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This evening's music features soul singer Gladys Knight. Enjoy!

“I have no doubt that the nation has suffered more from undue secrecy than from undue disclosure. The government takes good care of itself.”

-- Daniel Schorr

News and Opinion

Torture, Iran, and Secrecy: Trove of CIA Director John Brennan’s emails released by WikiLeaks

Whistleblowing journalism organization WikiLeaks released a trove of former CIA Director John Brennan’s emails Wednesday afternoon. The private messages provide insight into a variety of issues, including torture, Iran, and secrecy. ...

A 2008 letter penned by Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chairman Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-MO) to fellow board members shows how the government tried to work around laws against torture. It was often proposed that U.S. intelligence agencies should use only the 19 interrogation techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual (AFM), Bond reveals. Then CIA Director Michael Hayden, however, wanted to use more methods, Bond indicates. His solution was to propose letting the CIA use any forms of interrogation that are not specifically prohibited by the AFM, so that new techniques “may be developed in the future.” ...

In a 2007 paper titled “Intelligence to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century,” Brennan firmly states that the intelligence community “must always maintain its independence” and “must never be subject to political manipulation and interference.”

He concedes that the “CIA has been the subject of much criticism over the years” — primarily for its roles in destabilizing and overthrowing democratically elected governments that are not subservient to the U.S., or training far-right death squads in Latin America and elsewhere who carried out egregious atrocities, among others — but insists that “many of those programs have made major contributions to U.S. foreign policy objectives.”

CIA ‘Queen of Torture’ could face trial in Germany

Hmmm... John Brennan says that there “are times when our country’s security demands that we take actions abroad to address real and emerging threats to our interests,” and that, sometimes, “such actions must be carried out under the cover of secrecy.”

You don't suppose that John Brennan decided to practice his covert action skills while he was at UW? ...

Files in Lawsuit Against CIA Stolen in 'Disturbing' University Break-In

University of Washington police are investigating a break-in at the school's Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) after files from a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were stolen from the center's offices.

A computer and hard drive containing information from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on October 2 were stolen from the offices of Dr. Angelina Godoy sometime between Thursday and Sunday, according to police. The UWCHR is investigating whether the CIA illegally withheld information about human rights violations carried out by U.S.-backed El Salvador army officers during the country's civil war against leftist rebels in the 1980s.

Godoy said "about 90 percent of the information" was taken in the break-in. The UWCHR has backups of the stolen files, but Godoy said the concern now is how the data might be used against rights workers in El Salvador who are involved in the lawsuit.

"What worries us most is not what we have lost but what someone else may have gained," she said in a statement. "The files include sensitive details of personal testimonies and pending investigations."

The break-in had "suspicious and disturbing" elements, the Seattle Times reported—including that it coincided with a campus visit by CIA director John Brennan, who gave a speech at the university's law school Friday.

Shaker Aamer: After 5,000 Days of Torment, Last British Prisoner at Guantanamo is Set for Release

In rare admission, US says evidence against ex–Gitmo inmate was unreliable

The U.S. government has, in a seemingly rare admission of intelligence failing, stated publicly that its central allegation against a former Guantánamo prisoner turned out to be unreliable and was withdrawn in 2011.

Younous Chekkouri was repatriated to Morocco last month after languishing at the controversial detention camp in Cuba since 2002. He is currently detained in Salé prison, near Rabat, awaiting a decision over his release.

But in a letter to Chekkouri’s lawyers before a court session Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department noted it “withdrew reliance” on “all evidence identifying Mr. Chekkouri with the organization known as Group Islamique Combatant Maroc [sic].”

Known in English as the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, the group is designated a terrorist organization by Washington and is said to have supported Al-Qaeda’s war against the West.

Chekkouri has said that information linking him to the group was obtained through torture of him and other prisoners as well as lies told by inmates at Guantánamo who were looking for better treatment at the prison, according to the legal charity Reprieve, which represents him.

