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“Last Wednesday, at a Deputies Committee meeting at the White House, officials from the State Department, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff discussed limited military strikes against the (Assad) regime … One proposed way to get around the White House’s long-standing objection to striking the Assad regime without a U.N. Security Council resolution would be to carry out the strikes covertly and without public acknowledgment.”

-- Washington Post, "Obama administration considering strikes on Assad, again"

News and Opinion

Testing Obama’s Transparency Pledge, Groups Send List of Drone Strikes to Investigate

A coalition of human rights groups is calling on the Obama administration to make good on an executive order issued this summer that requires the United States to investigate when civilians are harmed in lethal operations abroad, including drone strikes.

In a letter sent to the White House on Thursday, the groups press for investigations into several specific attacks that occurred on the president’s watch. The letter calls for public acknowledgement as well as “prompt, thorough, effective, independent, impartial and transparent investigations” into 10 incidents over the last seven years. A dozen groups signed on, including the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Center for Civilians in Conflict.

The letter also calls for the methodology of those investigations to be made public, to include “only those redactions necessary to protect information that is properly classified” and to offer clear explanations for any discrepancies that might arise between the government’s conclusions and those reached by outside parties, including NGOs and journalists.

The executive order that Obama signed requires the government to investigate allegations of civilian casualties caused by U.S. operations, then take responsibility when they occur, and provide compensation to the family members of victims.

That order was released alongside a report detailing the government’s estimate of civilians killed in airstrikes outside conventional war zones — part of an effort by the Obama administration to present itself, after years of virtually blanket secrecy in these matters of life and death, as setting a tone of transparency for its successors.

Once lauded as a peacemaker, Obama's tenure fraught with war

Seven years ago this week, when a young American president learned he'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize barely nine months into his first term — arguably before he'd made any peace — a somewhat embarrassed Barack Obama asked his aides to write an acceptance speech that addressed the awkwardness of the award.

But by the time his speechwriters delivered a draft, Obama's focus had shifted to another source of tension in his upcoming moment in Oslo: He would deliver this speech about peace just days after he planned to order 30,000 more American troops into battle in Afghanistan. ...

The speech Obama delivered — a Nobel Peace Prize lecture about the necessity of waging war — now looks like an early sign that the American president would not be the sort of peacemaker the European intellectuals of the Nobel committee had anticipated. ...

He is the erstwhile anti-war candidate, now engaged in more theaters of war than his predecessor. He is the commander-in-chief who pulled more than a hundred thousand U.S. troops out of harm's way in Iraq, but also began a slow trickle back in. He recoiled against full-scale, conventional war, while embracing the brave new world of drone attacks. He has championed diplomacy on climate change, nuclear proliferation and has torn down walls to Cuba and Myanmar, but failed repeatedly to broker a lasting pause to more than six years of slaughter in Syria. ...

By some sobering measures, the case for Obama the peacemaker is difficult to make. Analysts who track conflict, refugee populations, terrorist attacks and political upheaval say the world has only become less peaceful during Obama's tenure, a trend that began just before he took office.

The Forgotten Libyan Lessons and the Syrian War

Most intelligent Americans – Republicans as well as Democrats – now accept that they were duped into the Iraq War with disastrous consequences, but there is more uncertainty about the war on Libya in 2011 as well as the ongoing proxy war on Syria and the New Cold War showdown with Russia over Ukraine.

Today, many Democrats don’t want to admit that they have been manipulated into supporting new imperial adventures against Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Russia by the Obama administration as it pulls some of the same propaganda strings that George W. Bush’s administration did in 2002-2003.

Yet, as happened with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, we have seen a similar hysteria about the evil doings of the newly demonized foreign leaders with the predictable Hitler allusions and vague explanations about how some terrible misdeeds halfway around the world threaten U.S. interests.

Though people mostly remember the false WMD claims about Iraq, much of the case for the invasion was based on protecting “human rights,” spreading “democracy,” and eliminating a supporter of Palestinians who were violently resisting Israeli rule.

The justification for aggression against Iraq was not only to save Americans from the supposed risk of Iraq somehow unleashing poison gas on U.S. cities but to free the Iraqis from a brutal dictator, the argument which explained why Bush’s neocon advisers predicted that Iraqis would shower American troops with rose petals and candies.

