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This evening's music features jazz and blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon. Enjoy!

“To keep any great nation up to a high standard of civilization there must be enough superior characters to hold the balance of power, but the very moment the balance of power gets into the hands of second-rate men and women, a decline of that nation is inevitable.”

-- Christian D. Larson

News and Opinion

An Alternative State of the Union: Progressives on Obama's Legacy & Hopes for His Final Year

Obama Speech Ignored His Death Toll at Home and Abroad

The White House kept one seat vacant in the gallery during Obama’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday “for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice.” This was part of Obama’s campaign for new federal restrictions on firearms ownership.

But shouldn’t there have also been chairs left empty to memorialize other casualties – including those “who no longer have a voice” thanks to Obama administration policies? ...

If the first lady sat alone among the other 28 seats the White House receives in the first lady’s box, it wouldn’t make room to represent the casualties of Obama administration policies at home and abroad. Presidents have the prerogative to morally grandstand in State of the Union addresses. But Obama’s righteous indignation would have more credibility if his litany had fewer glaring omissions.

The American Sailors Held by Iran Have Been Released After the US 'Apologized,' Says Iran

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday it has released 10 American sailors who it had detained a day earlier, according to a statement broadcast on state television. A US official has also confirmed that the servicemen have been freed after being held overnight.

This came after the US apparently apologized to Iran, according to General Ali Fadavi, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards naval forces.

Iran detained the sailors aboard two US Navy patrol boats in the Gulf on Tuesday in an incident that rattled nerves days ahead of the expected implementation of a landmark nuclear accord between Tehran and world powers. ...

"This incident in the Persian Gulf, which probably will not be the American forces' last mistake in the region, should be a lesson to troublemakers in the US Congress," Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, head of Iran's armed forces, was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

U.S. Media Condemns Iran’s “Aggression” in Intercepting U.S. Naval Ships — in Iranian Waters

News broke last night, hours before President Obama’s State of the Union address, that two U.S. Navy ships “in the Persian Gulf” were “seized” by Iran, and the 10 sailors on board were “arrested.” The Iranian government quickly said, and even the U.S. government itself seemed to acknowledge, that these ships had entered Iranian waters without permission, and were thus inside Iranian territory when detained. CNN’s Barbara Starr, as she always does, immediately went on-air with Wolf Blitzer to read what U.S. officials told her to say: “We are told that right now, what the U.S. thinks may have happened, is that one of these small boats experienced a mechanical problem . . . perhaps beginning to drift . . . it was at that point, the theory goes right now, that they drifted into Iranian territorial waters.”

It goes without saying that every country has the right to patrol and defend its territorial waters and to intercept other nations’ military boats that enter without permission. Indeed, the White House itself last night was clear that, in its view, this was “not a hostile act by Iran” and that Iran had given assurances that the sailors would be promptly released. And this morning they were released, exactly as Iran promised they would be, after Iran said it determined the trespassing was accidental and the U.S. apologized and promised no future transgressions.

Despite all of this, most U.S. news accounts last night quickly skimmed over – or outright ignored – the rather critical fact that the U.S. ships had “drifted into” Iranian waters. Instead, all sorts of TV news personalities and U.S. establishment figures puffed out their chest and instantly donned their Tough Warrior pose to proclaim that this was an act of aggression – virtually an act of war: not by the U.S., but by Iran. ...

Iran detains US sailors. Released promptly or not, a hostile act by a regime that acts w/o US cost/consequence https://t.co/0MNy0FnsjI

— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) January 12, 2016

Iranian hardliners have been systematically trying to undermine Rouhani and damage US-Iranian relations. Seizing sailors, that'll do it.

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) January 12, 2016

Hey Iran, you have exactly 300 days left to push a US president around. Enjoy it while you can. After that, there will be hell to pay.

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) January 12, 2016

Somehow, the U.S. media instantly converted the invasion by U.S. ships into Iranian waters into an act of aggression by Iran. That’s, in part, because the U.S. political and media establishment believes the world is owned by the United States [...] Thus, the U.S. military has the absolute right to go anywhere it wants – even into Iranian waters – and it’s inherently an act of “aggression” for anyone else to resist. That was the clear premise of the bulk of the U.S. commentary last night.