Obama Pushes Perpetual War In Seven Countries

US Slams Russia for Allowing Syrian President to Visit

US officials expressed outrage at the visit, saying Russia was “emboldening” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by allowing him to visit, and claiming it was at odds with Russia’s previous support for a transitional government. They went on to say that the war would be lengthened by the visit.

From Russia’s perspective, however, Assad’s visit is likely not particularly controversial, as the nations have been allies for decades and are allied in the ISIS war. Indeed, Russian officials presented it as hope for a long-term solution in the ongoing conflict, and briefed Saudi, Jordanian and Turkish leaders after the visit.

Western media enraged by Assad’s ‘red carpet’ visit to Moscow

US Tells Iraq to Choose Between Them and Russia in ISIS War

Yesterday, when Gen. Joe Dunford claimed Iraq “doesn’t want Russia’s help” in the ongoing ISIS war, it appears to have been less a statement of fact and more a US threat of further punishments if Iraq dares to ask for Russian help, making it clear Iraq would lose all sorts of US aid if that happened.

Officials are making that all the more clear today, saying they’d explicitly warned Iraq that they have to choose between getting help from Russia in the ISIS war or continuing to get help from the US, with Dunford adding there was “angst” in the US about Iraq’s interest in Russian help.

Prime Minister Hayder Abadi made it clear, the moment Russia started helping Syria in their battle with ISIS he would welcome similar help, but so far he hasn’t made a formal request.

Iraqi PM Under ‘Tremendous Pressure’ to Ask Russia for Help Against ISIS

According to Iraqi MPs familiar with the situation, Prime Minister Hayder Abadi is “under tremendous pressure” to formally request military aid against ISIS from the Russian Federation, despite US threats to end all aid to the government if they do so.

The MPs were quoted as saying an “official request” was made to Abadi by the ruling Iraqi National Alliance, the bloc of Shi’ite political parties to which the premier belongs. There have also been reports of key militia figures calling for Abadi to start courting Russia.

Three Syrian hospitals bombed since Russian airstrikes began, doctors say

At least three hospitals have been bombed by fighter jets in north-western Syria since Russia’s intervention in the war began in late September, doctors and international observers claim.

The latest attack, on Tuesday, killed at least 12 people at Sarmin hospital in Idlib province. At least three of the victims were believed to be medical staff. Survivors and witnesses said the hospital was hit by two airstrikes at about 1pm.

Dr Mohamed Tennari, director of Sarmin hospital, said the facility appeared to have been directly targeted and could no longer serve patients on one of the fiercest frontlines in the war.

He said the hospital had been the target of at least 10 other airstrikes earlier in the conflict. Throughout the war, international medical organisations have repeatedly claimed that medical facilities in opposition areas have been systematically targeted.

Physicians for Human Rights said it had documented 307 attacks on medical facilities and the deaths of 670 medical personnel in Syria since protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011 until the end of August 2015. “Syrian government forces have been responsible for more than 90% of these attacks,” the organisation said. “Each of which constitutes a war crime.”

The latest attack comes less than two weeks after a US attack on a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which killed at least 22 people – 12 of them medical professionals and the rest patients. That attack was widely condemned and has forced an apology from senior US officials, as well as several international investigations.

This is an excellent article worth a full read:

America’s Civilian Killings are No Accident

America and its allies make modern war in a way that assures “mistakes” destroy hospitals, and civilian lives are taken by drones. These horrors are all too often strategic decisions, or the result of the profligate use of needlessly destructive weapons. They are typically far from accidents.

The destruction of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, including the deaths of physicians from Doctors Without Borders, has become the celebrity example of America’s conduct of war. It is the one that made the news, much like a single child dead on the beach stood in for five years of unabated refugee flows out of the Middle East. But Kunduz is more important than just a dramatic news story, in that it stands as a clear example of a sordid policy.