Those same “humanitarian” arguments were out in force to justify the U.S.-European “regime change” in Libya eight years later. As former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted – even this year – Muammar Gaddafi was a “genocidal” dictator bent on slaughtering the people of eastern Libya (though Gaddafi insisted that he was only interested in killing the “terrorists”).

We are seeing the same pattern play out today with the “group think” in support of a major U.S. military intervention in Syria (supposedly to impose the sweet-sounding goal of a “no-fly zone,” the same rhetorical gateway used to start the “regime change” wars in Iraq and Libya).

We are experiencing the same demonization of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin that we witnessed before those other two wars on Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. Every possible allegation is made against them, often based on dubious and deceitful “evidence,” but it goes unchallenged because to question the propaganda opens a person to charges of being an “apologist” or a “stooge.” ...

The most likely outcome from a Syrian “regime change” is a victory by Al Qaeda and/or its erstwhile friends in the Islamic State. How that would make the lives of Syrians better is hard to fathom. More likely, the victorious jihadists would inflict a mass bloodletting on Christians, Alawites, Shiites, secular Sunnis and other “heretics,” with millions more fleeing as refugees.

Among the Western elites – in politics and media – no lessons apparently have been learned from the disaster in Iraq, nor from the new British report on the Libyan fiasco.

From criticism to direct threats in just 1 month: US-Russia tension growing over Syrian crisis

Despite Russia Warning, US Considers Hitting Assad

Officials with the US State Department have repeatedly talked of “non-diplomatic options” recently in Syria. Though they’re trying to be coy, what they’re really talking about is overt military action against the Syrian government, attacks which would threaten Russian forces embedded with them, and likely drag Russia into a shooting war with the US.

Russia’s Defense Ministry was quick to urge caution today, noting that they’d recently deployed air defense systems into Syria specifically to counter the threat of US attack, and that the US should “carefully” consider the potential consequences of launching such strikes.

The State Department acknowledged they were aware of the Russian warning, but insisted that internal discussion within the US government continues on the “non-diplomatic” options, which is to say, starting a war with Russia. Spokesman John Kirby added there would be no discussion with Russia over the matter.

Putin the 'Peacemaker': banner hung from Manhattan Bridge puzzles police

New York City police were looking for whoever draped a gigantic banner featuring a portrait of President Vladimir Putin over the side of the Manhattan Bridge on Thursday.

The 20ft by 30ft banner appeared on the side of the bridge between lower Manhattan and the borough of Brooklyn, featuring Putin dressed in a suit in front of the Russian flag with the word “Peacemaker” in capital letters.

New York City police received a call about the banner at 2.45pm and removed it about half an hour later, a spokesman said.

We spotted this Putin banner being unfurled on north side of the Manhattan Bridge at 1:47 p.m. https://t.co/DStAoerBz9 pic.twitter.com/kL2uUh9Vhe

— Gothamist (@Gothamist) October 6, 2016

US Protecting Nusra Front as Proxy in Syria War

In an interview with Denmark’s TV 2, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insisted that the effort to regain total control of Aleppo, and indeed of all Syrian territory, would continue, but insisted that while military operations are ongoing, he would prefer local deals and amnesty allowing rebels to leave the contested areas as a way to avoid fighting.

At the same time, he didn’t appear to hold out much hope for that happening in Aleppo, insisting that the main rebel force there, long-time al-Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front, was being used by the United States as a proxy, because they are the only really effective card the US has to play in the war.

Assad insisted the main reason the ceasefire failed was not the fighting or even the bungled US airstrike against a military base in Deir Ezzor, but rather the general lack of will among US officials to come to the table on any deal that would allow fighting against Nusra.

Assad offers rebels amnesty if they surrender Aleppo

Rebels holed up in Aleppo can leave with their families if they lay down their arms, President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday, vowing to press on with the assault on Syria's largest city and recapture full control of the country.

The offer of amnesty follows two weeks of the heaviest bombardment of the five-and-a-half-year civil war, which has killed hundreds of people trapped inside Aleppo's rebel-held eastern sector and torpedoed a U.S.-backed peace initiative.

Fighters have accepted similar government amnesty offers in other besieged areas in recent months, notably in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus that was under siege for years until rebels surrendered it in August.

