The Evening Blues - 2-1-16

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas blues singer and guitarist Melvin "Lil' Son" Jackson. Enjoy!

“In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People."

-- Eugene V. Debs

News and Opinion

‘Eyewash’: How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations

Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information about operations and sources overseas, according to current and former U.S. officials who said the practice is known by the term “eyewash.”

Agency veterans described the tactic as an infrequent but important security measure, a means of protecting vital secrets by inserting fake communications into routine cable traffic while using separate channels to convey accurate information to cleared recipients.

But others cited a significant potential for abuse. Beyond the internal distrust implied by the practice, officials said there is no clear mechanism for labeling eyewash cables or distinguishing them from legitimate records being examined by the CIA’s inspector general, turned over to Congress or declassified for historians.

Senate investigators uncovered apparent cases of eyewashing as part of a multi-year probe of the CIA’s interrogation program, according to officials who said that the Senate Intelligence Committee found glaring inconsistencies in CIA communications about classified operations, including drone strikes. ...

Senate investigators appear to have stumbled into several cases during a five-year probe of the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation methods on alleged al-Qaeda operatives. ...

In one case, officials said, CIA operatives in Pakistan issued a cable that attributed the death of a senior member of al-Qaeda to a surge in tribal violence in northwest Pakistan, when in fact the militant had been killed in a drone strike. ... Officials said they saw no indication that the false claim about the militant’s death had circulated beyond the CIA, but several noted that there appeared to be no foolproof way to prevent eyewash falsehoods from being repeated in analytic reports that in some cases are sent to the Pentagon or White House.

Judge rules FBI unlawfully refused to comply with information act requests

The FBI unlawfully and systematically obscured and refused to answer legitimate requests for information about how well it was complying with the Freedom of Information Act (Foia), a Washington, DC court found last week.

US district judge Randolph D Moss ruled in favor of MIT PhD student Ryan Shapiro, finding that the government was flouting Foia, a law intended to guarantee the public access to government records unless they fall into a protected category. Moss found that the FBI’s present policy is “fundamentally at odds with the statute”. ...

The bureau shot down requests for information so regularly and thoroughly – sometimes saying that records were unavailable, sometimes that they didn’t exist, sometimes that it could neither confirm nor deny the existence of records – that Shapiro and his co-plaintiffs asked for more information about the process by which they had been so often refused.

And those requests for clarifying information were categorically denied on the grounds that any information about the FBI’s reasons for denying previous Foia requests were by their very nature secret.

Shapiro and his fellow plaintiffs contended that the government often acts in bad faith and was trying to shield itself from scrutiny as broadly as possible. In doing so, they said, it had stretched the law to breaking point by including harmless documents in the broad categories of material it refuses to hand over or discuss.

Defense Department to take no additional action against Gen. David Petraeus

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has decided there will be no additional action taken by the Defense Department against retired Gen. David Petraeus, according to a letter obtained by CNN on Saturday. ...

Carter's options had included demoting Petraeus from a four-star general to a three-star, which would have affected his retirement salary. This decision now clears Petraeus to continue to receive his full retirement benefits.

'US aims to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan'

Saudi Arabia: US, British Experts to Help With Yemen Targeting

Today [...] Saudi coalition officials are promising changes to their airstrike targeting, expressing “great regret” for the civilian toll, and say US and British military experts will be advising them on how to get the civilian toll down.

Of course, the US has been involved in the Saudi war from the start, and has repeatedly been reported to be involved in targeting advice throughout. It is unclear, then, what will actually be changing, except the promise to get the toll down.

UK considering military action against Isis in Libya

Downing Street waiting to see if peace efforts succeed before joining US and France in calling for intervention

A British decision on whether to join western powers considering direct military intervention against Islamic State in Libya is likely to rest on whether long-running efforts to form a viable national unity government will materialise in the coming weeks.

