the Canadian Press reported.

"Why is it so easy for the government to welcome refugees and offer them first-class citizenship in our country? When will Canada wake up and open its eyes to First Nations communities?"

CP did not note what, if anything, Bennett said in response. But she committed to a new, properly equipped youth center and additional youth programming in Attawapiskat, which shot to international attention last week with reports that 11 people — most of them youths — had tried to commit suicide in one day alone. More than 100 had made the attempt since September. There were reportedly five more suicide attempts by children on Friday. About 2,000 people live in the reserve off the shores of James Bay.

@JustinTrudeau how long will our governments keep saying this, and doing nothing?

— Joel Clements (@joel_clements) April 10, 2016

US congressman calls for investigation into vulnerability that lets hackers spy on every phone

Vulnerabilities within SS7 mobile phone network brokerage system allow attackers to listen to calls, read messages and track location using just a phone number

The security flaws within the system that brokers connections, billing and transfers messages between phone networks – called Signalling System No 7 (SS7), also know as C7 in the UK or CCSS7 in the US – allow remote access to mobile phone users’ data anywhere in the world regardless of the security of their smartphone, using just their phone number.

The Californian congressman Ted Lieu said: “The applications for this vulnerability are seemingly limitless, from criminals monitoring individual targets to foreign entities conducting economic espionage on American companies to nation states monitoring US government officials.”

While encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp are unaffected, SMS messages and calls placed across the mobile phone network can be listened in to, read and recorded, while the location of the phone can be tracked using the mobile network’s location services independent of GPS or other location technologies on the phone. ...

As the vulnerability is within the mobile phone network infrastructure, there is nothing users can do to protect themselves beyond switching off their phone.

Pentagon Announces More US Ground Troops Headed to Iraq

Over the past couple of weeks, Pentagon officials have been talking up planned further escalations of the war in Iraq, and today started their latest move, announcing 217 more US ground troops, along with attack helicopters will be heading to the front lines around Mosul.

The deployment is the formal point at which the US will be violating its deal with the Iraqi government, wherein US ground troops were to be capped at 3,870. The Pentagon has admitted having almost 5,000 troops in Iraq for months, but didn’t count many, listing them as “temporary” even though they have no end date for their deployment. Today’s move will put the “official” figure at over 4,000.

The inclusion of Apache helicopters in the escalation is also noteworthy, as Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has been pushing those for months, with Iraq’s government repeatedly rejecting the idea during previous offensives.

War in Syria: Peace talks near collapse as opposition declares pause

Syrian Rebels Withdraw From Peace Talks, Will Stay in Geneva for Now

After days of loudly condemning the Syrian military for an offensive against al-Qaeda controlled territory south of the city of Aleppo, the Syrian rebel negotiating team in Geneva has withdrawn from the UN-brokered peace talks.

Officials are presenting this simply as a “postponement” of the talks, and say that the rebel negotiators will remain in Geneva for now, with the possibility of returning to the talks, though top negotiator Mohammed Alloush inssisted there was “no way” they’d return. ...

The US appears to be endorsing the rebels’ decision to withdraw from the talks, demanding that Russia use its influence to stop Syria’s ongoing offensive against Nusra territory. Other Western diplomats, however, warn that if the talks collapse over this, the rebels will be blamed.

White House to Veto Bill Allowing Lawsuits Against Saudi Govt for 9/11

The possibility of holding the Saudi Arabian government liable for the role of its officials in the 9/11 attacks in New York City is looking remote today, with the White House press secretary Josh Earnest openly saying he can’t imagine a scenario in which President Obama doesn’t veto the measure. ...

Multiple reports have Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir threatening to have the Saudi government sell as much as $750 billion in US assets, including Treasury securities and other financial securities on the world market, a move that would potentially have disastrous effects on the US dollar and the American economy in general.

Earnest appeared to concede as much, saying that taxpayers would be at risk if Obama didn’t veto the bill that would authorize the lawsuit. This, however, would be ultimately an acknowledgement that the Saudi government is untouchable, and that efforts to keep the Saudi involvement in 9/11 a secret ultimately is to avoid embarrassing US officials who believe they can’t do anything about it.

Saudi Arabia Coerces US Over 9/11

On Saturday, Mark Mazzetti wrote an article that appears on the front page of the New York Times called, apparently very scared by it.