The army announced a reduction in shelling and air strikes on Wednesday to allow people to leave. It backed that up with an ultimatum: "All those who do not take advantage of the provided opportunity to lay down their arms or to leave will face their inevitable fate."

The government also sent text messages to the mobile phones of some of those people trapped in the besieged sector, telling them to repudiate fighters in their midst.

GOP senator: Strikes on Assad need Congress's approval

Sen. Mike Lee is warning the White House that a push to increase the U.S. military's involvement in Syria would require congressional approval.

The Utah Republican said reports that the administration is considering using airstrikes to target the Assad regime — as part of a broader consideration of new options to end the country's civil war — would represent "a major departure from our current strategy."

"[It] carries potentially cataclysmic consequences which the American people have never debated in Congress," he said in a statement. "If President Obama and his advisors want to increase the involvement of the United States in Syria in any manner — including attacks against the Assad regime — they have a constitutional responsibility to ask for a declaration of war from Congress."

The Washington Post reported that a Cabinet-level meeting to discuss potential options had been scheduled for Wednesday, though whether President Obama would sign off on additional military force — something he has been hesitant to do — is unclear.

With lawmakers out of Washington until after the November elections, Lee added that if Obama moves "ahead without authorization, then Congress must be called back into session to fulfill its obligation to debate and determine whether our nation should once again go to war.”

Offensive on Mosul is "a matter of days" Falah Mustafa Bakir, Foreign Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan

Turkey Rejects Demand to Withdraw Troops as Iraq Warns of Regional War

With Iraqi officials warning that the unwelcome presence of Turkish ground troops in their territory threatens to spark a “regional war,” and requesting an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council over the deployment, Turkish officials are continuing to resist the calls to leave.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim insisted that Iraq’s objection would have no impact on Turkey’s deployment of troops into Iraqi territory, saying Turkey is being unfairly criticized and that Iraq has no right to speak to Turkey like it has been.

Yildirim noted that there are 63 countries with existing military presences in Iraq, saying he thought it was “unreasonable” to single out just Turkey and demand that they leave.

German right-wing leader compares migrants to a pile of compost — to hearty applause

Politicians across Germany have condemned the leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party for comments she made this week comparing migrants with a pile of compost.

Dismissing the notion that migrants make German society more diverse, Frauke Petry said: "What should we make of the 'Germany is colourful' campaign? A compost heap is colorful too."

Petry might've been greeted with hearty applause inside the conference, but German politicians throughout the country were quick to condemn her comments.

Petry made the statement at a party conference on Monday, which gathered some three hundred (mostly male, largely elderly and almost entirely white) Alternative für Deutschland members in Stuttgart.

Democratic Senators Question FCC About Interference Caused by Covert Cellphone Trackers

Twelve Democratic senators penned a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking whether surveillance technology used by law enforcement causes major interruptions in cellphone service — as experts have alleged — endangering people making emergency calls. They also expressed concern over the technology’s frequent use in minority communities. ...

In the past, the government has admitted the technology causes a disruption in cellphone service in order to track nearby phones — but has insisted it’s a very short time period.

Several activist groups represented by Georgetown Law’s Laura Moy filed a 38-page complaint against the Baltimore Police Department in August — alleging that cellphone trackers used by police were interfering with cellular networks without permission from the FCC, violating the Federal Communications Act, as well as disproportionately affecting minorities.

Regardless of the length of the interruption, the legal complaint alleges that law enforcement is emitting unauthorized signals using the wireless spectrum, which falls under the purview of the FCC and its chairman.

Thousands of Colombians wave white flags for peace

Thousands of Colombians took to the streets on Wednesday night to show their support for peace after the weekend's shock vote rejecting a deal to end half a century of conflict with the FARC guerrilla group. ...

Fears that Colombia could slip back into full-scale war are now growing as the government struggles to get new negotiations going and the FARC puts its plans to demobilize on hold. The current ceasefire is due to run out at the end of the month.

Wednesday's pro-peace demonstrations were organized over social media by students who have never known anything other than war in Colombia. The largest was in the capital Bogota.

