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This evening's music features r&b singer and sax player Jackie Brenston. Enjoy!

“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

-- George Orwell

News and Opinion

Rearming for the apocalypse

Americans are in near-panic over the danger posed by Islamic terrorists. That danger, however, pales beside an emerging new one. President Obama has proposed a frighteningly wrongheaded plan to “modernize” our nuclear arsenal at the unfathomable cost of about $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Terror will never reach even 1 percent of our population. Nuclear “modernization” increases the prospect of true devastation.

The nuclear threat seems diffuse and faraway, while the prospect of a deranged fanatic shooting up a cinema is as vivid as today’s news. Perhaps we have been lulled into security by the fact that no nuclear weapon has been used since 1945. Voices trying to alert us to the true threat are drowned out in a frenzy of over-the-top campaign speeches and TV rants about crazed Muslims. ...

Obama’s proposed “modernization” increases our vulnerability, not our security. The first and most obvious reason is that it will certainly lead other countries to seek equivalent arsenals of their own. It is especially upsetting to Russia, which already feels under increasing American threat as a result of our military maneuvers on its borders and the fact that many of our missiles are positioned in Germany, Turkey, and other countries near its territory. The Russian defense minister recently announced that in response to Obama’s plan, Russia will “bring five new strategic nuclear missile regiments into service.” China would surely match that escalation. If it does so, India will follow. Then Pakistan will jump into the race. It is a recipe for disaster. ...

Besides these grave dangers — global proliferation, accidental war, and nuclear terror — there is another: national bankruptcy. Obama’s project is ruinously expensive. Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calls it “spending ourselves into oblivion.” He describes our skyrocketing national debt as “the most significant threat to our national security.”

Now is the time to stop this program. So far, enthusiasm for it is confined to the White House and Pentagon. Once it is launched, rich procurement contracts will be portioned out to the districts of influential members of Congress. That will produce a self-interested constituency and give the project unstoppable momentum.

Concepcion Picciotto, Who for Decades Held White House Vigil for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Dies

Concepcion Picciotto, known to countless people as the woman who for decades maintained a peace vigil outside the White House gates, passed on Monday at a housing facility operated by N Street Village, a nonprofit that supports homeless women in Washington, D.C.

Schroeder Stribling, the shelter’s executive director, said that Picciotto had recently suffered a fall but the immediate cause of death is still unknown. She was believed to be 80.

Often referred to as "the Little Giant," Picciotto held her protest "for world peace against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction" in Lafayette Park since 1981. The Washington Post notes that her demonstration is "widely considered to be the longest-running act of political protest in U.S. history."

Known by Connie to her friends, Picciotto kept her vigil "through the rain and snow, the arrests, the abuses and threats through the years," according to a website dedicated to her.

There is some interesting information in this article about how Betrayus managed to get off the hook for crimes far worse than John Kiriakou or Jeffrey Sterling were prosecuted and sent to prison for.

How David Petraeus avoided felony charges and possible prison time

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director James B. Comey listened as prosecutors did a mock run-through of the government’s case, a preview of how they would present their evidence to Petraeus’s lawyers in order, they hoped, to force a guilty plea.

The presentation included felony charges: lying to the FBI and violating a section of the Espionage Act. A conviction on either carried potentially years in prison. ...

The government would never file those charges. Not everyone at Justice shared the prosecutors’ confidence, and lawyers for Petraeus and Broadwell separately pushed back hard, saying they would fight and beat the charges being considered. Moreover, with its mix of sex and government secrets, a trial promised to be an uncomfortably tawdry affair, one some in the government — as well as defense lawyers — preferred to avoid. ...

In early February 2015, lawyers for Petraeus and the government met once again at the Bicentennial Building in the District. James Melendres, a prosecutor with the national security division, offered a deal.

For this to go away, he said, Petraeus would have to plead guilty to lying to the FBI and mishandling classified information, a misdemeanor. In the statement of facts that would accompany the plea agreement, prosecutors also said they would want to reference a message Petraeus sent to the CIA workforce in 2012 after John Kiriakou, a former agency officer, was convicted of leaking classified information.

“Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy,” Petraeus had said.

Petraeus’s lawyer, David E. Kendall, declined to comment. But another person familiar with the meeting said he described the lying charge as “a nonstarter.” The Kiriakou reference was also off the table, he said.

Scott, the national security division prosecutor, threatened to call off the talks if Kendall insisted on a no-contest plea. On this, Kendall relented. ...