What Hillary Knew about Libya

In selling the Libyan policy to the American people, it was also important to downplay another part of the crisis: that Gaddafi was right when he warned of the danger from Islamic radicals, including Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, operating in eastern Libya.

Gaddafi’s original military offensive was aimed at these groups, but the Obama administration’s propagandists twisted the issue into Gaddafi supposedly committing “genocide” against the people of eastern Libya, thus requiring a U.S.-led “responsibility to protect” or “R2P” mission.

However, in the emails to Clinton, Blumenthal conveyed the actual reality – that these supposedly innocent anti-Gaddafi rebels in the east indeed included jihadist elements. He wrote: “Sarkozy is also concerned about continuing reports that radical/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and Al Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are infiltrating the NLC [the rebel’s National Transitional Council] and its military command.

“Accordingly, he [Sarkozy] asked [a] sociologist … who has long established ties to Israel, Syria, and other nations in the Middle East, to use his contacts to determine the level of influence AQIM and other terrorist groups have inside of the NLC. Sarkozy also asked for reports setting out a clear picture of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the rebel leadership.”

Blumenthal added: “Senior European security officials caution that AQIM is watching developments in Libya, and elements of that organization have been in touch with tribes in the southeastern part of the country. These [European] officials are concerned that in a post-Qaddafi Libya, France and other western European countries must move quickly to ensure that the new government does not allow AQIM and others to set up small, semi-autonomous local entities — or ‘Caliphates’ — in the oil and gas producing regions of southeastern Libya.”

In other words, the danger of Islamic terror groups exploiting the power vacuum that the Obama administration and its Western allies were creating inside Libya was well understood in March 2011, but the supposed “R2P” mission pressed ahead nevertheless.

Deadly Bombing of Polio Clinic Points to CIA's Chilling Legacy

At least 15 people were killed and 25 wounded on Wednesday when a bomb blast targeted a polio eradication center in the city of Quetta, located in southwestern Pakistan.

The bomb reportedly hit a police van that was accompanying health workers in a drive aimed at immunizing young children.

The bombing is the latest deadly attack to target polio facilities and workers, who have fallen under greater distrust after the CIA orchestrated a fake vaccination drive in 2011 as part of the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin.

Iraqi Sunni Mosques Burned in ‘Revenge’ Attacks, 10 Killed

Anger at yesterday’s ISIS attack on a cafe popular with Shi’ite militias has led some of those militias to launch revenge attacks. Not against ISIS, of course, but rather against Sunni civilians in Iraq’s Diyala Province, where at least 10 were killed.

Militia fighters with loudspeakers were roaming the streets of the city of Muqdadiya demanding all Sunni civilians leave within 24 hours or be killed on sight. The militias destroyed at least nine Sunni mosques in the area, and dozens of Sunni-owned shops.

Syrian Troops, Hezbollah Retake Latakia Town

Syrian military forces, backed by Hezbollah forces on the ground and Russian airstrikes, have retaken the Latakia Province town of Salma, along with strategically important hillsides around the town’s outskirts. ...

Holding Latakia is also a top priority for Russia, as they have a naval base further south along the coast, and want to ensure that there is a secure path between the capital city of Damascus and the coast. This is why, despite the lack of ISIS in the area, Russia has heavily supported offensives against other Islamist rebels in and around this area.

In addition to the al-Qaeda coalition, Turkmen rebels are also active in northern Latakia. The Turkmen are heavily backed by neighboring Turkey, and have been targeted heavily by Russia since Turkey destroyed one of their warplanes over Syrian territory.

Syria air strikes: David Cameron admits 'there aren’t enough' moderate fighters on the ground and some are 'hardline'

David Cameron has admitted that “there aren’t enough” moderate Syrian fighters to defeat Isis yet and conceded some of the rebels belong to “relatively hardline Islamist groups”.

He insisted however that the Government’s strategy of relying on 70,000 on-the-ground rebel fighters to seize Isis-held territory following Western air strikes was the right way to defeat the Isis, also known as Daesh and rejected the idea that the only way of beating it was by supporting President Assad’s forces.