The Pentagon and the French government have been pressing for direct action following a meeting in Paris last week, with Italy saying it would consider involvement. Downing Street said on Monday that no decisions had been taken regarding British troops and fended off questions about whether they would be in a combat or training role. ...

There is at present no support for air strikes from the Africa Union, and it is likely that the Commons foreign affairs select committee will shortly produce a scathing report into the failure of western post-conflict planning after the 2011 toppling of Gaddafi.

Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition Labour leader, is likely to oppose any intervention and the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, would face a further dilemma over whether to support further military action against Isis.

If any action does go ahead it may be possible that British involvement will be so limited it would not warrant Commons authorisation.

Turkey’s Syrian Calculation: Gambling on an Invasion?

A month before Turkey shot down a Russian bomber which it accused of entering its airspace, Russian military intelligence had warned President Vladimir Putin that this was the Turkish plan. Diplomats familiar with the events say that Putin dismissed the warning, probably because he did not believe that Turkey would risk provoking Russia into deeper military engagement in the Syrian war. ...

The shooting-down – the first of a Russian plane by a Nato power since the Korean War – is important because it shows how far Turkey will go to maintain its position in the war raging on the southern side of its 550-mile border with Syria. It is a highly relevant event today because, two months further on, Turkey now faces military developments in northern Syria that pose a much more serious threat to its interests than that brief incursion into its airspace, even though Ankara made fresh claims yesterday over a new Russian violation on Friday.

The Syrian war is at a crucial stage. Over the past year the Syrian Kurds and their highly effective army, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), have taken over half of Syria’s frontier with Turkey. ... Developments in the next few months may determine who are the long-term winners and losers in the region for decades. President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are advancing on several fronts under a Russian air umbrella. The five-year campaign by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s to overthrow Assad in Damascus, by backing the armed opposition, looks to be close to defeat. ...

Turkey is the last regional power that could reverse the trend of events in Syria by open military intervention, a development that cannot be discounted as the Syrian-Turkish border is progressively sealed off. But, barring this, the conflict has become so internationalised that only the US and Russia are capable of bringing it to an end.

Finally in Geneva, Syrian Rebel Negotiators Threaten to Leave

After responding to their invitation with a series of demands, then refusing to attend, Syrian rebel negotiators finally showed up in Geneva, with an eye toward continuing to press those same demands, including the release of all rebel prisoners, and an end to all airstrikes against rebel territory.

Indeed, it’s still not clear if the rebel delegation is in Geneva to participate in the talks at all, and their first discussions with UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura have centered not around the peace process, but around their preconditions for participation.

That and their threats to leave.

Syria: peace talks run straight into trouble after Islamic State bombers kill over 60 people

In Besieged Middle East, Food Becomes Weapon of War

As crises in the Middle East escalate, food has become a weapon of war.

A new Associated Press analysis published Friday looks at the way food supply and access is controlled by all sides in conflict and the devastating impact this tactic has on civilian populations struggling to survive behind blockades in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq.

The AP reports:

The biggest humanitarian catastrophe by far is Syria, where a ruinous five-year civil war has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced half the population. All sides in the conflict have used punishing blockades to force submission and surrender from the other side — a tactic that has proved effective particularly for government forces seeking to pacify opposition-held areas around the capital Damascus.

Earlier this month, United Nations (UN) aid groups visited several besieged Syrian towns on a humanitarian mission. That included Madaya, a town northeast of Damascus with a population of 40,000, where recently released images of the starving populace—particularly the malnourished children—gained international attention.

After returning from that trip, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the use of food as a weapon in conflict constitutes a "war crime."

"U.N. teams have witnessed scenes that haunt the soul," Ban said. "The elderly and children, men and women, who were little more than skin and bones: gaunt, severely malnourished, so weak they could barely walk, and utterly desperate for the slightest morsel."