A former senior Justice Department official said it was the “cleanest” possible outcome for both sides.

Speaking of people that administration figures are working behind-the-scenes to prevent accountability for mishandling classified materials...

Motion filed to block State from delaying release of Clinton emails

The journalist who forced the State Department to release thousands of Hillary Clinton’s emails is opposing the government’s efforts to delay the final release by one month, warning the extension would cause "irrevocable harm."

On Monday, lawyers for Vice News reporter Jason Leopold filed a motion seeking to block the department from extending the amount of time that it has to release emails from the former secretary of State's personal server. 

The Obama administration “has failed to show good cause for the requested extension, that it is necessary or that the interests of justice will be served by granting it,” Leopold’s lawyers wrote in the 13-page filing. ...

The State Department on Friday requested that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia delay by one month the deadline for it to release the last batch of Clinton’s work-related emails. The department claimed that an internal oversight caused it to overlook 7,200 pages of emails, and that the massive snowstorm hitting the East Coast would make it hard for employees to finish the review in time. 

The department insisted it would release some emails by the original deadline of Jan. 29, but asked to have until Feb. 29 to release the final batch of 55,000 pages of emails. That new schedule would delay the final release until after the first four presidential nominating contests. Clinton is currently the front-runner for the Democratic nominating contest.

West Virginia Bill Would Block Unconstitutional National Guard Deployments

A bill introduced in the West Virginia House of Delegates this month would block unconstitutional foreign deployments of the state’s national guard troops, effectively restoring the Founders’ framework for state-federal balance on the Guard.

House Bill 2168 (HB2168), the Defend the Guard Act, was introduced by Del. Pat McGeehan (R-Hancock), a former Air Force intelligence officer who did tours in Afghanistan and the Middle East. It was cosponsored by ten other delegates. If passed, the bill would block the federal government from deploying West Virginia Guard troops overseas unless there is a declaration of war from Congress, as required by the Constitution.

“With Sen. McConnell working to give the President nearly unlimited war powers, this bill couldn’t come at a more important time,” said Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center. “This bill would ensure that West Virginia’s Guard troops are not abused by unconstitutional deployments.”

Geneva: As the clock ticks towards Syrian peace talks, question of who will attend still unclear

Syrian Peace Talks Have Already Been Delayed — But the UN Insists They Will Happen

Syrian peace talks set to begin Monday in Geneva have been postponed until Friday at the earliest, amid growing uncertainty over who will represent the country's opposition.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN's special envoy for Syria, told a packed briefing room that he was "aiming at having the beginning" of talks on January 29 and would send out invitations on Tuesday. He said negotiations would last six months, with staggered gatherings of rebel factions and officials from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Geneva.

There will be no face-to-face discussions between the two sides initially. "Proximity talks" will take place instead, with staff ushering notes from one room to the next.

The question of precisely which rebel groups would be invited to Geneva has bedeviled de Mistura for weeks.

The Empire Files: Examining the Syrian War Chessboard

Libya’s UN-Recognized Parliament Rejects UN-Backed Unity Govt

Libya’s UN-recognized parliament, the one based in the eastern town of Tobruk, voted overwhelmingly today, 15-89, to reject the call to recognize the new UN-backed “unity government” unveiled last week in Tunisia.

Tobruk MPs complained the power-sharing deal gave too much to the Tripoli parliament’s faction, and that the 32-member cabinet was far too big, giving the UN a week to offer another proposal. The “unity government” was already a government in name only, as it was never able to get back into the country, and is still stuck in Tunis.

Vladimir Putin accuses Lenin of placing a 'time bomb' under Russia

Vladimir Putin has denounced Lenin and his Bolshevik government for their brutal repressions and accused him of having placed a “time bomb” under the state. ...

Putin’s assessment of Lenin’s role in Russian history during Monday’s meeting with pro-Kremlin activists in the southern city of Stavropol was markedly more negative than in the past. He denounced Lenin and his government for brutally executing Russia’s last tsar along with all his family and servants, killing thousands of priests and placing a time bomb under the Russian state by drawing administrative borders along ethnic lines. ...

Putin was particularly critical of Lenin’s concept of a federative state with its entities having the right to secede, saying it has heavily contributed to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. He added that Lenin was wrong in a dispute with Joseph Stalin, who advocated a unitary state model. Putin has in the past denounced Stalin for the purges that killed millions, but noted his role in defeating the Nazis in the second world war.