It is bad enough that Wall Street tycoons got off the hook in 2008 because they were “too big to fail.” But, to re-victimize the 9/11 families in order to protect the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia because they are “too invested in the U.S. economy to be held accountable” is appalling. It is extortion — plain and simple.

US Rejects Netanyahu’s Declaration That Golan Is ‘Forever’ Israeli

The US State Department has rejected yesterday’s demand from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the international community recognize the occupied Golan Heights as “forever” part of Israel, saying that the US position is unchanged, and that Golan is not legally part of Israel.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights in 1967, and reports have suggested previous Israeli governments sought to return the heights to Syria as part of a broader peace deal. Netanyahu opposed this, however, and insists that the illegal 1981 annexation of Golan will never be reversed.

‘Total failure’ – Palestine FM on Obama’s foreign policy

US feels 'overwhelming frustration' with Israeli government, says Biden

The US vice-president, Joe Biden, has delivered an unusually sharp critique of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, saying the Israeli prime minister is leading Israel in the wrong direction through his policies, including settlement building.

Biden described the Obama administration’s “overwhelming frustration” with Israel, adding that “profound questions” existed about how the country could remain both Jewish and democratic.

Although Biden’s comments, made in a speech to the Jewish American group J-Street, also criticised Palestinians for the failure of the last round of Middle East peace talks, his remarks about the Netanyahu government were particularly pointed.

“I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years – the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalisation of outposts, land seizures – they’re moving us and more importantly they’re moving Israel in the wrong direction,” Biden said.

His remarks appear to have scotched the notion that relations between Israel and its most significant backer – which have been unusually strained – were returning to normal after the deep frictions over the Iran nuclear deal.

Ringleader in burning alive of Palestinian youth convicted of murder

The Israeli ringleader in the beating and burning alive of a Palestinian teenager in 2014 has been convicted of his murder.

Yosef Haim Ben David, 31, was found in November to have led the assault, but a verdict was delayed after his lawyers submitted last-minute documents saying he suffered from mental illness.

The court ruling on Tuesday said that Ben David “was not psychotic, fully understood the facts, was responsible for his actions, had no difficulty in understanding reality and had the capacity to prevent the crime”.

A sentencing hearing has been set for 3 May.

The family of the teenager, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, welcomed the decision but said they hoped judges followed through with a life sentence for Ben David.

Germany-Pegida leader on trial: Anti-immigration group founder charged with hate speech

Hate Speech Trial of Far-Right Pegida Party Founder Begins in Germany

The founder of Germany's far-right anti-Islam group Pegida went on trial on Tuesday accused of inciting racial hatred.

The charges against Lutz Bachmann, 43, relate to Facebook posts in which he called refugees "cattle," "filth," and "scumbags." A court said his comments amounted to an attack on the dignity of refugees and a disruption of public order. ...

He arrived at court with his girlfriend amid tight security wearing large rectangular dark glasses that mimicked the way media conceal people's identities by blacking out their eyes in pixelated photos — apparently mocking Germany's censorship rules, said the BBC.

Supporters cheered and held banners reading "Against religious fanaticism and any kind of radicalism," "We are the people!" and "Shame on you! Acquit Bachmann."

Bachmann denies being a racist. If convicted he faces between three months and five years in jail.

After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington

It is highly likely that the Senate will agree to hear the charges, which will result in the 180-day suspension of Dilma as president and the installation of the pro-business Vice President Michel Temer from the PMDB party. The vice president himself is, as the New York Times put it, “under scrutiny over claims that he was involved in an illegal ethanol purchasing scheme.” Temer recently made it known that one of the leading candidates to head his economic team would be the chairman of Goldman Sachs in Brazil, Paulo Leme. ...

The US has been notably quiet about this tumult in the second-largest country in the hemisphere, and its posture has barely been discussed in the mainstream press. It’s not hard to see why. The U.S. spent years vehemently denying that it had any role in the 1964 military coup that removed Brazil’s elected left-wing government, a coup that resulted in 20 years of a brutal, pro-U.S., right-wing military dictatorship. But secret documents and recordings emerged proving that the U.S. actively helped plot that coup, and the country’s 2014 Truth Commission report documented that the U.S. and U.K. aggressively supported the dictatorship and even “trained Brazilian interrogators in torture techniques.”