Meme alert:

Kerry Claims Syrian War ‘Worst Since WW2’

Trying to hype the importance of the Syrian peace talks ongoing in Geneva, Secretary of State John Kerry made what is likely to be a wildly controversial claim, tapping the Syrian Civil War as the worst humanitarian catastrophe in generations, “unmatched since World War II.” ...

Even looking at single-nation civil wars, Syria is just one of many, with Rwanda, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, China, and countless others seeing civil wars with death tolls as large or larger, and refugee crises every bit as calamitous. ...

There is always a tendency to present the most recent calamities as necessarily the worst, both because they are fresh in our minds and because they are unresolved. Yet presenting the Syrian Civil War as “unmatched” does a disservice to the countless millions of victims of other huge conflicts throughout the era.

Former US secretary of state on Syrian refugee crisis, cold war was a piece of cake

Tackling issues such as global inequality and the Syrian refugee crisis is difficult, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said on Sunday – even more difficult than fighting the cold war. ... The divisions brought out by the Syrian refugee crisis, she said, highlighted the issue of global inequality.

“In order to have equality, you can’t all of a sudden be separating people into smaller and smaller groups that actually are proud of their identity but hate the people next door,” she said.

According to Albright, no one “can even figure out who should sit at the table to solve the problem”.

“I was in a meeting,” she said, “in which I turned to the person next to me and said: ‘The cold war was a piece of cake in comparison to this. The world was divided between the red and [the] red, white and blue.’

“At this point it’s hard to keep track of who is who and the institutional structures are not helping equality at all, in terms of trying to figure it out.”

US officials question Saudi Arabia report of Americans detained on terror charges

American officials said on Sunday they did not believe nine US citizens were among 33 suspects detained on terrorism charges in Saudi Arabia over the past week, as reported by a Saudi newspaper.

The English-language daily Saudi Gazette, citing an unnamed source, on Sunday reported that four Americans were detained last Monday, followed by another five in the following days. ...

Six US officials told Reuters that the US government could not confirm that any Americans were among the 33 suspects detained.

However, two officials said US authorities were still checking names against databases. Saudi authorities were also investigating the citizenship of those detained, one of the officials said.

None of the US officials was authorized to speak publicly, and the US embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Docs Reveal US Used Denmark for Rendition Flight Waiting to Kidnap Snowden

Remember when the PM #Rasmussen said Denmark shouldn't respect asylum law in my case? Turns out he had a secret. https://t.co/8K6cYuvAhv

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 27, 2016

A U.S. rendition plane was ready and waiting in Copenhagen in June 2013 to nab National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, a Danish news website reported this week.

At the time, Snowden had fled Hong Kong and was stuck at the airport in Moscow.

Documents obtained by Denfri.dk from Denmark's Ministry of Justice, and which back previous claims, show that Danish authorities approved a request from the United States for a specific aircraft to fly over and in Danish territory "for state purposes of a non-commercial nature," and indicate that the aircraft did, in fact, land in Copenhagen.

That aircraft, with registration number N977GA, has been used in CIA and Department of Justice kidnappings, The Register reported in 2014.

Report counts some 2,300 journalists killed in past 25 years

In the last quarter century, at least 2,297 journalists and media staff have been killed for doing nothing more than trying to inform the world on war, revolution, crime and corruption. And killers continue to act with impunity, the International Federation of Journalists announced in a new report.

The annual total stood at 40 in the federation's first year of counting, 1990, but has not dipped under the 100-mark since 2010.

"The last ten years were the most dangerous," said IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger in an interview, with 2006 the worst year of all with 155 killed.

And despite vows of protection from as high as the United Nations, the IFJ said it produced the report "25 years of contribution towards safer journalism" to underscore a worsening climate of impunity which has helped killers get away with murder and turn journalists into soft targets.

"The IFJ estimates that only one of ten killings is investigated," the report said, with actual convictions lower still.