In Monday’s comments, Putin also criticised the Bolsheviks for making Russia suffer defeat at the hands of Germany in the first world war and ceding large chunks of territory just months before it lost. “We lost to the losing party, a unique case in history,” Putin said.

Putin said he sincerely believed in Communist ideology when he served in the KGB, adding that while its promises of a fair and just society “resembled the Bible quite a lot”, the reality was different. “Our country didn’t look like the City of the Sun” envisaged by socialist utopians, he said.

Russia threatens UK politicians with slander charges over Litvinenko verdict

Russia’s foreign minister has said leading British politicians are open to charges of slander over accusations that the Kremlin was involved in the 2006 murder of the former spy Alexander Litvinenko. ...

“Serious accusations have been made towards the Russian leadership yet exactly zero evidence has been presented,” Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday. “All the conclusions were based on some sort of testimony by specially chosen witnesses, people who weren’t objective, or else on secret testimony.” ...

“Given all this, it seems to me that if a well-versed lawyer took this up and analysed the facts and statements made by the leaders of the British government, they could be held accountable for slander,” Lavrov said. ...

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, called the findings an example of “subtle British humour”.

Danish parliament approves plan to seize assets from refugees

Denmark has become the latest European state to force refugees to hand over their valuables, with the continent increasingly using scare tactics and physical deterrents to deal with the biggest migration crisis since the second world war.

Following similar moves in Switzerland and southern Germany, Denmark’s parliament voted on Tuesday to allow police to search asylum-seekers on arrival in the country and confiscate any non-essential items worth more than 10,000 Danish kroner (about £1,000) that have no sentimental value to their owner.

The centre-right Danish government says the procedure is to cover the cost of each asylum-seeker’s treatment by the state, and mimics treatment of Danish citizens on welfare benefits.

The UN has nevertheless called the move concerning and regrettable, while an opposition party termed it “morally horrible”. An academic specialist confirmed that Danes are expected to use their own income before claiming benefits, but pointed out that except in rare occasions police do not have the right to search Danish welfare claimants. ...

Opponents to the law argue that while refugees can in general still expect to be treated humanely in Denmark, the new legislation is ethically unsound. Pernille Skipper, an MP and legal affairs spokesperson for Enhedslisten, a left-wing Danish party, said: “Morally it is a horrible way to treat people fleeing mass crimes, war, rapes. They are fleeing from war and how do we treat them? We take their jewellery.”

London: Banksy’s ‘Les Misérables’ mural criticises treatment of migrants in Calais

How a Small Company in Switzerland Is Fighting a Surveillance Law — And Winning

A small email provider and its customers have almost single-handedly forced the Swiss government to put its new invasive surveillance law up for a public vote in a national referendum in June.

“This law was approved in September, and after the Paris attacks, we assumed privacy was dead at that point,” said Andy Yen, co-founder of ProtonMail, when I spoke with him on the phone. He was referring to the Nachrichtendienstgesetzt (NDG), a mouthful of a name for a bill that gave Swiss intelligence authorities more clout to spy on private communications, hack into citizens’ computers, and sweep up their cellphone information. ...

But thanks to the way Swiss law works — if you get together 50,000 signatures within three months of the law passing — you can force a nationwide referendum where every citizen gets a say.

“In Switzerland, and overseas, no one really thought to ask the people,” Yen said. “The public opinion, especially from the young people, has shifted to pro-privacy.”

By gathering its users and teaming up with political groups including the Green and Pirate parties, as well as technological and privacy advocates including Chaos Computer Club Switzerland and Digitale Gesellschaft Switzerland, ProtonMail was able to collect over 70,000 signatures before the deadline.

Canada underfunded welfare services for indigenous children, panel rules

Canada discriminated against aboriginal children by underfunding welfare services on reserves, a human rights tribunal has ruled, in a decision that could affect the way Ottawa funds education, health and housing for indigenous Canadians.

The ruling comes nearly nine years after aboriginal groups opened a human rights complaint against Ottawa over its funding formula for child welfare on reserves, and adds to a litany of problems in the relationship between the country’s 1.4 million aboriginals and the federal government.

Justin Trudeau, the prime minister who took office in November, has pledged to repair relations with Canada’s indigenous people, who make up 5% of the population but represent about half of the more than 30,000 Canadian children aged 14 and under living in foster care.