That U.S-supported coup and military dictatorship loom large over the current controversy. President Rousseff and her supporters explicitly call the attempt to remove her a coup. ... The U.S., of course, has a long — and recent — history of engineering instability and coups against democratically elected, left-wing Latin American governments it dislikes. ...

Although no real evidence has emerged proving this theory, a little-publicized trip to the U.S. this week by a key Brazilian opposition leader will likely fuel those concerns. Today — the day after the impeachment vote — Sen. Aloysio Nunes of the PSDB will be in Washington to undertake three days of meetings with various U.S. officials as well as with lobbyists and assorted influence-peddlers close to Clinton and other leading political figures.

Nunes is an extremely important — and revealing — opposition figure to send to the U.S. for these high-level meetings. He ran for vice president in 2014 on the PSDB ticket that lost to Dilma. He will, notably, now be one of the key opposition figures leading the fight to impeach Dilma in the Senate.

As president of the Brazilian Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, Nunes has repeatedly advocated that Brazil once again move closer to an alliance with the U.S. and U.K. And — it almost goes without saying — Nunes has been heavily implicated in corruption allegations; in September, a judge ordered a criminal investigation after an informant, a construction company executive, told investigators that he gave Sen. Nunes R$ 500,000 (US$ 140,000) for his campaign — R$ 300,000 above board and another R$ 200,000 in illicit bribes — in order to win contracts with Petrobras. It is hardly the first such accusation against him.

Dilma Rousseff would likely take the fight to the Supreme Court

Dilma Rousseff vows to keep fighting despite impeachment defeat

Brazil’s embattled president Dilma Rousseff has said that she will fight to maintain power despite a devastating impeachment defeat in the lower house.

While the opposition camp celebrated Sunday’s vote and prepared for a new administration under Vice-President Michel Temer, Rouseff said that she was the victim of a “non-traditional coup d’etat”.

“I believe in democracy,” she told reporters. “I will fight, like I have always done in my life.”

She added: “This is not the beginning of the end – it’s the beginning of the fight.”

Rouseff singled out Temer for criticism, saying that he had “openly conspired” against her, and repeated her pledge not to stand down.

“My mandate is not for me, it’s for 54 million who voted for me ... this is a fight for Brazil, for democracy,” she said. ...

The government side said supporters should to prepare for the next stage of the impeachment process in the senate.
“The Workers’ party calls on all men and women committed to democracy to remain mobilised and occupy the streets against this fraudulent impeachment,” said Rui Falcão, the party’s national president.

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez: U.S. Exceeding King George III's Despotism in Current Treatment of Puerto Rico

'An international disgrace': Jesse Jackson calls for Chicago to close Homan Square

The Rev Jesse Jackson has called for Chicago police to close the warehouse it uses for thousands of incommunicado detentions and interrogations, condemning Homan Square as an “international disgrace”.

Criticism from the civil rights leader comes as the Chicago police department is under heavy pressure for reform, following a mayoral taskforce’s conclusion last week that the force is plagued by institutional racism and an ongoing US Justice Department investigation into its patterns and practices.

“Homan Square is an international disgrace,” Jackson said of the warehouse exposed by the Guardian, at a Monday press conference reacting to the police accountability taskforce’s report.

“People will go without police protection, without equal protection. They are violated and whipped into submission and some of them never return alive.”

A minimally marked warehouse, Homan Square houses the headquarters of anti-narcotics, anti-gang, anti-vice and intelligence units, as well as the property reclamation unit.

But a Guardian investigation and transparency lawsuit has revealed, based largely on the Chicago police’s own internal documents, that at least 7,300 people have been held at Homan Square without a contemporaneous public record of their whereabouts. More than 80% of known Homan Square detainees are black, a figure disproportionate to Chicago’s population. Fewer than 1% of arrestees at Homan Square, according to police records, received access to an attorney. Activists and lawyers have called Homan Square the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

Matt Taibbi has an important find. There's a good chance that Obama and his stenchly henchmen are up to something crooked. Here's a taste, there's more detail to look into, a full read is a good idea.

Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Keep 11,000 Documents Sealed?