The Empire Files: The Empire's Border Part I - A Policy of Death

An excellent article worth reading in full:

Third Way Misleads Hard in a Weak Effort to Discredit Social Security Expansion

Third Way, the self-appointed sentries holding back the barbarians of progressivism from the gates of the Democratic Party, issued a new paper three days before the Iowa caucus, with the novel suggestion that Bernie Sanders’ proposal to expand Social Security – the consensus position among the party rank-and-file and a strong majority of the Congressional Democratic caucus – is “not progressive,” because more of its expanded benefits pass on to the rich.

This new tactic among Rubinite Democrats (Third Way’s funders include hedge fund managers Dan Loeb and Derek Kaufman, and their board features dozens of investment bankers and CEOs) seeks to capitalize on the Democratic base’s passions about the flow of economic growth upward to the 1%. And it will probably fool a few folks in the interim. But nobody is a more dishonest broker for that message than Third Way. Plus, the claim isn’t only ham-handed and ahistorical, it’s factually inaccurate.

Nancy Altman of Social Security Works took a hatchet to this over the weekend. First, she points out that Third Way has had it in for Social Security for years:

In a 2011 Politico column, “Progressives: Wise Up,” Third Way’s president and vice president for policy lectured advocates for Social Security to stop fighting a Grand Bargain that would have cut Social Security’s modest benefits – cuts that are opposed by 93.8 percent of Americans.

In 2013, the duo took to the Wall Street Journal where they attacked Senator Elizabeth Warren for proposing to expand Social Security as a solution to the nation’s looming retirement income crisis. This time, they lectured not just progressives; they warned the entire Democratic Party not to “follow Sen. Warren…over the populist cliff.” Since Senator Warren was standing with the 90 percent of Democrats (and 73 percent of Republicans) who want to increase Social Security benefits, it was no surprise that Third Way admitted that they represented, “no people,” beholden only to their wealthy paymasters.

It’s hard to accept that the same group who tried to browbeat liberals into cutting Social Security benefits, particularly for poor women – who would have borne the brunt of the changes to the Consumer Price Index calculation – have a genuine interest in the relative fairness of any expansion. But having lost a frontal assault on the program, Third Way is now retreating to a bank-shot – raise doubts about the progressivity of new benefits to taint the entire concept.

Barclays and Credit Suisse pay biggest ever fines for dark pool trading

Barclays and Credit Suisse has been fined $154m (£108m) following an investigation into the banks’ “dark pools” private trading exchanges exploited by “predatory, high-frequency traders” at the expense of the bank’s traditonal customers.

Eric Schneiderman, attorney general of New York state, said the fines were a “major victory in the fight to combat fraud in dark pool trading” and would help protect investors from “the most aggressive and predatory high-speed traders”. ...

Dark pools are private exchanges for trading stocks and bonds, but unlike traditional markets there are no public prices and trades can be carried out in secret which can favour high speed traders.

Schneiderman said Barclays had told its dark pool clients that it monitored for high-speed trading, but it didn’t and it actually favoured high-speed traders. This meant that traditional players thought they were only up against other traditional traders when actually they were facing “the most aggressive and predatory high-speed traders,” he said.

Barclays and Credit Suisse each made “false statements and omissions in connection with the marketing of their respective dark pools and other high-speed electronic equities trading services,” Schneiderman said in his news release.

Too bad this great transfer of wealth only happens at the cost of more hydrocarbons being pumped out of the ground and burnt. Woohoo, we can all die richer!

BofA: The oil crash is kicking off one of the largest wealth transfers in human history

Economists are still hotly debating whether the oil crash has been a net positive for advanced economies.

Optimists argue that cheap oil is a good thing for consumers and commodity-sensitive businesses, while pessimists point to the hit to energy-related investment and possible spillover into the financial system.

A new note from Francisco Blanch at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, however, puts the oil move into a much bigger perspective, arguing that a sustained price plunge "will push back $3 trillion a year from oil producers to global consumers, setting the stage for one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history." ...