Aboriginals also have higher levels of poverty and a lower life expectancy than other Canadians, and are more often victims of violent crime, addiction and incarceration.

France hit by day of protest as workers take to the streets

Police have fired teargas at striking French taxi drivers who tried to march down a major Paris bypass on a day of protests against non-traditional car services such as Uber.

Hundreds of taxi drivers stationed themselves on airport routes and a major intersection into western Paris. Riot police used teargas to push back dozens of drivers who attempted to block the road near Porte Maillot; some drivers set fire to tyres.

The drivers are protesting against what they consider to be unfair competition from Uber and other non-licensed private hire cabs, and are seeking compensation. “Economic terrorism!” read one banner at the Porte Maillot protest. Police said they had made 20 arrests. ...

Thierry Guichard, a spokesman for the Taxis de France collective, said the government had failed to act to protect taxi drivers and “ensure respect for the regulations”.

Days of Revolt: The Death of the American City

This is an interesting article worth taking a peek at:

Former BIS Chief Economist Warns of Massive Debt Defaults, Need for Debt Jubilee; Fingers Europe as First in Line

When you hear an orthodox economist, particularly one who was early to warn of the dangers of real estate bubbles around the world, speaking of a debt jubilee as the best of bad option, you know a crunch is coming. Here is the key quote from William White, former chief economist of the Bank of International Settlements, in an exclusive interview with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph:

The only question is whether we are able to look reality in the eye and face what is coming in an orderly fashion, or whether it will be disorderly. Debt jubilees have been going on for 5,000 years, as far back as the Sumerians.

White gives a dire set of underlying causes, and one of them is what economists would call a lack of policy space, which in layspeak means “no remedies available to treat the disease.” Yet even though White is almost certainly correct as to the endgame, which is that many people who hold financial assets will find that they are worth a lot less than they believe, one of the reasons is that even people like White, as he exhibits in this interview, subscribe to economic beliefs that are part of the problem. In other words, there are treatments that would work, even now, but mainstream economist reject them and thus look as if they will have to relearn the lessons of the Great Depression.

Mind you, White is largely correct, most of all in his pointing out that debts need to be written down, and if they aren’t in a formal manner, they will be forcibly written down, via default. But where he errs is in deeming debt always and ever bad, and in further not acknowledging (or recognizing) that for a fiat currency issuer like the United States, using debt to finance government spending is a political requirement, not an economic one. The federal government could simply deficit spend, but our funding procedures are a holdover from the gold standard era. Thus some of the lack of policy space he complains about is due to self-imposed constraints, like the perverse and self-destructive fear of running deficits in economies that are tipping into deflation and have plenty of underutilized resources.

Nearly 300,000 civilian drones registered in US in 30 days

Nearly 300,000 drones have been registered in the US in the last 30 days, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has revealed.

Compulsory registration of civilian drones in the US was introduced on 21 December covering all manner of remote control flying systems from toys to aerial cameras. Any small unmanned aircraft weighing between 250g and 25kg must be registered before being flown outdoors, and pilots must be aged 13 or older.

FAA administrator Michael Huerta said: “The registration numbers we’re seeing so far are very encouraging. We’re working hard to build on this early momentum and ensure everyone understands the registration requirement.” ...

Supplying the FAA with the name, address and email address of the owner is part of the registration process, which is intended to help prevent abuse and nuisance drones. Currently when a drone is captured it is difficult to trace back to an owner. The FAA hopes that registration will help.

Inmate locked in scalding shower died 'by accident', medical examiner says

A civil rights group has stepped up its call for a federal inquiry into Florida’s troubled prison service after a medical examiner reportedly ruled the death of an inmate who was locked under a scalding shower by prison guards for almost two hours an accident.

Darren Rainey, who was schizophrenic, died in June 2012 after he was confined to a tiny cubicle at the psychiatric unit of the Dade correctional institution near Homestead, with corrections officers controlling the water temperature from outside. Several inmates reported hearing Rainey, 50, screaming to be let out while another later claimed he was made to scrape chunks of the dead prisoner’s burned-off flesh from the cubicle floor.

The long-awaited postmortem report from the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office, however, states that no burns were found anywhere on Rainey’s body, and that his death was caused by complications of his mental illness and heart disease, according to the Miami Herald, which said it spoke to law enforcement sources close to the case.

Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said it “defies belief” that Rainey, who was serving a two-year sentence for cocaine possession, and who had been locked in the shower after he defecated in his cell, died by accident.