Faced with criticism over his claim that 70,000 “moderate” fighters existed in Syria, Mr Cameron said it “wasn’t a figure I invented” but was provided by the security services and was a “best estimate”.

He accepted that not all of the rebel fighters were the “sort of people you bump into at Liberal Democrat party conference” but refused a request to publish the names of groups British intelligence services had identified as part of the 70,000 figure.

You can’t report truthfully on Israel without facing its wrath

Makarim Wibisono has announced his resignation as UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. ...

The Indonesian diplomat says that he could not fulfill his mandate because Israel has adamantly refused to give him access to the Palestinian people living under its military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Unfortunately, my efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way,” Wibisono explains.

Shaker Aamer: Gitmo built with sole purpose of breaking people

Canada campaigners to demand public debate on controversial anti-terror law

Opponents of Canada’s sweeping new anti-terror law are planning a major campaign to pressure the Liberal government to launch broad public consultations before overhauling the controversial legislation.

Civil society groups, legal scholars and labour unions are calling on the government to hold a public debate on reforms for the legislation – known as C-51 – which they say are necessary to protect Canadian civil liberties, freedoms and personal privacy.

“We know very little about the government’s plans for C-51, so our hope is they are going to listen to the huge number of Canadians who expressed deep, deep concerns about this bill when it was passed,” British Columbia Civil Liberties Association executive director Josh Paterson told the Guardian. ...

Bill C-51 provoked widespread outrage when it was passed by the Conservative government last June. Liberals took a beating in public opinion polls when they voted in support of the legislation, though they promised to repeal its “problematic elements” if they won the 19 October federal election.

They did, and now the bill’s critics – who say it is too broad, lacks sufficient oversight for national security and law enforcement agencies, and includes a number violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a rights bill embedded in Canada’s constitution – want to ensure those problems are dealt with in full public view.

UN: International migration surged 41% since 2000

The number of people who migrated to foreign countries surged by 41 percent in the last 15 years to reach 244 million in 2015, according to a United Nations study released Tuesday. Of those people, 20 million are refugees. The U.N. is planning a series of meetings in 2016 to address migration, including a March 30 gathering in Geneva where countries can pledge to take in Syrians fleeing civil war. But while the Syrian refugee crisis has gripped the world's attention, it is but a drop in the sea of international migration. ...

While Asia and Europe host the largest portions of international migrants, they also contribute the most. Asia is the biggest regional source of international migrants, with 104 million, or 43 percent. Europe contributed 25 percent, or 62 million. The U.N. report explained that migration occurs mostly between countries located in the same region. Latin America and the Caribbean was the third-largest regional source of international migration, with 37 million, or 15 percent. Only 2 percent (4 million) are from North America.

India had the world's biggest diaspora, with 16 million people, followed by Mexico (12 million), Russia (11 million), China (10 million) and Bangladesh (7 million) and Pakistan and Ukraine (6 million each).

US intelligence director's phone account was hacked, office says

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence (DNI), appears to have become the latest government official who had a personal account accessed by a hacker. In October, CIA director John Brennan said he was “outraged” after a still-anonymous hacker or hackers broke into his AOL email account and posted files online.

“We are aware of the matter and have notified the appropriate authorities,” DNI spokesman Brian Hale said in a written statement. ...

The hacker allegedly accessed Clapper’s Verizon account so that calls to the director would be forwarded to the Free Palestine Movement. The hacker also claimed to have accessed Clapper’s wife’s personal email account.

Apple’s Tim Cook Lashes Out at White House Officials for Being Wishy-Washy on Encryption

Apple CEO Tim Cook lashed out at the high-level delegation of Obama administration officials who came calling on tech leaders in San Jose last week, criticizing the White House for a lack of leadership and asking the administration to issue a strong public statement defending the use of unbreakable encryption.

The White House should come out and say “no backdoors,” Cook said. That would mean overruling repeated requests from FBI director James Comey and other administration officials that tech companies build some sort of special access for law enforcement into otherwise unbreakable encryption. Technologists agree that any such measure could be exploited by others.

But Attorney General Loretta Lynch responded to Cook by speaking of the “balance” necessary between privacy and national security – a balance that continues to be debated within the administration. ...