After a series of cascading explanations, the United States settled on blaming the Afghan military for demanding a strike on the building which was the hospital. There is truth in that — the request likely did initiate with the Afghans — but it ignores the larger story of how “accidents” really happen. ...

How could the U.S. have known the target was a hospital? Easily. Kunduz had been controlled by the Afghans alongside their embedded Americans for some time. It was a mature battlefield, with landmarks such as the hospital well-known on the ground. ... Unlike in WWII when thousands of planes flew over cities hoping to hit a target only as precisely defined as “Tokyo,” modern ordnance is delivered by computer, using laser designation, satellite coordination, GPS systems and classified mapping tools.

America blew up exactly what it aimed at in Kunduz.

Kunduz was not America’s first hospital. The U.S. bombed a maternity hospital in Baghdad in 2003, a hospital in Rutbah, and stormed a hospital in Nasiriya. Shells hit the large Al Yarmuk Hospital in Baghdad. A hospital in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia, was bombed in the 1990s. In Hanoi, the United States struck the Bach Mai hospital — twice — during the 1972 “Christmas Bombing.” The United States also destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, citing inaccurate maps as the cause. ...

It is clear that modern war as conducted by the United States and its allies in the Middle East has as a known outcome massive civilian casualties. The sites purposefully targeted can be civilian when needed, in violation of all known standards of international law. The steady flow of “accidents” and collateral kills are fully-expected, inevitable and foreseeable consequences of the choice of weapons used.

The civilian deaths are not accidental, but policy. Kunduz was no accident. It was simply another example.

U.S. Ally Saudi Arabia Prepares to Behead, Crucify Pro-Democracy Protester Ali Mohammed al-Nimr

This war against ISIS sure is good for business, and there's plenty of that wonderful oil money to spread around.

Kuwait Is Buying a Bunch of Weapons to Protect Itself From the Islamic State

With the Islamic State creating chaos next door in Iraq, Kuwait is arming itself to the teeth. The tiny, oil-rich nation just signed a defense deal with France worth $2.8 billion.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and his Kuwaiti counterpart Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Hamad al-Sabah finalized the agreement on Wednesday in Paris. France will equip Kuwait with 24 Caracal helicopters, with an option for six more, as part of a contract worth $1.2 billion. The helicopter was designed for cargo transport and search and rescue missions, and has supported military operations in Afghanistan, Libya, and Mali.

The two countries have also inked two provisional agreements. One involves France upgrading and maintaining Kuwait's small patrol warships, the other reportedly involves the sale of French-made all-terrain Sherpa trucks — light armored vehicles with 360-degree firepower that can carry up to four people and are designed to withstand landmines.

"Lately, Kuwait has started arming itself, mainly because it shares a border with Iraq, where the Islamic State is gaining traction and is now a viable threat," explained Emma Soubrier, a a Gulf defense expert at the University of Auvergne in France. "When you consider the attacks that have been carried out against Kuwait, you can see why the country feels that it needs to arm itself." ...

French defense exports have already raked in $13.6 billion in 2015, up from $5.5 billion in 2012 and $9.3 billion in 2014. Gulf states like Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia ,and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are among the French defense industry's biggest clients.

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we'll be talking about real money. Too bad our captive government can't afford to spend our tax dollars to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure at home and provide for the general welfare because they are on the hook to fund the ever-growing demands of the war industry.

US Plans $1 Billion Annual Hike in Israel Military Aid

According to reports in the Israeli press, planned talks between Israel and the US on a one-time, multi-billion dollar military aid package in “compensation” for US approval of the Iran nuclear deal remain on hold, with focus on a planned increase in annual military aid to Israel.

The US currently sends Israel $3.1 billion annually in military aid, and the increase is expected to bump this up by roughly another billion dollars. Such plans tend toward 20-year timeframes, meaning the spending will add up to $20 billion more.

US military aid by and large isn’t cash, but rather credits used to purchase weapons from certain well-connected US arms makers, meaning the aid program amounts to a subsidy for both the Israeli military and for major US manufacturers.