“To accept the medical examiner’s conclusion you have to believe that he accidentally locked himself in a shower, then turned up the water temperature to 180 degrees, accidentally boiled himself to death and all the while he was screaming for help,” he told the Guardian.

“That doesn’t sound to me much like an accident.”

Obama bans solitary confinement of juveniles in federal prisons

Barack Obama is banning the use of solitary confinement to punish juvenile offenders in US federal jails, saying the practice can cause long-term psychological damage, especially in young and mentally ill people.

Obama announced the measure in an editorial column published online by the Washington Post on Monday night. It came as part of a series of reforms aimed at reducing the use of solitary confinement in federal prisons. ...

Obama said the reforms would affect roughly 10,000 inmates in the federal system. Around 100,000 people are in solitary confinement in the US, according to the White House. The Washington Post noted, however, that between September 2014 and September 2015 federal authorities were notified of just 13 juveniles who were put in solitary confinement.

Bill Black: Wall Street Declares War Against Bernie Sanders

Wall Street billionaires are freaking out about the chance that Bernie Sanders could be elected President.  Stephen Schwarzman, one of the wealthiest and most odious people in the world, told the Wall Street Journal that one of the three principal causes of the recent global financial trauma was “the market’s” fear that Sanders may be elected President.  Schwarzman is infamous for ranting that President Obama’s proposals to end the “carried interest” tax scam that allows private equity billionaires like Schwarzman to pay lower income tax rates than their secretaries was “like when Hitler invaded Poland.” ...

The Wall Street plutocrats, with good reason, fear Bernie – not Hillary.  Indeed, it is remarkable how vigorous and open Wall Street has been in signaling through the financial media that it has no problem with Hillary’s Wall Street plan.  CNN, CNBC, and the Fiscal Times, under titles such as:  “Here’s Why Wall Street Has Little to Fear from Hillary Clinton,” pushed this meme.

Michael Bloomberg was the second Wall Street billionaire to pile on to Bernie this week.  Bloomberg leaked to dozens of media outlets that he was again considering a run for the presidency.  The same leaks explained that Bloomberg’s fear of Bernie was the key.  Bloomberg is infamous for organizing the mass arrests designed to crush the Occupy Wall Street movement.  He is Wall Street and he openly represented Wall Street as Mayor of New York City. ...

Why do the Wall Street billionaires hate Bernie?  Paul Krugman, unintentionally, provided the key in his most recent attack on Bernie.  Krugman claimed that the key to what he claimed was President Obama’s success was not “breaking” “Wall Street’s power” over our economy and democracy.  To Krugman and Hillary’s horror, however, Democratic voters, like the median U.S. voter, understand that breaking the paramount power of the Wall Street billionaires over our economy and its political power that has caused us to descend into crony capitalism is essential to take back our Nation.

Watch Bill Clinton Defend Bernie Sanders’ Health Care Plan (in 2009)

Former president Bill Clinton joined his wife and daughter in assailing Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care plan last week, saying that it would lead to “overcharging and inflation.”

But in 2009, he defended the single-payer approach, in which the government pays for everyone’s health care. During an appearance on CNN, host Sanjay Gupta asked the former president whether single-payer was “politically unpalatable, or is it a bad idea?”

“Well, I think it’s more politically unpalatable than it is a bad idea,” responded Clinton. “Because single-payer is not socialized medicine. Canada has a single-payer system, and a private health care system. Our single-payer systems are Medicare and Medicaid and Medicare is quite popular. The good thing about single-payer is the administrative costs are quite low. We probably waste $200 billion a year between the insurance administrative costs, the doctors’ and other health care providers’ administrative costs, and employers’ administrative costs in health care that we would not waste if we had any other country’s system.”

Sanders Scores Major Endorsement in South Carolina After Lawmaker Dumps Clinton

Justin T. Bamberg, a prominent African-American lawyer and lawmaker in South Carolina, has changed his mind about who should be the next president of the United States. After initially endorsing Hillary Clinton, Bamberg is now throwing his support behind Bernie Sanders.

At press conference organized by the Sanders campaign on Monday, Bamberg said he hadn't given the Vermont senator a "fair shake."

Bamberg is a high-profile civil rights attorney who represents the family of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who was fatally shot in the back last year while fleeing a white South Carolina police officer. Bamberg is also leading Democrat in the South Carolina state legislature. ...

