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This evening's music features r&b singer Sugar Pie DeSanto. Enjoy!

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”

-- George Orwell

News and Opinion

Judge Grants Torture Victims Their First Chance to Pursue Justice

A civil suit against the architects of the CIA’s torture program, psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, will be allowed to proceed, a federal judge in Spokane, Washington, decided on Friday.

District Judge Justin Quackenbush denied the pair’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit launched against them on behalf of three victims, one dead, of the brutal tactics they designed. ...

This is the first time opponents of the program will have the chance to seek discovery evidence in the case unimpeded by the government. In every other past torture accountability lawsuit, the government has invoked its special state-secrets privileges to purportedly protect national security.

But since the extraordinarily detailed and revealing executive summary of the Senate’s torture report was published in 2014, after years of investigation, the government now says almost everything is declassified already.

Former CIA officer faces extradition to Italy over Abu Omar kidnapping

A former undercover CIA officer is to be extradited to Italy following her conviction over the 2003 extraordinary rendition of a terror suspect to Egypt.

Sabrina De Sousa, a dual US and Portuguese citizen, was arrested in Portugal last October and has since lost three appeals against being handed over to Italian authorities. Her extradition is scheduled for 4 May.

At the heart of the case lies the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr – known as Abu Omar – who was snatched off the streets of Milan by the CIA, allegedly with the help of Italian officials, and sent to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

The case was investigated by an independent prosecutor in Italy, leading to the conviction in absentia of De Sousa and 21 other CIA operatives and high-ranking officials. At the time, the case was seen as the only exhaustive investigation of the illegal counter-terrorism practice known as extraordinary rendition, and exposed US allies’ role in helping to execute the strategy.

Pages Said to Detail Saudi Arabia's Involvement in 9/11 to be Made Public

As Obama administration and Gulf ally try to evade accountability, 28-page document may be declassified by June

Confidential and deeply controversial documents said to reveal the support network behind the 9/11 hijackers may soon be made public, according to the Obama administration's head of national intelligence.

James Clapper, who is charged with overseeing the declassification, reportedly said that it is a "realistic goal" that the 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report would be available as early as June.

"We are in the position of trying to coordinate interagency position on the declassification of the 28 pages," he told attendees of an event sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, The Hill reported on Monday.

Clapper's statement followed similar remarks made Sunday by Sen. Bob Graham (R-Fla.), who was co-chairman of the bipartisan congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attack. Graham and others familiar with the report have alleged that the report contains damning information about U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.

"Horrified": Seymour Hersh Reacts to Obama's Plan to Send 250 More U.S. Special Ops Troops to Syria

The US Is Sending 250 Special Forces Troops to Syria to Help Fight Islamic State

A White House advisor said on Monday the US would send 250 special forces personnel to Syria in non-combat roles, five times the number of soldiers that are currently there, in the first major expansion of US ground troops since the war began.

President Barack Obama decided to send the troops to support local militias battling the Islamic State (IS) and speed up the process of retaking territory from the jihadists, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, told reporters in Hannover. The total number of US forces in Syria will now be 300.

"We've seen across parts of northern and eastern Syria progress as ISIL [an alternative acronym for IS] has been pushed out of some strongholds," Rhodes said. "We want to accelerate that progress and we believe the commitment of additional US special forces can play a critical role."

Obama, who is in Germany to discuss foreign policy with a number of European leaders, is expected to formally announce the deployment later on Monday.

Obama's troop increase in Syria is part of a troubling trend

When it comes to Syria, “no boots on the ground” was something of a mantra for Barack Obama. He has repeated it dozens of times, but not anymore. On Monday, he told the world at least 250 US troops would soon be fighting inside the country. With American military members now slowly streaming into multiple countries in the Middle East, we’re entrenched in yet another war and it’s unclear how we’ll get out of it.

To much less fanfare last week, the White House also reportedly loosened the military engagement rules in Syria, so that US servicemen are allowed more leeway to kill civilians as collateral damage in pursuit of Isis. Rightwing Republicans have been clamoring for this policy change for months, despite the risk of it completely backfiring on the US and creating many more terrorists than it kills. At the time, Democrats criticized the likes of Ted Cruz for demanding such a policy. Now there is near silence as the Obama administration has made it a reality.