Netanyahu's Record on Inciting Violence Against Palestinians

Why is Benjamin Netanyahu trying to whitewash Hitler?

Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly asserted that Adolf Hitler had no intention of exterminating Europe’s Jews until a Palestinian persuaded him to do it.

The Israeli prime minister’s attempt to whitewash Hitler and lay the blame for the Holocaust at the door of Palestinians signals a major escalation of his incitement against and demonization of the people living under his country’s military and settler-colonial rule. ...

The bogus claim that the Mufti had to persuade reluctant Nazis to kill Jews has been pushed by other anti-Palestinian propagandists, notably retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz.

As Columbia University professor Joseph Massad notes in his 2006 book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, Haj Amin al-Husseini has long been a favorite theme of Zionist and Israeli propaganda.

Husseini “provided the Israelis with their best propaganda linking the Palestinians with the Nazis and European anti-Semitism,” Massad observes.

The Mufti fled British persecution and went to Germany during the war years.

Massad writes that al-Husseini “attempted to obtain promises from the Germans that they would not support the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Documents that the Jewish Agency produced in 1946 purporting to show that the Mufti had a role in the extermination of Jews did no such thing; the only thing these unsigned letters by the Mufti showed was his opposition to Nazi Germany’s and Romania’s allowing Jews to emigrate to Palestine.”

Yet, he adds, “the Mufti continues to be represented by Israeli propagandists as having participated in the extermination of European Jews.”

"Where Does This End?": After Drone Papers Leaks, U.K. Gov't Has a Kill List of Its Own

Senior UN official castigates World Bank over its approach to human rights

UN special rapporteur accuses bank of leading ‘race to the bottom’ on human rights, and says organisation pays lip service to issues without tackling them

Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said that after 40 years of inconclusive internal discussions, the Washington-based organisation and its 188 member countries had to realise they could no longer separate human rights from development financing.

“The bank has for a long time played a double game where a lot of the publicity suggests that they are engaging intensively with human rights. You’ll find many references on their websites. They have conferences every year where there are lots of panels on human rights and so on,” he said.

“But the reality is the exact opposite. They can talk about these issues but when it comes to country programming and the advice and so on that they give – which is their core mission – they won’t touch human rights.” ...

In a recent and unusually scathing report, Alston described the bank’s approach to human rights as “incoherent, counterproductive and unsustainable”, adding that it was for most purposes, “a human rights free zone”, and an institution whose operational policies treat human rights “more like an infectious disease than universal values and obligations”.

The special rapporteur, a law professor at New York University, rejects the bank’s argument that a “political prohibition” clause prevents it from becoming involved in the “political affairs of any member” and that its decisions can be governed only by economic considerations.

“I see that legal analysis as bankrupt,” he said. “It is not in line with anything else the bank does. They have singled out human rights as almost the only issue that they would see as political [yet] they engage in the full range of environmental issues, which are deeply political. They engage in governance, which is entirely political, they engage in anti-corruption campaigns. None of these is characterised as political. But suddenly they draw the line at human rights and I think this is very artificial.”

NSA Pushing Its Deadline for Ending Bulk Collection of U.S. Phone Call Metadata

The National Security Agency is literally counting down the hours until its deadline to stop the bulk collection of information on American phone calls. The agency’s civil liberties and privacy officer, Rebecca Richards, said Wednesday morning that there are about 930 hours left. And yes, she said, “there is a big clock.”

The deadline is 11:59 p.m. on November 29. Richards said the NSA has not yet begun testing is alternate system. She spoke at the Second Annual Cato Surveillance Conference. ...

NSA might have even less than 930 hours, should other parts of the federal judiciary block it. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon is considering a request for an injunction.

A federal appeals court ruled in May that the program was illegal but declined to enjoin it.