Bamberg told reporters on Monday that he had a change of heart after watching Sanders and Clinton campaign. "Hillary Clinton is more a representation of the status quo when I think about politics or about what it means to be a Democrat," he said. "Bernie Sanders on the other hand is bold. He doesn't think like everyone else. He is not afraid to call things as they are."

Sanders ultimately convinced Bamberg to change his mind after the two had a long conversation about the Walter Scott case on Martin Luther King Jr. Day last week. "What I got from him was not a presidential candidate talking to a state representative, or an old white man talking to a young black guy," Bamberg said. "What I got from him was a man talking to a man about things that they are passionate about, and that was the tipping point for me."

Democratic Town Hall Iowa CNN Presidential Town Hall, Bernie Sanders 1/25/15

Anti-Corruption Crusader Zephyr Teachout Running for Congress

Anti-corruption activist and law professor Zephyr Teachout announced this morning that she will be running for the U.S. House of Representatives to represent New York’s 19th congressional district. ...

The 19th congressional district will have an open race, as incumbent Republican Rep. Chris Gibson is retiring. In addition to her run for Congress, Teachout has also been a vocal supporter of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

Check out this article, there is a lot of good information here. In addition to disclosing that the Governor or his stenchly henchmen overrode a local decision of Snyder's own Emergency Manager and forced the poisoning of Flint, the article documents lies told by Snyder's spokesdroid in the wake of the decision.

Gov. Rick Snyder’s Men Originally Rejected Using Flint’s Toxic River

An emergency manager said no to using the river in 2012 after speaking to environmental regulators. An ex-Flint official said the governor’s office reversed that decision.

The emergency manager for Flint, Michigan, appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder in 2012, rejected using the city’s river as drinking water after consulting with the state’s environmental protection agency.

Snyder appointed Ed Kurtz to be Flint’s second emergency manager and Kurtz selected Jerry Ambrose to be the city’s chief financial officer. Both men were tasked by the Republican governor’s administration with restructuring the city’s government to save money after it was in danger of becoming insolvent. One cost-saving measure considered was to quit buying municipal water from Detroit.

In a civil deposition not reported until now, Ambrose testified under oath that emergency manager Kurtz considered a proposal to use the Flint River, discussed the option with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and then rejected it. ...

Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint who resigned in November 2015, asserted more than four months ago in a videotaped interview with the ACLU of Michigan that the decision to use the dangerously corrosive river came directly from the Snyder administration.

In the interview, Croft said that the decision to use the river was a financial one, with a review that “went up through the state.”

“All the way to the governor’s office?” the ACLU of Michigan asked him.

“All the way to the governor’s office,” Croft replied.

Flint rewrites water testing directions blamed in lead pollution crisis

The city of Flint has belatedly rewritten water testing instructions that have been blamed for the gross underestimation of its lead pollution crisis, with the Michigan government to be sued this week over its continued support for the distorted tests revealed by the Guardian. ...

Until December 2015, officials in the city were handing out instructions to residents which said they should test their drinking water only after they had had turned on the “cold faucet of your kitchen or main bathroom sink and let it run for three to four minutes”. This practice of “pre-flushing” pipes has been criticized by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and other scientists for reducing the amount of lead and copper corrosion found in samples.

Analysis conducted by the Virginia Tech scientists Marc Edwards, Rebekah Martin, and Min Tang, who were among the first to uncover the toxic water crisis in Flint, found that of 21 Flint households tested under these altered conditions, 16 showed much higher lead levels when their water was tested normally.

“The differences in the tests are profound,” Edwards said. “If Flint had followed the test protocols, people would have immediately got instructions on how to keep themselves and their children safe.

“Instead, the state, with the EPA’s blessing, said that the water is safe. Because of the smoke-and-mirrors testing, Flint is meeting the standard even as national guardsman walk the street. This shows what a sham the EPA has allowed its tests to become. They are condoning cheating.”

Flint All Over Again? Lead Poisoning Scandal Strikes Ohio Town

Schools in Sebring, Ohio were closed for a third day on Tuesday and pregnant women and children have been advised not to drink the water, after tests showed elevated levels of lead in the local water supply.

Though the village of about 4,300 in northeastern Ohio is much smaller than Flint, Michigan, the drinking water crises in the neighboring states share troubling aspects.

According to local news station WKBN: "Correspondence from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Village of Sebring show concerns with water testing, beginning in late September. Elevated lead levels were noted by the EPA in November, but customers didn’t learn of the issues until Thursday, meaning that some people could have been drinking water containing lead for months." WKBN has a full timeline of events here. ...