As he’s broken his promise involving ground troops in Syria, can we expect the same about-face in Libya? “There’s no plan for ground troops in Libya,” Obama said at a press conference in London during his European tour last week. He added: “I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t think it would be welcomed by this new government. It would send the wrong signal.”

One can imagine it’s only a matter of time before that statement is proven false.

Is the Obama Admin Ignoring the Role of Turkey & Saudi Arabia in Syria's 2013 Sarin Gas Attacks?

Yemeni Troops Retake Al-Qaeda Port City Stronghold

Yemeni and Emirati soldiers retook the Yemen seaport city of Mukalla on Sunday, the de facto capital of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), as part of a major offensive to drive the group out of their southern strongholds.

The Saudi-led coalition claimed on Monday that at least 800 militants had been killed during the Mukalla offensive, though according to earlier reports the takeover was relatively peaceful. ...

Local Yemeni officials and residents said on Sunday that some 2,000 Yemeni and Emirati troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport, and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city. They also said they had witnessed little fighting during the offensive.

Residents said local clerics and tribesmen had been in talks with AQAP earlier in the day to exit quietly and that fighters withdrew westward to neighboring Shabwa province. Air strikes killed 30 militants, residents said. ...

Mukalla has been the center of a rich mini-state that AQAP built up over the past year as it took control of an almost 370-mile band of Arabian Sea coastline.

The group that has masterminded several foiled bomb plots on Western-bound airliners and claimed credit for the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year was pocketing around $2 million a day in customs revenues from the port.

Obama Spurns North Korea Offer to Suspend Missile Program

Speaking during is visit to Germany, President Obama denounced North Korea for its offer to abandon its nuclear and missile program in return for an end to US military exercises with South Korea, condemning the nation for its “provocative behaviors.”

Indeed, as much as President Obama rails against North Korea’s nuclear test from back in February, the North Korean government had offered full nuclear disarmament just days before in return for an agreement to sign a deal to end the Korean War, which despite being in a state of mostly-ceasefire is fast approaching its 70th year.

The Obama Administration has repeatedly spurned North Korean offers for a peace treaty, insisting North Korea’s actions, themselves usually reactions to the latest failed offer, prove that the US doesn’t want peace with them. It is this refusal to even contemplate peace which has kept the war going for generations.

This is a review of Andrew Bacevich's new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East. The review itself has a well-rendered history of US military madness since Vietnam. Here's a taste:

Andrew Bacevich and America’s Long Misguided War to Control the Greater Middle East

Nothing undermines the American belief in military force. No matter how often its galloping about results in resentment and mayhem, the U.S. gets up again to do good elsewhere. Failure to improve life in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya stiffens the resolve to get it right next time. This notion prevails among politicized elements of the officer corps; much of the media, whether nominally liberal or conservative; the foreign policy elite recycled quadrennially between corporation-endowed think tanks and government; and most politicians on the national stage. For them and the public they influence, the question is less whether to deploy force than when, where, and how. ...

Bacevich describes a loyal cadre of intellectuals and pundits favoring war after war, laying the moral ground for invasions and excusing them when they go wrong. He notes that in 1975, when American imperium was collapsing in Indochina, the guardians of American exceptionalism renewed their case for preserving the U.S. as the exception to international law. An article by Robert Tucker in Commentary that year set the ball rolling with the proposition that “to insist that before using force one must exhaust all other remedies is little more than the functional equivalent of accepting chaos.” Another evangelist for military action, Miles Ignotus, wrote in Harper’s two months later that the U.S. with Israel’s help must prepare to seize Saudi Arabia’s oilfields. Miles Ignotus, Latin for “unknown soldier,” turned out to be the known civilian and Pentagon consultant Edward Luttwak. Luttwak urged a “revolution” in warfare doctrine toward “fast, light forces to penetrate the enemy’s vital centers” with Saudi Arabia a test case. The practical test would come, with results familiar to most of the world, 27 years later in Iraq.

Congress takes its first step toward killing the military draft

The military draft may be headed for the scrap heap.

The House Armed Services Committee will include instructions to examine the Selective Service program's viability and possible “alternatives” as part of its review of the annual defense authorization bill next week, staffers confirmed on Friday.

The move comes following months of hand-wringing over whether women will be forced to register for the draft as part of the military's plans to open combat jobs to all troops regardless of gender.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers — several of whom sit on the committee — has already offered legislation to abolish the Selective Service System, calling it an outdated vestige of military history.