Pay up or go to jail: how a Mississippi town resurrected the debtors' prison

Qumotria Kennedy, a 36-year-old single mother with teenage kids from Biloxi, Mississippi, was driving around the city with a friend in July when they were pulled over by police for allegedly running a stop sign. Though Kennedy was the passenger, her name was put through a police database that flashed up a warrant for her arrest on charges that she failed to pay $400 in court fines.

The fines were for other traffic violations dating back to 2013. At that time, Kennedy says she told her probation officers – a private company called Judicial Corrections Services Inc (JCS) – that she was so poor there was no way she could find the money.

She worked as a cleaner at the baseball field in downtown Biloxi, earning less than $9,000 a year – well below the federal poverty level for a single person, let alone a mother of two dependent children. Her plea fell on deaf ears: a JCS official told her that unless she paid her fines in full, as well as a $40 monthly fee to JCS for the privilege of having them as her probation officers, she would go to jail – an arrest warrant was duly secured to that effect through the Biloxi municipal court.

Nor was Kennedy’s inability to pay her fines as a result of poverty taken into account by the police officer when he stopped her in July, she said. Discovering the arrest warrant, he promptly put her in handcuffs and took her to a Gulfport jail.

There she was told that unless she came up with all the money – by now the figure had bloated as a result of JCS’s monthly fees to $1,000 – she would stay in jail. And so she did. Kennedy spent the next five days and nights in a holding cell. ...

Kennedy is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit lodged on Wednesday with a federal district court in Gulfport against the city of Biloxi, its police department, the municipal court system and the private probation company JCS. The filing, drawn up by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), claims that the agencies collectively conspired to create a modern form of debtors’ prison as a ruse to extract cash from those least able to afford it – the city’s poor.

Landmark Look at US Charter System Reveals Waste, Fraud, 'Ghost Schools'

According to the report released Wednesday—Charter School Black Hole (pdf)—no one even knew how much the federal government had spent on its program designed to boost the charter sector until CMD started poking around. Now, after filing close to 50 open records requests and reviewing more than two decades of federal authorizations and appropriations, the national watchdog group has calculated that sum to be a whopping $3.7 billion.

Furthermore, how those billions were spent was equally difficult to discern.

"What is even more troubling is how difficult it is to find essential information on how some charters have spent federal and state tax dollars, even as governments continue to increase funding for charters while slashing funds for traditional public schools," reads the report. "Unlike truly public schools that have to account for prospective and past spending in public budgets provided to democratically elected school boards, charter spending of tax monies is too often a black hole."

The study attributes this lack of accountability "to the way the charter industry has been built by proponents, favoring 'flexibility' over rules."

"That flexibility has allowed an epidemic of fraud, waste, and mismanagement that would not be tolerated in public schools," CMD states, noting that charters "are often policed—if they are really policed at all—by charter proponents, both within government agencies and within private entities tasked with oversight."

In fact, that oversight is so spotty that CMD's investigation turned up dozens of "ghost" schools, where federal grants were awarded to charters that never even opened.

DDay has a very interesting article, worth some attention about Hillary's ties to BlackRock:

Clinton Takes Her Adviser’s Side, Attacking Big Banks but Not BlackRock

Hillary Clinton has received a mixture of plaudits and qualified skepticism for her Wall Street reform plan. She insists that the plan is tougher than those of her Democratic presidential rivals, because it targets more participants in the financial industry beyond the big banks.

But Clinton’s plan was mute on a key sector of the industry: asset management firms, like BlackRock or Vanguard or Fidelity, which control a staggering $30 trillion in global wealth.

And a number of Clinton’s ideas mirror the preferences of leading asset managers, who would profit from crackdowns on their competition — the big banks — while they get a pass.

That’s probably not a coincidence. Cheryl Mills, arguably Clinton’s closest adviser, sits on the board of directors of BlackRock, the largest asset management firm in the world, with $4.5 trillion in investor assets. ...

Mills was elected to BlackRock’s board in October 2013, months after the end of her tenure at the State Department. BlackRock’s announcement highlighted Mills’ ties to Clinton in its opening sentence. ...