For years now, the federal government has been quietly fighting to keep a lid on an 11,000-document cache of government communications relating to financial policy. ... The Obama administration invoked executive privilege, attorney-client and deliberative process over these documents and insisted that their release would negatively impact global financial markets. But in finally unsealing some of these materials last week, a federal judge named Margaret Sweeney said the government's sole motivation was avoiding embarrassment.

"Instead of harm to the Nation resulting from disclosure, the only 'harm' presented is the potential for criticism," Sweeney wrote. "The court will not condone the misuse of a protective order as a shield to insulate public officials from criticism in the way they execute their public duties."

So what's so embarrassing? Mainly, it's a sordid history of the government's seizure of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, also known as the government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs. ...

Within a few years after the crash, the housing markets improved significantly, to the point where Fannie and Freddie started to make money again. Lots of money. The GSEs became cash cows again, and in 2012 the government unilaterally changed the terms of the bailout.

Now, instead of taking a 10 percent dividend, the government decided that the new number it preferred was 100 percent. ...

Despite the fact that the GSEs went on to pay the government $228 billion over the next three years, or $40 billion more than they owed, none of that money went to paying off Fannie and Freddie's debt. ...

But there might be more to this story. Likely also buried in the still-sealed documents is a wealth of information about the government's plans for future reorganization of Fannie and Freddie, a huge looming event in the history of American finance.

Many of the government officials who were involved in the decisions surrounding the GSE conservatorship are now in the private sector, working on proposals for much-anticipated GSE reform.

Heh, the vampire squid is flailing:

Goldman Sachs' slump extends to four quarters as net revenue plummets

Wall Street bank’s net revenue falls 40.3% in first quarter of 2016 to its lowest level since third quarter of 2011 due to market volatility and China worries

Goldman Sachs profit slumped for the fourth straight quarter as market volatility hit the company’s bond trading and investment banking businesses.

The Wall Street bank’s net revenue fell 40.3% in the three months ended 31 March to its lowest since the third quarter of 2011.

“The operating environment this quarter presented a broad range of challenges, resulting in headwinds across virtually every one of our businesses,” the chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, said in a statement.

Goldman – the last of the big US banks to release first-quarter results – reported a 56.3% fall in net income applicable to common shareholders to $1.2bn, or $2.68 a share, for the three months ended 31 March. That compared with $2.75bn, or $5.94 a share, one year earlier, when the bank recorded its best quarterly profit in five years. Analysts on average had expected earnings of $2.45 a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

Goldman’s shares, which up to Monday had fallen about 12% this year, were down 0.5% in pre-market trading.

As with other banks, Goldman’s trading revenue was hit by sliding commodity and oil prices, worries about the Chinese economy and uncertainty about US interest rates.

'Sea of Red' as 40,000 Verizon Workers and Allies March Against Greed in New York

Verizon workers were joined by city leaders in New York on Monday for the sixth continuous day of their labor strike, with a march that stretched from the Verizon building on West 36th Street to 42nd Street.

A sea of red in New York City as 40,000 Verizon workers go on strikehttps://t.co/l9UWP20Gmw

— CNBC (@CNBC) April 18, 2016

An estimated 40,000 workers, elected officials, and other allies marched through Manhattan in "a sea of red" as they called for Verizon executives to settle contract disputes that they say hold tens of thousands of livelihoods in the balance and expressed outrage over the company's plans to outsource labor to the Philippines, Mexico, and other developing countries.

Bernie Sanders made an impromptu visit to the picket line, joining them for the second time since the strike began last week and thanking the workers for standing up to the kind of "corporate greed...that is destroying the American middle class." ...

As organizers noted in a press release ahead of the action, Verizon's service quality has "deteriorated to the point that New York State’s Public Service Commission has convened a formal hearing to investigate problems across the Empire State," with similar probes taking place in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Ben & Jerry's co-founders scooped up by police for protesting at US Capitol

Police arrested the co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at the US Capitol on Monday as they protested against the influence of money in politics.

Jerry Greenfield and Ben Cohen were arrested while participating in the Democracy Spring protests, a two-week series of demonstrations at the US Capitol. Since the protests began on 11 April, 12 people have handcuffed themselves to scaffolding in the building’s rotunda and more than 1,200 people have been arrested.

The demonstrations are not affiliated with any presidential candidate, but are calling on politicians at all levels of government “to commit to fight for reform to save our democracy and ensure political equality”.