Stonewalled by NSA, Members of Congress Ask Really Basic Question Again

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is none too happy that the executive branch is asking them to reauthorize two key surveillance programs next year without answering the single most important question about them.

The programs, authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are called PRISM and Upstream. PRISM collects hundreds of millions of internet communications of “targeted individuals” from providers such as Facebook, Yahoo, and Skype. Upstream takes communications straight from the major U.S. internet backbones run by telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon and harvests data that involves selectors related to foreign targets.

But both programs, though nominally targeted at foreigners overseas, inevitably sweep up massive amounts of data involving innocent Americans.

The question is: How much? The government won’t answer.

National Security Letters are now constitutional, judge rules

A judge who in 2013 declared that National Security Letters (NSLs) were unconstitutional has now changed her mind in an unsealed ruling made public Thursday. ...

US District Judge Susan Illston ruled three years ago that NSLs were an unconstitutional infringement of speech. But following her ruling, the law was changed to allow the recipients of the letters in certain and very limited circumstances to disclose their existence—albeit with numerous caveats. The law's change "cures the deficiencies previously identified by this Court," Illston wrote.

The judge also pointed out that the attorney general adopted new disclosure procedures as well.

The legal challenge Illston decided stemmed from a challenge brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was representing two service providers that challenged the NSLs on grounds that the gag requirement illegally limited their rights of speech. ...

[EFF] will appeal Illston's decision.

The real reason Dilma Rousseff’s enemies want her impeached

The story of Brazil’s political crisis, and the rapidly changing global perception of it, begins with its national media. The country’s dominant broadcast and print outlets are owned by a tiny handful of Brazil’s richest families, and are steadfastly conservative. For decades, those media outlets have been used to agitate for the Brazilian rich, ensuring that severe wealth inequality (and the political inequality that results) remains firmly in place.

Indeed, most of today’s largest media outlets – that appear respectable to outsiders – supported the 1964 military coup that ushered in two decades of rightwing dictatorship and further enriched the nation’s oligarchs. This key historical event still casts a shadow over the country’s identity and politics. Those corporations – led by the multiple media arms of the Globo organisation – heralded that coup as a noble blow against a corrupt, democratically elected liberal government. Sound familiar? ...

Slowly, the outside world has begun to see past the pleasing, two-dimensional caricature manufactured by its domestic press, and to recognise who will be empowered once Rousseff is removed. It has now become clear that corruption is not the cause of the effort to oust Brazil’s twice-elected president; rather, corruption is merely the pretext. ...

The country’s elite class and their media organs have failed, over and over, in their efforts to defeat the [left-wing Workers] party] at the ballot box. But plutocrats are not known for gently accepting defeat, nor for playing by the rules. What they have been unable to achieve democratically, they are now attempting to achieve anti-democratically: by having a bizarre mix of politicians – evangelical extremists, far-right supporters of a return to military rule, non-ideological backroom operatives – simply remove her from office. ...

Those leading the campaign for her impeachment and who are in line to take over – most notably the house speaker Eduardo Cunha – are far more implicated in scandals of personal corruption than she is. ... It is impossible to convincingly march behind a banner of “anti-corruption” and “democracy” when simultaneously working to install the country’s most corruption-tainted and widely disliked political figures. Words cannot describe the surreality of watching the vote to send Rousseff’s impeachment to the Senate, during which one glaringly corrupt member of Congress after the next stood to address Cunha, proclaiming with a straight face that they were voting to remove Rousseff due to their anger over corruption. ...

There is a real risk that once she is impeached, Brazil’s media will no longer be so focused on corruption, public interest will dissipate, and the newly empowered faction in Brasilia will be able to exploit its congressional majorities to cripple that investigation and protect themselves.

To See the Real Story in Brazil, Look at Who Is Being Installed as President — and Finance Chiefs

It's not easy for outsiders to sort through all the competing claims about Brazil’s political crisis and the ongoing effort to oust its president, Dilma Rousseff, who won re-election a mere 18 months ago with 54 million votes. But the most important means for understanding the truly anti-democratic nature of what’s taking place is to look at the person whom Brazilian oligarchs and their media organs are trying to install as president: the corruption-tainted, deeply unpopular, oligarch-serving Vice President Michel Temer. Doing so shines a bright light on what’s really going on, and why the world should be deeply disturbed.