The Washington Post reported in September that the White House had decided not to pursue legislation against unbreakable encryption. But the intelligence community’s top lawyer was quoted in an email saying that that the administration should be “keeping our options open…in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.” ...

Cook has been outspoken in his opposition to the idea that we need to sacrifice privacy and digital security for the sake of public safety. During an episode of 60 Minutes on December 20, he said: “We’re America, we should have both.”

US Admits Some Families It Rounded Up for Deportation Could Qualify for Asylum

At 3.30am last Thursday, US immigration agents removed dozens of El Salvadoran women and kids from a South Texas detention center and loaded them onto a plane to be deported. As their flight departed San Antonio, Isamar Sanchez and her seven-year-old daughter wept, fearing what would happen after they returned to their gang-ravaged homeland.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had raided the family's Virginia home just days earlier, taking the pair into custody as part of a broader roundup of 121 Central American mothers and children who entered the country illegally. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, claimed the families had exhausted all legal options to remain in the US and would be deported immediately.

But when the jet carrying Sanchez and her daughter touched down in Laredo, Texas, for a brief layover before continuing south, the 23-year-old mother suddenly heard her name.

"Isamar, get off!" a DHS agent commanded. "We're taking you back where you were."

The agent ordered two other families picked up in the raids to deplane as well. He explained that DHS had been mistaken — the families actually had one more chance to stay in the US. ...

Sanchez and her daughter are now being allowed to stay in the US indefinitely. After initially stating otherwise, the government now admits they may qualify for asylum, the protection granted to individuals that have fled persecution in their home country. The Board of Immigration Appeals granted stays of deportation for 12 families, as the court determines whether the families can now file appeals on their asylum decisions.

The vast majority of families targeted in the recent ICE raids were denied legal counsel, because the fact that undocumented immigrants have been accused of violating civil law means they are not guaranteed the right to an attorney (unlike defendants in criminal cases.) Those like Sanchez, who could afford a lawyer or had one provided to them by legal aid groups, had a much better chance of avoiding deportation, said attorney Ian Philabaum, who has secured stays for 12 families.

The Most Durable Economy in the World?

State of the Union: U.S. is in decline

If you watched the President’s State of the Union speech at WhiteHouse.gov, you got to see the interesting charts – some are still available here along with a transcript of the speech. One chart, shown below, reads: “Today, the top 3 percent of the richest Americans hold half the nation’s wealth.” That correct assessment, unfortunately, makes another statement by the President impossible to justify. The President told the highly cynical American people the following: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

It’s simply impossible to have an economy or a democracy moving in the right direction when wealth and income is clustered in so few hands. There is simply not enough purchasing power in the hands of the masses to buy the goods and services being produced by the rich corporate owners.

It’s not just the Republican candidates running for President who are saying the U.S. is in decline. It’s also Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who is running as a Democrat. Sanders is stumping across the U.S. telling tens of thousands of fellow realists the following:

The U.S. has the greatest income and wealth inequality of any other major developed country;

One percent of the population now controls a greater share of pre-tax income than at any time since the 1920s, (the last time Wall Street was legally allowed to gamble for the house with bank deposits);

The top one-tenth of one percent of the super elite own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent;

Since Wall Street imploded under the weight of its own corruption in 2008, destroyed the U.S. economy, used taxpayer money to bail itself out and reward the financial elites with millions of dollars in bonuses and golden parachutes, only the poor and middle class have paid the price. The one percent have reaped 58 percent of all income gains since the crash.

There is simply no honest argument to be made that the above set of facts does not depict both an economy and a democracy in decline. ...

The President peddled some additional fiction when he stated that the financial crisis had been caused by “recklessness on Wall Street.” Recklessness is when you run a red light. Fraud is when you are repeatedly warned of illegal acts within the business you oversee and you look the other way because the profits and your big bonuses are rolling in.

Royal Bank of Scotland hits the panic button:

Sell everything ahead of stock market crash, say RBS economists

Investors face a “cataclysmic year” where stock markets could fall by up to 20% and oil could slump to $16 a barrel, economists at the Royal Bank of Scotland have warned.

In a note to its clients the bank said: “Sell everything except high quality bonds. This is about return of capital, not return on capital. In a crowded hall, exit doors are small.” It said the current situation was reminiscent of 2008, when the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank led to the global financial crisis. This time China could be the crisis point. ...