Colombian President Wins Nobel Prize for Peace Accord, Days After Deal Loses National Referendum

Colombia's president wins Nobel Prize despite failed peace deal

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was having a hell of a week, and then the Nobel Committee called. In a surprise announcement, Santos has been awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

The embattled president of Colombia may be more surprised than anyone. Still reeling from a shocking referendum result Sunday that left his peace deal with the country's largest rebel group on life support, Santos has had little to celebrate. ...

Announcing the result, Nobel Committee chair Kaci Kullmann Five explained that the award was presented as "an acknowledgement of the very hard work and the very important initiative that President Santos has made... and it is a strong encouragement, we hope, for all parties in these negotiating processes to do their utmost to reach a good result acceptable to the people."

President Santos has spent the past four years on a deal with FARC guerrillas that would bring peace to a country that has experienced civil war for five decades. The deal was ratified at a ceremony with global leaders in Cartagena, Colombia, in September only to be rejected narrowly by voters in a referendum on Sunday, in part due to a campaign spearheaded by former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Velez.

Peace deal rejection returns Álvaro Uribe to political limelight

A week ago, Colombia’s populist former president, Álvaro Uribe, appeared to be on the verge of leaving the political stage for good.

A peace deal with Farc rebels that he had vigorously opposed was a step away from being implemented, and he hinted that he would leave his senate seat before accepting that former guerrillas might soon sit next to him in parliament. ...

Uribe – who had declined repeated invitations to meet President Juan Manuel Santos and the rebel commander in chief Rodrigo Londoño, known by the nom de guerre Timochenko, during the talks – is now trying to steer a renegotiation of the settlement under his terms, especially the questions of punishment for war crimes and congressional seats for demobilised guerrillas. ...

The Farc have said they remain committed to the original peace deal that they have already signed. And they balk at seeing Uribe take centre-stage as a new party in the peace process. “If we leave peace in the hands of Uribe, the devil will take it,” tweeted Iván Márquez, the rebels’ chief negotiator.

The rebels reject Uribe because of his alleged ties to right-wing paramilitary groups that emerged in the 1980s to fight off guerrilla extortion and kidnapping of drug lords and large landowners. ...

Uribe was the most vocal and visible proponent of the no vote in the plebiscite but voters had their own reasons for rejecting the peace deal, many based on misinterpretations, rumours and outright lies.

Evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, for example, were convinced the accord was a threat to traditional family values as it recognised the rights of gays, lesbians and transgender people.

A social media campaign scared pensioners into believing they would have to give over 7% of their pensions to help support demobilised guerrillas. Flyers for the no side falsely claimed the accord would allow a joint government-Farc committee to prosecute anyone who was against the deal.

Nobel Hypocrisy as Colombia Marxists Excluded from Prestigious Peace Prize

The announcement that FARC rebels were excluded from the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Friday was met with some shock and outrage by observers who argued it was a "cowardly" move on the part of the committee. ...

While not naming FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño Echeverri (also known as "Timochenko"), the committee said that the award should "be seen as a tribute to the Colombian people who, despite great hardships and abuses, have not given up hope of a just peace, and to all the parties who have contributed to the peace process." ...

As Slate columnist Joshua Keating observed, "In past awards given in recognition of peace deals, the leaders of both sides have typically been awarded." But including Timochenko would have "enraged" those "who see the deal as too lenient."

The successful campaign against the peace agreement was led by a ruling elite, which included former president Alvaro Uribe and big landowners. As Jacobin's Ronan Burtenshaw noted on social media after the vote, "Colombia's right is not afraid of FARC, it's afraid popular demands on land reform, resources & trade deals no longer countered by violence."

DoJ to investigate Alabama prisons in 'possibly unprecedented' move

The federal government is investigating prisons throughout Alabama in an inquiry that is “possibly unprecedented”. The investigation comes after a series of strikes and riots that have revealed the state’s prisons are in turmoil.

“It’s a giant investigation. This is rare,” said Lisa Graybill, a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is conducting an investigation of its own. Previously Graybill worked for the federal unit that will investigate Alabama, and said the closest comparison in memory was an examination of Puerto Rico’s juvenile jails. “Taking on a whole state is unusual and possibly unprecedented,” she said.

According to the Department of Justice (DoJ) the investigation will focus on whether prisoners are protected from physical and sexual abuse by other prisoners and guards, and whether living conditions are sanitary and safe in general at men’s prisons.