[See full article for descriptions of the corruption of VP Temer and House Speaker Eduardo Cunha. - js]

... But there’s one more vital motive driving all of this. Look at who is going to take over Brazil’s economy and finances once Dilma’s election victory is nullified. Two weeks ago, Reuters reported that Temer’s leading choice to run the central bank is the chair of Goldman Sachs in Brazil, Paulo Leme. Today, Reuters reported that “Murilo Portugal, the head of Brazil’s most powerful banking industry lobby” — and a long-time IMF official — “has emerged as a strong candidate to become finance minister if Temer takes power.” Temer also vowed that he would embrace austerity for Brazil’s already-suffering population: He “intends to downsize the government” and “slash spending.”

In an earning calls last Friday with JP Morgan, the celebratory CEO of Banco Latinoamericano de Comercio Exterior SA, Rubens Amaral, explicitly described Dilma’s impeachment as “one of the first steps to normalization in Brazil,” and said that if Temer’s new government implements the “structural reforms” that the financial community desires, then “definitely there will be opportunities.” News of Temer’s preferred appointees strongly suggests Mr. Amaral — and his fellow plutocrats — will be pleased. ...

So to summarize: Brazilian financial and media elites are pretending that corruption is the reason for removing the twice-elected president of the country as they conspire to install and empower the country’s most corrupted political figures. Brazilian oligarchs will have succeeded in removing from power a moderately left-wing government that won four straight elections in the name of representing the country’s poor, and are literally handing control over the Brazilian economy (the world’s seventh largest) to Goldman Sachs and bank industry lobbyists.

Health Care Industry Moves Swiftly to Stop Colorado’s “Single Payer” Ballot Measure

The Campaign in Colorado to create the nation’s first state-based “single payer” health insurance system, providing universal coverage and replacing insurance premiums with higher taxes, has barely begun.

But business interests in Colorado are not taking anything for granted, and many of the largest lobbying groups around the country and in the state are raising funds to defeat Amendment 69, the single-payer ballot question going before voters this November. ...

The proposal calls for the Colorado legislature to pass new laws raising $25 billion a year from a mix of employer payroll taxes, a 3 percent tax on employee gross pay, and a new tax on self-employed net income. The money would be used for a new health care system that would cover all premiums and out-of-pocket costs for health and dental care. The state would also be charged with negotiating with providers and for better drug prices. Supporters of the plan say the system would save $4.5 billion a year.

Cleveland agrees to pay Tamir Rice family $6m over police shooting

The city of Cleveland, Ohio, has agreed to pay $6m to the family of Tamir Rice to settle a lawsuit over the 12-year-old’s fatal shooting by a police officer.

The payment will avert a federal civil rights case brought against city authorities by Tamir’s relatives over the death of “a young boy with his entire life ahead of him, full of potential and promise”, their attorneys said on Monday. ...

The details of the settlement were contained in a filing by judge Solomon Oliver to federal court in Cleveland on Monday morning. The city will pay Tamir’s family $3m this year and $3m next year. Tamir’s estate will receive $5.5m while his mother, Samaria Rice, and his sister, Tajai Rice, will receive $250,000 each directly. “There is no admission of wrongdoing,” the court filing states.

Tamir was shot dead by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann, who opened fire less than two seconds after arriving at a park where the 12-year-old was playing with a toy gun in November 2014. A 911 caller had reported that he appeared to be wielding a weapon and noted it was “probably fake”, but this caveat was not relayed to the officers by dispatchers.

With Call to Repeal 'Hate Bill 2', Thousands of Protesters Welcome Back NC Lawmakers/h5>

As North Carolina's General Assembly began its new session on Monday, it was greeted by tens of thousands of people calling for the repeal of the state's much maligned anti-LGBTQ House Bill 2 (HB 2), passed during a one-day special session on March 23.

The legislation, which opponents say is unconstitutional, requires that transgender people use bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificates, and forbids cities and counties from enacting their own ordinances to prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender people. ...

Monday, with a rally and press conference, the coalition TurnOUT! NC delivered to the state legislature a whopping 187,000 signatures demanding HB 2's repeal. ...

.@HRC is in Raleigh, North Carolina today for the rally to #repealHB2 pic.twitter.com/HT95MJMK3a

— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) April 25, 2016

Local ABC affiliate WTVD reports that four Democratic state lawmakers filed a bill (pdf) Monday morning to fully repeal the controversial law—though they acknowledge that with a Republican majority, repeal is a long shot during this session.