US Capitol police said about 300 people were arrested during Monday’s demonstrations for “crowding, obstructing or incommoding”. Those arrested were processed on the scene and released.

Our co-founders, board members, & employees participating in direct action on Capitol steps for #DemocracyAwakens pic.twitter.com/n2EKrqJZUA

— Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) April 18, 2016

Democrats March Toward Cliff

As Democratic-insider “super-delegates” give Hillary Clinton a seemingly insurmountable lead for the presidential nomination, the former Secretary of State’s negative ratings continue to soar to stunning levels, hitting a net 24-point unfavorable in the new NBC-Wall Street Journal poll.

It is hard to imagine someone who is viewed unfavorably by a clear majority of voters (56 percent) and with a net-negative of 24 points winning the White House, except that most voters also don’t like the top Republican choices either. Donald Trump sports a 41-point net-negative and Sen. Ted Cruz is at minus-23 points. (By contrast, of the two trailing candidates, Sen. Bernie Sanders gets a net-positive 9 points and Gov. John Kasich a net-positive 12 points.)

But a major difference between Trump and Clinton in the latest poll is that Trump’s numbers haven’t moved much while Clinton’s net-negative has almost doubled in the last month. In other words, the more Americans get to see of Clinton the more they don’t want her.

While Clinton’s dismal approval ratings haven’t seemed to have shaken the Democratic establishment, which continues to line up behind her long-anticipated coronation, some outside analysts see the party leaders blindly marching toward a cliff. ...

So, if Clinton’s eventual nomination is inevitable, the Democrats will be putting up a candidate who is broadly disliked by the American people. That means a Clinton candidacy will require massive spending on negative ads to make the Republican candidate so frightening in the eyes of most Americans that they will vote for Clinton out of fear, not hope.

Two hours after polls are meant to open in #Brooklyn and our polling place isn't ready. #NYPrimary pic.twitter.com/58KUvKPMuU

— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) April 19, 2016

Emergency Lawsuit Highlights Voter Frustration with New York Primary Process

One day before primary, voters sue Board of Elections and say mysterious "purges" of voting rolls have disenfranchised unsuspecting New Yorkers

As voters on Tuesday morning began casting ballots around New York in the state's Democratic and Republican primaries, a federal court in New York City was scheduled to hear an emergency class-action lawsuit that was filed against the state's Board of Elections alleging that thousands of New Yorkers will be heading to the polls only to discover they can't vote.

Many New Yorkers—mostly registered Democrats—recently discovered their voting registrations changed without their knowledge or that their registration never went through in the first place, argued Election Justice USA (EJUSA), the group that filed the lawsuit alongside 200 voters.

These disenfranchised voters, numbering in the thousands, have been unfairly disqualified from voting in the state's closed primary, argues EJUSA.

"Voters are frustrated, angry, and feel helpless," said Shyla Nelson, spokeswoman for EJUSA. "We have heard hundreds of stories, with desperate pleas for help. This election season has excited and galvanized the voting public in unprecedented numbers. For these voters to be systematically and erroneously removed from the rolls or prevented from voting in their party of choice is devastating to them personally and has sent a wave of doubt and worry through the voting public."

The group seeks an injunction that would immediately allow "tens of thousands" of potential plaintiffs to cast their votes in Tuesday's primary, reports Gothamist. Such a blanket order would effectively make the New York primary an open one, according to ThinkProgress.

EJUSA was awarded a 9am hearing in federal court in New York City on Tuesday. By 11:15am the attorney general named in the case had still not showed up, according to a local reporter, and after EJUSA requested an emergency summons the hearing was rescheduled to 2pm. If the judge rules in favor of the plaintiffs any provisional ballots filed today will be counted, EJUSA says.

New revelations have lent support to the group's allegations: WNYC reported Tuesday that over 123,000 Democratic voters in Kings County—a.k.a Brooklyn—had mysteriously disappeared from the Board of Elections' records since November of 2015. (The deadline for New Yorkers to change party affiliation was October 9, the earliest in the country, and the deadline for first-time voters to register was March 25.)