Alabama’s prisons – particularly the notorious Holman prison – were at the forefront of a nationwide call for prisoners to strike from work, last month. On 9 September prisoners across the US began a strike that lasted several days, in some places. And at Holman, guards joined striking prisoners by staying home from work.

Michael Hudson: Economic 'Recovery' Feels Weak Because the Great Recession Hasn't Really Ended

Wells Fargo banking scandal a financial crisis we can finally understand

For most Americans the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis was all too obvious. The economy imploded, jobs disappeared, house prices collapsed. But coming to grips with the reason it was happening – the run on mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations (AKA, CDOs), credit default swaps, synthetic derivatives, tranches – was not so easy.

The mumbo jumbo mattered – and that’s what made it all the more infuriating. It was a banking crisis that only the insiders could decode. ...

So let’s be grateful that the banks have finally provided us with a scandal that we can understand, and to the regulators, for (belatedly) addressing a real problem that too many Americans grapple with daily.

The Wells Fargo mess is the poster child for it all. Last month, the bank – one of the oldest in the country, with a tradition dating back to the Pony Express – disclosed that it would fork over $185m in penalties to regulators after an audit discovered that employees opened as many as 2m deposit and credit accounts in customers’ names but without their consent. ...

You don’t need a Jenga game, or Anthony Bourdain cooking a fish stew, Margot Robbie languishing in a bubble bath, or any other tortured metaphor, to explain the concept and just what is wrong with this picture. ...

Thomas Curry, the US comptroller of the currency, has warned other banks to review their own cross-selling practices and has told Congress that his own staff will be evaluating what the largest banks are up to in this respect. It’s about time. Hopefully, he’ll report back with the answers.

Six Million Adults Who Won't Influence This Presidential Race

On July 7th in Staten Island a few months back, Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the death of Eric Garner, sat in court conferring with his family. He was about to agree to plea deal on drug and weapons charges that would send him to prison for a while. ...

The term – four years – had already been settled. But some specifics were left up to him. In particular, he was given a choice as to which of his many drug charges he could swallow.

He walked back to the front of the courtroom, and soon after formally pleaded guilty. ... This past Monday, Orta was formally sentenced in Staten Island Supreme Court. A convicted felon, he now becomes part of a community of about 6.1 million Americans who are not eligible to vote.

Some people might want to compare Orta's situation to that of Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who killed Eric Garner. Pantaleo is not only still eligible to vote, he recently got a $20,000 pay raise while on desk duty in the NYPD. Some $13,000 of Pantaleo's $120,000 income last year was from "unspecified pay," which can include bonuses.

But to me the more damning comparison is with the executives of global banking giant HSBC. The bank four years ago entered into a $1.92 billion deferred prosecution agreement with our federal government. Among its offenses was laundering $881 million for the Sinaloa and Norte del Valle drug cartels. ...

No executives were charged individually in that affair. So nobody lost voting rights for laundering hundreds of millions of dollars for the world's worst drug gangs. ...

Companies like Wells Fargo (which paid $175 million to settle charges of discriminatory lending practices), Citigroup ($7 billion to settle mortgage fraud allegations), JP Morgan Chase ($13 billion to settle similar mortgage charges) and Bank of America (which paid the largest civil settlement in history to make its mortgage fraud issues go away) have all been nailed committing offenses far more serious than selling a few bags of dope.

But their executives all get to retain full voting rights. The companies will also keep their professional licenses. And election cycle after election cycle, they get to keep exerting enormous influence by donating millions of dollars to candidates.

Hundreds of Sanders Delegates Continuing to Withhold Support For Clinton

Poor countries urge fast action on Paris deal to stop catastrophic warming

UN back-slapping for the record speed at which the Paris agreement on climate change has been ratified this week has been tempered by the reality that the new treaty will not stop catastrophic warming as it stands, and that the money so far pledged by rich countries is nowhere near enough to allow developing countries to adapt to expected sea level rises and more extreme weather.

The agreement, which will come into force on 4 November, is hoped to hold temperatures to a maximum 2C rise, and for the first time commits both rich and poor countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But, say scientists, the historic measures pledged in Paris last year by the big greenhouse gas emitters like Europe, the US and China set the world on track to a temperature rise of about 3C over the next 50 years – enough to render many of the world’s poorest countries uninhabitable.