How America's rich betrayed their fellow citizens

America has become a nation of pervasive economic inequality. It’s no wonder, then, that the 2016 election has witnessed a populist uprising. ...

Since the 1980s, rich Americans have maximized their share of the nation’s prosperity at the expense of the rest of the country. Adding insult to injury, a growing body of evidence suggests that many rich people today simply do not care about their fellow Americans. The old concept of noblesse oblige has declined among the wealthy to a disturbing degree. ...

Even though we live in a time of entrenched income inequality, poor Americans actually give a higher percentage of their income to charity than the rich do. The lack of generosity among America’s upper classes shows no signs of abating. Although the overall wealth of the upper classes is growing, levels of charitable giving continue to fall among the rich.

The selfish worldview of America’s upper classes is underscored by their demand for ever greater financial rewards. In the last 50 years, CEO compensation rates have soared. For example, in 1965 the typical CEO made about 20 times as much as average workers. By 2013, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio grew to nearly 300 to 1.

The rich have also poured money into the campaigns of candidates who cut the government programs that most benefit middle-class and working-class Americans, such as public schools and healthcare. And the wealthy increasingly cluster in neighborhoods that isolate them from other social classes.

It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that middle-class and working-class Americans are so angry at political and economic elites. ... The 2016 election is just the tip of the iceberg.

Trump and Clinton share Delaware tax 'loophole' address with 285,000 firms

There aren’t many things upon which Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree, especially as they court very different Delaware voters ahead of a primary on Tuesday. But the candidates for president share an affinity for the same nondescript two-storey office building in Wilmington. A building that has become famous for helping tens of thousands of companies avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in tax through the so-called “Delaware loophole”.

Officially, 1209 North Orange is home to Apple, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, Walmart and dozens of other companies in the Fortune 500 list of America’s biggest companies. Being registered in Delaware lets companies take advantage of strict corporate secrecy rules, business-friendly courts and the “Delaware loophole”, which can allow companies to legally shift earnings from other states to Delaware, where they are not taxed on non-physical incomes generated outside of the state.

The loophole is said to have cost other states more than $9bn in lost taxes over the past decade and led to Delaware to be described as “one of the world’s biggest havens for tax avoidance and evasion”.

Both the leading candidates for president – Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – have companies registered at 1209 North Orange, and have refused to explain why.

Clinton, who has repeatedly promised that as president she will crack down on “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere”, collected more than $16m in public speaking fees and book royalties in 2014 through the doors of 1209, according to the Clintons’ tax return.

Seymour Hersh Weighs In on Sanders vs. Clinton: "Something Amazing Is Happening in This Country"

Koch Brothers Consider Purchasing First Democrat

Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who have spent decades acquiring a world-class collection of Republicans, revealed over the weekend that they are considering purchasing their first Democrat. ...

Charles said that he and his brother had considered acquiring a Democrat only after determining that none of the Republicans on offer this year was worth adding to their collection.

“It’s kind of a scary proposition for us, because we’ve never owned a Democrat before,” he said. ... Koch said that he and his brother learned, after making some phone calls, that other oligarchs have bought Democrats in the past, and “had good experiences with them.”

"It's Possible": Koch Brother Says Hillary Clinton Might Be Best Choice for Him

When the oligarchs speak, take it with a grain of salt. Or a wheelbarrow full.

But in an interview on ABC's "This Week" which aired Sunday morning, billionaire industrialist and philanthropist of the far-right Charles Koch says given the performance of former president Bill Clinton and her own record, he thinks "it's possible" that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be better at fulfilling his libertarian and pro-business agenda than any of the Republicans currently in the running.

Asked by journalist Jonathan Karl if he could actually see himself supporting Clinton in a hypothetical general election against Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or John Kasich – Koch smiled, but didn't say no.

Bernie Sanders and Danny Glover

Channeling Sanders' Call for Revolution, Teachout Soars in NY Congressional Race

Populist candidate Zephyr Teachout has entirely outstripped all other Democratic congressional candidates in New York in 2016 in fundraising, bringing in over half a million dollars mostly from small individual donations, according to her campaign's most recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

Teachout's fundraising success signals her continued popularity with New York progressives, who were overjoyed when Teachout shocked establishment politicians by winning over a third of the vote in the 2014 New York gubernatorial primary despite running against well-funded incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo on a shoestring budget, no political experience or name recognition, and an anti-corruption platform.