Millions of New Yorkers Disenfranchised from Primaries Thanks to State's Restrictive Voting Laws

On Staten Island, Clinton thanks Bush for 9/11 aid

Days before the state's April 19 presidential primary, Hillary Clinton made a moderate, middle-of-the-road pitch to supporters on Staten Island’s north shore — the borough she failed to carry in her 2000 Senate campaign, but won in her 2006 re-election. ...

But she used her appearance in the swing borough to remind voters of her record of working with Republicans, going so far as to praise former president George W. Bush and promising not to raise taxes. ...

The appearance on Staten Island comes as Clinton seeks to project a broader message of electability in November, and prove she can attract white, blue-collar voters. Hours before Clinton’s rally here, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was six miles away at the Hilton Garden hotel, also on Staten Island, for a speech at the county’s annual luncheon.

Clinton praised Bush for delivering $20 billion in federal aid to New York after the terrorists attacks on September 11. She said that was the dollar figure she requested from the White House, when she was a New York senator.

"And despite intense Republican pressure to back down, he never did. So I publicly say, thank you President George W. Bush for making sure we got the money to rebuild," she said over applause.

Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents

Bernie Sanders Just Accused Hillary Clinton of Violating Campaign Finance Laws

The Bernie Sanders campaign issued a blistering statement accusing Hillary Clinton’s campaign of circumventing federal campaign finance regulations.

In an official letter to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Sanders’ campaign attorney Brad C. Deutsch accused the Hillary Clinton campaign of using a joint fundraising committee to skirt campaign finance regulations. As Politico reported this weekend, the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF), which was designed to be a joint fundraising effort between the Clinton campaign and the DNC to help Democrats win down-ticket races, is unloading unusually large amounts of cash to Hillary for America (HFA) — Hillary Clinton’s official campaign account.

Deutsch pointed out that the money disbursed by the Hillary Victory Fund is disproportionately benefiting the Clinton campaign, rather than the Democratic Party as a whole:

The Hillary Victory Fund has reported receiving several individual contributions in amounts as high as $353,400 or more, which is over 130 times the $2,700 limit that applies for contributions to Secretary Clinton’s campaign. Bernie 2016 is particularly concerned that these extremely large-dollar individual contributions have been used by the Hillary Victory Fund to pay for more than $7.8 million in direct mail efforts and over $8.6 million in online advertising, both of which appear to benefit only HFA by generating low-dollar contributions that flow only to HFA, rather than to the DNC or any of the participating state party committees. ...

On the Hillary Victory Fund’s official FEC report, the joint fundraising committee disbursed $9.5 million in funds to HFA, while only allocating just over $2 million for the DNC and even less money for state Democratic parties.

Facebook Employees Asked Mark Zuckerberg If They Should Try to Stop a Donald Trump Presidency

Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?” ...

It’s not particularly surprising the question was asked, or that some Facebook employees are anti-Trump. The question and Zuckerberg’s statements on Tuesday align with the consensus politics of Silicon Valley: pro-immigration, pro-trade, pro-expansion of the internet.

But what’s exceedingly important about this question being raised—and Zuckerberg’s answer, if there is one—is how Facebook now treats the powerful place it holds in the world. It’s unprecedented. More than 1.04 billion people use Facebook. It’s where we get our news, share our political views, and interact with politicians. It’s also where those politicians are spending a greater share of their budgets.

And Facebook has no legal responsibility to give an unfiltered view of what’s happening on their network. ...

If Facebook decided to, it could gradually remove any pro-Trump stories or media off its site—devastating for a campaign that runs on memes and publicity. Facebook wouldn’t have to disclose it was doing this, and would be protected by the First Amendment.

You may hate Donald Trump. But do you want Facebook to rig the election against him?

While the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency is a terrifying one, perhaps this is scarier: Facebook could use its unprecedented powers to tilt the 2016 presidential election away from him – and the social network’s employees have apparently openly discussed whether they should do so. ...

The fact that an internet giant like Facebook or Google could turn an election based on hidden changes to its code has been a hypothetical scenario for years (and it’s even a plot point in this season’s House of Cards). Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain explained in 2010 how “Facebook could decide an election without anyone ever finding out”, after the tech giant secretly conducted a test in which they were able to allegedly increase voter turnout by 340,000 votes around the country on election day simply by showing users a photo of someone they knew saying “I voted”.