Meanwhile, the Youngstown Vindicator reports that Village Manager Richard Giroux has placed (pdf) Sebring water treatment plant superintendent Jim Bates on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of a state investigation into the incident.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) says Bates was "not properly performing his duties to protect public health and may have falsified reports," the Vindicator writes. Reached at home on Monday evening, Bates denied the charges.

And OEPA's criticism stretches to other local officials, as well. "The games the Village of Sebring was playing by giving us incomplete data time and time again, and not submitting the required documents, made it difficult for our field office to determine whether or not they had notified their customers," said Heidi Griesmer, an agency representative.

Brazil is 'badly losing' the battle against Zika virus, says health minister

Brazil’s health minister was warned that the country is “badly losing” the battle against the mosquito blamed for spreading Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects.

Marcelo Castro said that nearly 220,000 members of Brazil’s armed forces would go door-to-door to help in mosquito eradication efforts, according to Rio de Janeiro’s O Globo newspaper. It also quoted Castro as saying the government would distribute mosquito repellent to some 400,000 pregnant women who receive cash-transfer benefits. ...

“The mosquito has been here in Brazil for three decades, and we are badly losing the battle against the mosquito,” the Folha de S Paulo newspaper quoted him as saying as a crisis group on Zika was meeting in the capital, Brasília.

Emails to Castro’s office for comment were not immediately answered.

A huge eradication effort eliminated Aedes aegypti from Brazil during the 1950s, but the mosquito slowly returned over the following decades from neighbouring countries, public health experts have said. That led to outbreaks of dengue, which was recorded in record numbers last year.

Josh Fox on His New Doc "How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change"

Yes, Actually, Global Warming Probably Helped Supersize This Weekend's Blizzard

This weekend's storm, which left more than two feet of snow on the ground up and down the most densely populated urban corridor in the United States, was kicked off by a high energy disturbance in the mid- to upper-atmosphere, the Jet Stream. This force blended warm air and moisture rising from the Atlantic current, the Gulf Stream, with a layer of Arctic sub-freezing air, producing the temperature contrast that powers often ferocious Nor'easter storms. While this type of blizzard is nothing new, it's particular ferocity was in part the result of unusually warm surface waters in the Atlantic.

According to data from National Center for Environmental Information, the ocean waters along the East Coast are several degrees Fahrenheit warmer than their historic average. While this is partially caused by this year's strong El Niño, Michael Mann, a professor of climate science at Pennsylvania State University, said that rising global temperatures likely also play a role.

Further, Mann suggested that as global temperatures rise so will the likelihood of extreme storms.

"We expect the Atlantic to continue to warm as we continue to increase greenhouse gas concentrations through fossil fuel burning and other activities," Mann said. "Peer-reviewed scientific studies suggest we are likely to see more of these sorts of coastal storms in the future because of human-caused climate change."

#Snowzilla was powered by unusually warm seas heated by changes driven by #globalwarming https://t.co/AbTCKMaqq0 pic.twitter.com/etz2UA9c31

— Hunter Cutting (@ClimateSignals) January 25, 2016

Also of Interest

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

Are eco-friendly initiatives pointless unless we tackle overpopulation?

Did Wall Street Banks Create the Oil Crash?

Obama misses the point. Bernie Sanders is more than a 'bright, shiny object'

How Killer Mike answered Ta-Nehisi Coates on Bernie Sanders, reparations

Hillary Clinton Seeks Neocon Shelter

Why PolitiFact Is Wrong About Sanders' Criticism of the Pentagon Budget

Netanyahu has taken Israel’s crackdown on Jewish dissent to a new low

Ending Reported ‘Freeze,’ Israel Approves More Settlement Expansion

Slave Labor, the Mast Brothers, and the Looming Crisis of Cheap Chocolate

U.S. Air Force Veteran, Smeared as “an ISIS Fighter,” Just Returned to the U.S.

Rapist Cop Daniel Holtzclaw and the Limits of “Community Policing”

A Little Night Music

Jackie Brenston - Much Later

Jackie Brenston - Blues Got Me Again

Jackie Brenston - Trouble Up The Road

Jackie Brenston - 88 Boogie

Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats - Starvation

Jackie Brenston w/Ike Turners Kings Of Rhythm - Gonna Wait For My Chance

Jackie Brenston - Down In My Heart