Teachout has attracted some wealthy donors, such as the actor Mark Ruffalo and a Rockefeller heiress, but the majority of her contributions has been from small donors—echoing the fundraising successes of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which famously boasts an average donation of $27. ...

Sanders publicly backed Teachout and two other progressive women for Congress earlier this month, and Teachout endorsed Sanders for president last year, describing the Democratic presidential hopeful as "a fearless, experienced leader capable of seeing the truth, and standing up to big private power, even when it's almost impossibly hard."

"Zephyr literally wrote the book on political corruption," Sanders wrote in turn in his fundraising appeal on behalf of Teachout's campaign. "She understands better than anybody how special interests try to buy off politicians, and she's dedicated her life to fixing our broken political system."

As Tim Murphy points out in Mother Jones, "The similarities between two of the left's leading critics of corporatocracy are obvious to the point of cliché."

More of Hillary's handiwork on display:

'Time was running out': Honduran activist's last days marked by threats

In her final days, Berta Cáceres was bombarded with texts and calls warning her to give up the fight against the Agua Zarca dam, or else.

The Honduran indigenous leader told trusted friends and colleagues that some of the death threats were from a suspected sicario – or hitman – who was terrorizing community members near the dam and openly boasting of his intention to kill her. ...

Cáceres, who last year won the Goldman environmental prize for her work, had reported 33 death threats linked to the campaign. Just days before her death, she accused the Honduran company behind the dam, Desarrollos Energéticos SA (Desa), of using local thugs to terrorize her and COPINH as they tried to mobilize opposition to its revised plan to dam their sacred river, the Gualcarque.

The Honduran state was complicit in this intimidation, she alleged.

Since her murder, the violence and threats against COPINH members have continued. Earlier this month, several were injured after a peaceful march including international observers was attacked by people armed with rocks and machetes. Witnesses said that the aggressors chanted “we killed the fly, only the plebs are left” as police and army officers looked on. ...

Despite international pressure on Honduras to capture the assassins – and the people who sent them – fears are mounting that COPINH members could be framed in an attempt to crush opposition to the dam and deter other communities from derailing similar projects. ...

The current wave of repression against social and political activists in Honduras has its roots in the 2009 military-backed coup d’état. The rightwing government that replaced President Manuel Zelaya licensed hundreds of environmentally destructive mega-projects, including mines, hydroelectric dams and model cities, ignoring its obligation to seek consent from indigenous communities.

Sea Change in Gasland? PA Primary Shaping into Fracking Referendum

Progressive anti-fracking candidates fill the ballot in Pennsylvania, the second largest producer of fracked gas in the country

Pennsylvania Democrats will have the opportunity to choose a host of anti-fracking candidates on the states' primary ballot on Tuesday—representing a potential sea change against the industry at the heart of the Marcellus Shale, one of the country's largest fracking plays.

The state is the second largest producer of natural gas in the country, after Texas. Pennsylvanians living close to wells and suffering the accompanying adverse effects on their health and land have long appealed to corporate officials and local politicians to put a stop to the controversial practice.

In Pennsylvania, three candidates on Tuesday's ballot, "including Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders and two Democratic U.S. Senate hopefuls, want to ban or pause the controversial oil and gas drilling technique, splitting an electorate in parts of the state concerned about both jobs and the environment," Reuters reports.

And fracking sharply divides the two Democratic front-runners for president: Sanders has called for a nationwide ban on the practice, while Hillary Clinton, who promoted fracking around the world during her tenure as the U.S. secretary of state, has pushed for "a middle-of-the road approach that would allow it with caveats," as Reuters puts it.

Also of Interest

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

Exhibit One in Any Future American War Crimes Trial

How Neoconservatives and Liberal Hawks Use Lies to Sell Wars

Brazil’s Vice President, Unpopular and Under Scrutiny, Prepares to Lead

Saudi Arabia may be in for a nasty shock when Obama steps down

How the CIA Writes History

A Little Night Music

Sugarpie DeSanto - Slip In Mules

Sugarpie DeSanto - A Little Taste Of Soul

Sugar Pie De Santo - Going Back Where I Belong

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Witch For A Night

Sugar pie de Santo - I don't wanna fuss

Sugar Pie DeSanto - Go Go Power

Sugar Pie DeSanto & Etta James - In The Basement (Part 1& 2)