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who helped create the mortgage-backed security in the 1970s, has made no secret of wanting to enter politics. He was on the short list of replacements for Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary, and many took his decision to appoint Mills to the BlackRock board as a sign of his desire to ingratiate himself to the Clinton in a bid to secure the Treasury appointment in the next administration.

As Hillary Clinton Testifies Before GOP Panel, Friends of 2 Benghazi Victims Remember the Lives Lost

Loyal Biden embraces Obama legacy – what's Clinton's excuse?

Biden’s announcement on Wednesday afternoon that he would not run for president was the single best thing, in terms of a power to goose the polls, that could have happened to the Clinton campaign, short of a new batch of her emails turning up thousands of pages of secret and mutually affectionate correspondence with Prince.

And yet Biden’s exit from the stage might remove the candidate without removing the central problem that Hillary Clinton is likely to face one year from now if she is the Democratic nominee.

That problem is President Barack Obama, the failure of his broadest promises to deliver peace abroad and change at home, the disillusionment among Democrats with that failure, and the ability and desire of Republicans to highlight the failure and to pin it on whomever Obama attempts to hand the White House off to. ...

While Clinton has been attempting to differentiate herself from the president, she missed an opportunity to do so at the presidential debate last week, when she was asked to “name the one way that your administration would not be a third term of President Obama”.

“Well, I think that’s pretty obvious,” Clinton said. “I think being the first woman president would be quite a change from the presidents we’ve had up until this point, including President Obama.”

It was a gesture at what for some voters will be the strongest virtue of her candidacy – but it did not put the question to rest, and neither did her answer to a question about her 2002 Senate vote in favor of the Iraq war.

The proof of her judgment, she said, was in Barack Obama’s imprimatur.

“I recall very well being on a debate stage, I think, about 25 times with then Senator Obama, debating this very issue,” Clinton said. “After the election, he asked me to become secretary of state. He valued my judgment, and I spent a lot of time with him in the situation room, going over some very difficult issues.”

Elect me: Barack did.

Bernie Sanders Wants To Make College Tuition Free

Sanders Calls for Free Higher Ed for All

"It is time to build on the progressive movement of the past and make public colleges and universities tuition-free in the United States," presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wrote in an op-ed on Thursday, saying such a move would "be the driver of a new era of American prosperity."

"In my view, education is essential for personal and national well-being," Sanders declared, elaborating on a key aspect of his populist platform. "We live in a highly competitive, global economy, and if our economy is to be strong, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. We won’t achieve that if, every year, hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college while millions more leave school deeply in debt." ...

Earlier this year, the democratic socialist from Vermont proposed legislation in the U.S. Senate to cover tuition costs for qualified students at public colleges and universities by imposing a tax on Wall Street transactions by investment houses, hedge funds, and other speculators.

Notably, Vice President Joe Biden appears to be in Sanders' corner when it comes to the issue of higher education costs.

"We need to commit to 16 years of free public education for all our children," Biden said in his speech Wednesday announcing he would not run for president. "We all know that 12 years of public education is not enough. As a nation, let's make the same commitment to a college education today that we made to a high school education a hundred years ago."

Fight climate change for global stability, say US defence and diplomacy elite

In a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal the experts – 48 former secretaries of state and defense, national security advisers, diplomats and members of Congress from both parties – say it is time for America to claim global leadership on climate change.

The appeal is intended to apply pressure to Republicans in Congress who are trying to defeat Barack Obama’s plan to cut carbon pollution at home and seeking to limit US involvement in negotiations to reach a global deal on fighting climate change in Paris in December.

The letter, endorsed by Madeline Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton; Chuck Hagel, secretary of defense under Obama; George Shultz, secretary of state under Ronald Reagan; James Woolsey, CIA director under Clinton; and other prominent retired officials, declares that climate change is indeed a security threat.

“America’s elected leaders and private sector must think past tomorrow to focus on this growing problem, and take action at home and abroad,” the ad says.