RBS is not the only negative voice at the moment. Analysts at JP Morgan have advised clients to sell stocks on any bounce.

Morgan Stanley has said oil could fall to $20 a barrel, while Standard Chartered has predicted an even bigger slide, to as low as $10. Standard said: “Given that no fundamental relationship is currently driving the oil market towards any equilibrium, prices are being moved almost entirely by financial flows caused by fluctuations in other asset prices, including the US dollar and equity markets.

“We think prices could fall as low as $10 a barrel before most of the money managers in the market conceded that matters had gone too far.”

The Racist History of the 2nd Amendment and Why it Matters Today

Oregon militia to discuss 'when we will be leaving' wildlife refuge

The militiamen occupying the Malheur national wildlife refuge in eastern Oregon said on Tuesday that they intended to tell the public soon “when we will be leaving”, signalling that the takeover could be heading toward a resolution.

At a press conference at the refuge, LaVoy Finicum, an Arizona rancher and one of the main spokesmen of the armed militia, announced that on Friday, the occupiers planned to meet with the local community of Burns, the closest town to the wildlife sanctuary, located 30 miles away. “We will be going into town and holding a meeting with the community, to explain to the community … why we’re here and when we will be leaving. And that will be important,” he said. “We invite all to attend.”

The announcement is significant given that, if they follow through with the plan, the 7pm Friday event will mark the first time the occupiers enter Burns and formally communicate with local residents, who have increasingly called on the militia to end the siege and leave Oregon.

Although numerous Harney County officials and many Burns residents have condemned the armed occupation led by Arizona rancher Ammon Bundy, militia members have continued to claim that their local support is growing and that they will back out once they can transfer their efforts to Burns residents.

Oregon judge proposes militia pay $75,000 a day for occupying refuge

Judge says ongoing standoff at Malheur national wildlife refuge led by Ammon Bundy is expensive for the county and ‘we’re going to send Mr Bundy the bill’

A local judge in Oregon has raised the prospect of making the armed militia occupying a federal wildlife refuge pay as much as $75,000 a day for the toll the standoff is costing the rural county.

Harney County judge Steve Grasty, a vocal critic of the militia, estimates that the armed occupation led by cattle rancher Ammon Bundy cost the community roughly $60,000 to $75,000 each day of the first week of the occupation.

Grasty, an administrative judge, proposed making Bundy and his associates pay the expenses at a community meeting on Monday night in Burns, the closest town to the ongoing occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge.

It’s been 10 days since Bundy and a group of out-of-state militiamen stormed the federal wildlife sanctuary headquarters to protest the government’s land regulations and the imprisonment of two Harney County ranchers in an arson case.

Grasty earned loud applause from the audience when he told residents: “We’re going to send Mr Bundy the bill.”

Those costs will grow if the militia continues to ignore pleas from local residents for them to pull out. And if the standoff drags on for another week, expenses could add up to more than $1m.

People in the Western US Really Do Want Federal Regulation of Land

As the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in rural Oregon enters its second week, a new public opinion poll shows that a majority of people surveyed in seven states in the American West do not share the demands of Ammon Bundy's armed, camouflage-clad militia.

The State of the Rockies Project at Colorado College surveyed 2,800 residents in Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and found "strong public support" for federal efforts to preserve and regulate land.

The survey found that 58 percent of respondents oppose giving state governments control over national public lands and 60 percent oppose selling significant public land holdings, such as national forests, to reduce the budget deficit. Seventy-two percent of respondents believed that national public lands help their state economy. ...

"Charges of government overreach from the ideological fringes are making headlines, but in reality most Westerners in this poll favor greater protection and sensible use of the open lands and national treasures that define the region," Eric Perramond, a professor of human-environmental geography at Colorado College, in a said in release accompanying the polling data.

Pennsylvania police fatally shoot 12-year-old at her home

A police constable in Pennsylvania killed a 12-year-old girl when he fired a shot at the girl’s father that passed through the man’s arm and hit her, officials said on Tuesday.