Facebook repeated this civics engagement experiment on a broader scale during the 2012 election. While the testing did not favor any one candidate, the potential for that power to be used to manipulate voters became such an obvious concern that Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg, said, in 2014, “I want to be clear – Facebook can’t control emotions and cannot and will not try to control emotions.” She added: “Facebook would never try to control elections.”

Her comments came right after a controversial study conducted by Facebook became public. It showed that, in fact, the company had secretly manipulated the emotions of nearly 700,000 people.

And in a Politico Magazine piece entitled “How Google could rig the 2016 election”, research psychologist Robert Epstein described how a study he co-authored in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that “Google’s search algorithm can easily shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more – up to 80% in some demographic groups – with virtually no one knowing they are being manipulated.”

To be sure, many corporations, including broadcasters and media organisations, have used their vast power to influence elections in all sorts of ways in the past: whether it’s through money, advertising, editorials, or simply the way they present the news. But at no time has one company held so much influence over a large swath of the population – 40% of all news traffic now originates from Facebook – while also having the ability to make changes invisibly.

Australia's Largest Mining Project Moves Forward, Despite Weak Demand for Coal

When scientists from Australia's Coral Bleaching Task Force conducted a series of aerial surveys of the Great Barrier Reef last month, they expected to find some damage from the world's warming oceans around Lizard Island, north of Cooktown on Queensland's northeast coast.

Instead they found a disaster of epic proportion.

Ninety-five percent of more than 500 reefs stretching between Cairns and Papua New Guinea showed signs of bleaching — and some reefs appeared close to death. ...

So when the Queensland government approved three mining leases for Australia's largest coal mine — which will require dredging of waters around the reef to make way for coal ships — many scientists and conservationists expressed further dismay.

Emissions from the $17 billion Carmichael coal mine, which includes a 100-mile-long rail line and one of the world's largest coal ports, Abbot Point, are projected to be huge.

An estimated 4.7 billion metric tons of carbon will be released into the atmosphere over the mine's lifetime. Annual emissions from the mine — 79 million metric tons — will be 20 percent more than the annual average emissions of New York City, according to calculations by the Australia Institute.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the approvals were a "major step forward" and would create thousands of jobs. But the project future remains in jeopardy due to legal challenges, falling coal prices, and funding shortfalls.

New Leak at Hanford Nuclear Waste Site is 'Catastrophic,' Worker Warns

A leak at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state has prompted warnings of "catastrophic" consequences, as workers attempt to clean up more than eight inches of toxic waste from one of 28 underground tanks holding radioactive materials leftover from plutonium production.

Alarms on the site began sounding on Sunday, leading workers to discover 8.4 inches of toxic waste in between the inner and outer walls of tank AY-102, which has been slowly leaking since 2011 but has never accumulated that amount of waste before.

A former tank farm worker told local media that despite statements from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that the spill does not pose a threat to public health, it should be considered a major problem.

"This is catastrophic," the worker, Mike Geffre, who first discovered that the tank was failing in 2011, told King-TV on Monday. "This is probably the biggest event ever to happen in tank farm history. The double shell tanks were supposed to be the savior of all saviors [to hold waste safely from people and the environment]."

Also of Interest

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

Prisoner’s Letters Document Tragedy and Hope Inside Guantánamo

Why is Goldman Sachs funding the violent, racist Jewish settlers of Hebron?

An Interview With Gustavo Castro, Sole Witness to Assassination of Berta Cáceres

Iran's President Is Betting Billions on Economic Reform

Techies for Bernie: why some best-paid workers are supporting a socialist

Hillary Clinton’s Dealings With Saudi Arabia Back In Focus For 9/11 Bill

Wall Street Banking Model Takes Center Stage in Today’s New York Primary

Hillary's Dance: The Two-Faced Hypocritical 12-Step

Clinton Delegate Lead Down to 194, Even as Dramatic Miscounting of Delegates by Media Continues

Freddie Gray, one year later: Baltimore's black residents still waiting for changes

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Liggins - That's What's Knockin' Me Out

Jimmy Liggins - Boogie Woogie King

Jimmy Liggins - I Ain't Drunk

Jimmy Liggins - Talking That Talk

Jimmy Liggins - Shuffle Shuck

Jimmy Liggins - Drunk

Jimmy Liggins - I Can't Stop It