“This issue is critically important to the world’s most experienced security planners. The impacts are real, and the costs of inaction are unacceptable.”

The ad hits back against Republicans who are trying to block a global climate deal, arguing that Obama should have to submit any agreement for approval to Congress – where it would almost certainly be defeated.

'Never Seen Anything Like This Before' as 2015 Set to Be Hottest Year on Record

With many eyes turning to UN talks in Paris, Earth continues to exhibit symptoms of a planet on fire

"It’s just incredible to me. I’ve never seen anything like this before."

That's what Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist with the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told the New York Times in an interview following the agency's release on Wednesday of new figures showing that last month was the hottest September since records began and offered further confirmation that 2015 is on track to be the hottest year experienced in modern human history.

Dr. Blunden pointed the Times to measurements in several of the world’s ocean basins, "where surface temperatures are as much as three degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average," an increase described as "substantial" given the large size of these areas. "We’re seeing it all across the Indian Ocean, in huge parts of the Atlantic Ocean, in parts of the Arctic oceans," she said. The bottom line, she added: "the world is warming."

As Andrea Thompson at Climate Central notes, the findings show that "September 2015 was not only the hottest September on record for the globe, but it was warmer than average by a bigger margin than any of the 1,629 months in [NOAA's records]—that’s all the way back to January 1880."

Robin Hood in Reverse: How Hotter Planet Takes from Poor, Gives to Rich

Global warming 'is essentially a massive transfer of value from the hot parts of the world to the cooler parts of the world,' says UC Berkeley researcher

Ever-increasing temperatures and unmitigated climate change will worsen global inequality and widen the north-south gap between rich and poor countries, according to a groundbreaking new study published this week in the journal Nature.

Published by researchers from Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, the findings use a novel metric to show that "climate change will reshape the global economy, causing a small number of cold countries to perform better and many temperate and hot countries to perform worse."

In a fact sheet (pdf), the authors state: "On net, we project that the global economy will do much worse because of climate change, with global average incomes 23% lower in 2100 with climate change relative to without it. In addition, because some of the cooler richer countries are expected to benefit from warming and poorer tropical countries are hurt, global inequality is projected to get much worse due to climate change." ...

The Nature study posits that global economic growth will drop off sharply after temperatures pass a critical heat threshold of 55° Fahrenheit (13° Celsius). As average annual temperatures in individual countries tick past that mark, wealthy nations will start to see a decline in economic output, a Stanford press release explains, while poorer ones, mostly in the tropics, will suffer even steeper losses because they are already past the temperature threshold.

"What climate change is doing is basically devaluing all the real estate south of the United States and making the whole planet less productive," study co-author Solomon Hsiang, an economist and public policy professor at the UC Berkeley, told the Associated Press. "Climate change is essentially a massive transfer of value from the hot parts of the world to the cooler parts of the world."

"This is like taking from the poor and giving to the rich," Hsiang added.

Also of Interest

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

The Stealth Expansion of a Secret U.S. Drone Base in Africa

How US Immigrant Detention Facilities Get Away with Being Complete Hellholes

A Little Night Music

Gladys Knight & The Pips - You Need Love Like I Do (Don't You)

Gladys Knight & B.B. King - The Thrill Is Gone

Gladys Knight & The Pips - The Nitty Gritty

Gladys Knight and The Pips - Midnight Train To Georgia

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Dont Turn Me Away

Gladys Knight & The Pips - The Stranger

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Every Beat Of My Heart

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Everybody needs love

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Letter Full Of Tears

Gladys Knight & The Pips - If I Were Your Woman

Gladys Knight & The Pips - No One Could Love You More

Gladys Knight & The Pips - I Wish It Would Rain

The Muppet Show - Gladys Knight

Gladys Knight - Please Send Me Someone To Love

Gladys Knight and The Pips - On and On

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Daddy Could Swear, I Declare

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Dont Turn Me Away