Ciara Meyer was pronounced dead at her home on Monday morning after Constable Clarke Steele attempted to “enforce an eviction order” on her family in Duncannon, north of Harrisburg, according to officials.

When Steele approached the apartment, Ciara’s father, Donald Meyer, allegedly opened and then shut the door before opening it a second time armed with a rifle, officials said. Steele and Meyer exchanged words briefly before Meyer “leveled” the rifle at Steele, according to police. Steele fired a single shot at Meyer, who was struck in the upper left arm before his daughter was hit, police said.

The Intercept nails Hillary T. Hypocrite:

Hillary Clinton in 2008: “Since When Do Other Democrats Attack Each Other on Universal Healthcare?”

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been excoriating fast-rising rival Bernie Sanders for his proposal to adopt a single-payer universal health care plan. But in 2008, she decried the notion that a fellow Democrat would attack another for proposing universal coverage.

“Since when do Democrats attack each other on universal healthcare?” Clinton asked.

'Fighting Dirty,' Clinton's 'Inflammatory Distortion' of Sanders' Single-Payer Plan

Perhaps spurred by palpable momentum around Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton took aim this week at a centerpiece of her chief rival's platform—and political career—a Medicare-for-All program that he says would save the average U.S. family thousands of dollars a year in healthcare costs.

This isn't the first time that Hillary Clinton has attacked single-payer healthcare, having done so in November and December of last year.

In a statement on Monday, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs hit back: "Secretary Clinton is inaccurate in suggesting that Republican governors would be able to circumvent the law and deny implementation in their states." Referring to a single-payer proposal he put forth in 2013, Briggs added: "The bill Sen. Sanders introduced was very clear. It is national legislation for all states."

National Nurses United added its voice to those defending Sanders' proposal, accusing Clinton of deliberately distorting the facts.

"Surely Hillary Clinton knows that Medicare and Medicaid are national programs, and that they would be funded as national programs," said NNU co-president Jean Ross. "To claim that expanding Medicare to all would hand it over to state governors is a crude, inflammatory distortion, and shows an indifference to all those people who continue to be harmed by a broken system."

Bernie Sanders's health care plan is literally called "Medicare for All" and Hillary/Chelsea lie and say it dismantles Medicare. Shameless

— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) January 12, 2016

Ryan Cooper wrote at The Week, "it's obvious what's happening here. Clinton has been flagging in the polls of late, and as usual she's turned to fighting dirty."

Clinton's Lead Over Sanders Shrinking Nationwide: Poll

With just three weeks left before the Iowa presidential caucuses, voters throughout the country are rapidly turning away from Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and throwing their support behind once-dark horse Bernie Sanders, new polling shows.

A New York Times/CBS survey released Tuesday night found that Clinton's nationwide lead over Sanders continues to fade, with the former Secretary of State receiving 48 percent of prospective voters' support to the Vermont senator's 41 percent. Just a month ago, she had 20 percentage points on him nationally.

Other recent surveys found that Sanders has a five-point lead in Iowa and a 14-point lead in New Hampshire, while his support among women voters continues to grow.

Civil disobedience often leads to jail. But now, protestors can explain themselves

In the face of governmental failure in addressing climate change, the climate movement has seen a dramatic increase of civil disobedience. The threat of jail is real to activists who use these tactics – as I learned first hand. But now activists now have a powerful form of defense: necessity.

For the very first time, US climate activists have been able to argue the necessity defense – which argues that so-called criminal acts were committed out of necessity – to a jury. The Delta 5, who blockaded an oil train at the Delta rail yard near Seattle in September of 2014, have been been allowed to use the defense in an historic climate change civil disobedience trial being heard this week. They said they acted to prevent the greater harm of climate change and oil train explosions.

Like all civil disobedience, this new wave of climate disobedience is an inherent critique of the moral authority of government. The necessity defense is an opportunity to elaborate that implicit critique into a fully developed legal argument for the responsibility of citizen action in the face of governmental failure.

In addition to gaining the permission to openly argue the necessity defense, the Delta 5 defendants have so far been winning the crucial legal maneuvers in the courtroom. The trial started with several motions from the prosecution to limit how the defense could present “sympathetic” evidence or anything related to their backgrounds. These motions were denied.