The world’s 48 least developed countries (LDCs), which unanimously pressed for a global commitment to a 1.5C warmer world in Paris, said this week that they welcomed the ratification of the agreement, but warned that the rich must act urgently.

“Now we need to now turn our words into action. Without action, the Paris agreement will just be a piece of paper,” said Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands. “We need to see finance quickly flow to those who need it most so we can all implement our own ambitious plans to reduce emissions. Without [that] there is no way we will be able to stay within 1.5 degrees.”

Station cameras captured new views today of massive Hurricane Matthew. Matthew was moving through the Bahamas as a Category 4 hurricane. pic.twitter.com/ARD2odlCcQ

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) October 6, 2016

As Hurricane Matthew Threatens, Florida Governor Slammed for Climate Denialism

While Hurricane Matthew intensified to a Category 4 "monster" on Thursday as it approached the southeast U.S. coast, Republican Governor of Florida Rick Scott made dramatic headlines as he urged residents to evacuate vulnerable areas in the low-lying state. "This storm will kill you," he declared.

But while crediting Scott for fulfilling his duty to manage what is certain to be a disastrous event when Matthew comes ashore, Greenpeace took the opportunity to call out a governor with a long record of denying the existence of human-caused climate change which scientists have repeatedly shown are making extreme weather events like Matthew more likely and more dangerous.

"Gov. Scott has utterly failed the people of his state," said Greenpeace Senior Campaigner John Hocevar in a statement. "Instead of working to reduce carbon emissions, help homeowners and municipalities develop strategies to cope with climate impacts like sea level rise, erosion, flooding, salt water intrusion, insect-borne disease outbreaks and extreme heat, he has stuck his head in Florida's sand. Famously, Scott even banned state employees from using the phrase climate change. This would be irresponsible anywhere, but in a state like Florida, with so many people living by the coast, it borders on criminal negligence." ...

And—with apologies to the right-wing Daily Caller—it's not "liberals" who are "blaming Hurricane Matthew on global warming." It's actual scientists and their research that saying keep that. Over and over and over again. And again. And again.

As Kerry Emanuel, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained to the Guardian's Oliver Milman on Wednesday: "We expect to see more high-intensity events, category 4 and 5 events, that are around 13% of total hurricanes but do a disproportionate amount of damage. The theory is robust and there are hints that we are already beginning to see it in nature."

And a significant factor, he added, is rising sea levels, especially when it comes to low-lying coastal regions which Florida epitomizes.

As Hurricane Matthew Lashes U.S., Are TV Networks the Last Bastion of Climate Denial?

Tick bites that trigger severe meat allergy on rise around the world

People living in tick-endemic areas around the world are being warned of an increasingly prevalent, potentially life-threatening side effect to being bitten: developing a severe allergy to meat.

The link between tick bites and meat allergies was first described in 2007, and has since been confirmed around the world.

Sufferers of “tick-induced mammalian meat allergy” will experience a delayed reaction of between two and 10 hours after eating red meat. Almost invariably, they are found to have been bitten by a tick – sometimes as much as six months before.

Although most cases of tick bites of humans are uneventful, some immune systems are sensitive to proteins in the parasite’s saliva and become intolerant of red meat and, in some cases, derivatives such as dairy and gelatine.

Poultry and seafood can be tolerated, but many sufferers choose to avoid meat entirely.

Also of Interest

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

Pentagon Begins Low-Intensity, Stealth War in Syria

As the Surveillance Expands, Best Way to Resist is to Bury the NSA in Garbage

Al Gore is back

CIA Sued for Papering Over Digital Records

Pink Floyd unite to support the Women's Boat to Gaza

To Sell Weapons, Defense Contractors Make War Seem Fun

How to make climate change deniers care about the planet: flatter them

Hurricane Matthew: preparations and aftermath – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Snooks Eaglin - Drop The Bomb

Snooks Eaglin - Hideaway

Snooks Eaglin - I Hear You Knockin

Snooks Eaglin & Poppa Funk's Boys - Come on

Snooks Eaglin - Going To The River

Snooks Eaglin - Oh Red

Snooks Eaglin - Johnny B. Goode

Snooks Eaglin - Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland 1990