The judge has shown himself to be committed to a fully open trial of all the factors that would drive people to risk their bodies to stop fossil fuel expansion. This kind of openness is distressingly rare for civil disobedience cases in American courts. Why this particular judge, Anthony Howard, is breaking ranks in this climate trial is unknown, but I suspect it may have something to do with the fact that he is young enough that he will still be alive in 2050.

The EPA's Hush-Hush Response to the Flint Water Crisis

Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for months knew about the poisoning of the Flint water supply and, rather than raise alarm and stop residents from drinking the lead-tainted water, took a backseat on the matter.

The Detroit News reported late Tuesday that federal officials began making inquiries in February and the region's top EPA official, Susan Hedman, confirmed to the newspaper this week that as early as April the agency knew about the lack of corrosion controls in the water system.

According to the reporting:

An EPA water expert, Miguel Del Toral, identified potential problems with Flint’s drinking water in February, confirmed the suspicions in April and summarized the looming problem in a June internal memo. The state decided in October to change Flint’s drinking water source from the corrosive Flint River back to the Detroit water system. 

Critics have charged Hedman with attempting to keep the memo’s information in-house and downplaying its significance.

Federal officials for months engaged in a bureaucratic, behind-the-scenes "battle" with Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) "over whether Flint needed to use chemical treatments to keep lead lines and plumbing connections from leaching into drinking water," the paper reports. Hedman argued that it was not the "role" of the federal agency to regulate local water operations.

All the while, residents of the poor, largely African American community blindly continued to drink the poisoned water.

From Seabirds to Starfish: Climate Change Driving Unprecedented Die-Offs

From seabirds to whales to antelopes to starfish, animal die-offs across the globe are raising alarm about the deadly impact of climate change on the world's ecosystems and their vulnerable inhabitants.

An estimated 8,000 black-and-white common murres were found dead on the beaches of Alaska's Prince William Sound over the weekend, joining thousands more that have washed up on beaches from California to the Gulf of Alaska over the past year. The seabirds, who appear to have died of starvation, "are indicators of what is happening in the marine ecosystem," the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) wrote in a press release (pdf) on the matter. ...

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that at least 45 pilot whales have died in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, after more than 80 were stranded on the shore at Tuticorin. M. Ravi Kumar, the top government official in the port town, told the Associated Press that the whales began washing up on beaches on Monday evening, and that while 36 of the large mammals had been rescued and pushed back out to sea, they appeared disoriented and kept coming back. 

These heart-wrenching stories add to a list of similar incidents—a massive starfish stranding on Australia's Moreton Island; the mysterious die-off of endangered antelopes last spring in Central Asia, which killed more than half of the entire species in less than a month; drought in the Western U.S. transforming stretches of river into a "mass graveyard for baby salmon;" and historic coral bleaching events that degrade and erode the structure of living reefs.  ...

"Incidents like these are often mysteries to be unraveled, with scientists sorting through various explanations—hunger, habitat loss, disease, disorientation—for the mass deaths," Sarah Kaplan wrote at the Washington Post on Wednesday. "But in a swath of recent cases, many of the die-offs boil down to a common problem: the animals' environments are changing, and they’re struggling to keep up."

Also of Interest

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

Hope and change are all but gone. Obama's got nothing to lose any more

Supreme court justices put on defensive in overturning 1977 teachers’ union case

What Sean Penn Teaches Us About How Not to Chat With a Fugitive

Why Larry Summers is Wrong and Bernie Sanders is Right on Glass Steagall

McDonald's Slammed for Super-Sized Grip on European Economy

Michael Klare: Plunging Oil Prices – A Recipe for More War?

Next Cold War Roundup 1/13/16

A Little Night Music

Jimmy Witherspoon & Richard ''Groove'' Holmes - Goin' to Chicago

Jimmy Witherspoon - Love Me Right

Jimmy Witherspoon - It Ain't No Secret What My Baby Can Do

Jimmy Witherspoon - In The Evening

Jimmy Witherspoon & Groove Holmes - Take this hammer

Jimmy Witherspoon - Fast Women And Sloe Gin

Jay McShann & His Sextette with Jimmy Witherspoon - Strange Woman Blues

Jimmy Witherspoon with Ben Webster