Says Blanch: "Alternatively in a lower oil price scenario, e.g. if prices were to average just $40 over the next five years which is close to the current forward curve, demand would grow by 1.5 million barrels per day, which is 0.3 above our base case. Finally, at $20 oil demand would grow by an explosive by 1.7 per year on average, 0.5 above the base case, on our estimates." ...

After years of stagnation, vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. clearly ticked higher in 2015.

Combine these trends with the decline in, say, Saudi Arabia's foreign exchange reserves, or the stock price of any oil company, and you can see the dramatic wealth shifts now taking place in the world.

Nestlé admits slavery in Thailand while fighting child labour lawsuit in Ivory Coast

Last November Nestlé, the world’s largest foodmaker and one of the most recognisable household brands, went public with the news it had found forced labour in its supply chains in Thailand and that its customers were buying products tainted with the blood and sweat of poor, unpaid and abused migrant workers.

By independently disclosing that Nestlé customers had unwittingly bought products contaminated by the very worst labour abuses, the company said it was moving into a new era of self-policing of its own supply chains. ...

Nestlé is one of the companies facing legal action in the US. Last week the company, along with Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, failed in its bid to get the US Supreme Court to throw out a lawsuit seeking to hold them liable for the alleged use of child slaves in cocoa farming in the Ivory Coast.

This puts the company in the unfortunate position of disclosing slavery in one part of its operations, while at the same time fighting through the courts to fend off accusations that it exists in another – more profitable – part of its business.

Andrew Wallis, chief executive of Unseen UK, an anti-trafficking charity advocating for more supply chain accountability, said: “For me there is a big issue with one part of Nestlé saying, ‘OK we have been dragged along with everyone else to face the issue of slavery in Thailand and so let’s take the initiative and do something about it’, and at the same time fighting tooth and nail through the courts to avoid charges of child slavery in its core operations in the Ivory Coast.”

He argues that Nestlé’s self-reporting could also be seen as a tactic to head off or deflate other pending civil litigation suits.

Obama's true heir is Hillary Clinton. But that is a blessing for Bernie Sanders

Clinton really is the one carrying on Obama’s legacy – and it’s a legacy of which Sanders should want no part.

How can Sanders frame himself as Obama’s heir? And why would he want to? After all, his campaign is premised on responding to the crisis of the middle class in an era of skyrocketing inequality – a problem that has only deepened over the past eight years. ...

It might seem more understandable for Sanders to want to emulate Obama on the campaign trail, given the historic turnout of 2008, and as CNN reporters have observed, he’s borrowing both campaign logos (a rising sun) and slogans (“A Future We Can Believe In”) from Obama. But in politics, too, Obama’s legacy is problematic, and the lessons of 2008 more complex than they seemed at the time.

For the first-time voters who flocked to the polls that year, inspired by a candidate who spoke of lasting changes, the past eight years have been ones of political disappointment.

Instead of a challenge to the system that brought about the financial meltdown, they saw banks get bailouts while making few accommodations to people who lost their homes. Instead of taking steps toward economic equality, they got the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Instead of greater transparency, they got the NSA. ...

Back in 2008, Clinton presented herself as the realist’s alternative to Obama the dreamer. She’s describing herself the same way today, only Obama has turned out to be a pragmatic politician as well. Now Clinton can argue that she, like Obama, is a politician for whom a tempered realism matters more than principle in the end. ...

The problem is that this measured approach is exactly what’s led to the missed opportunities and myriad losses of the Obama presidency. Sanders should let Clinton claim Obama’s legacy: he should strike out for something new.

Iowa Progressives Weigh Clinton, Sanders as One of Whitest States Kicks Off Presidential Race

Gosh, where have we seen this sort of behavior before? Rather than calling the women who support Sanders, "bros," shouldn't they come up with another terminology, or would that be too hard?

The “Bernie Bros” Narrative: a Cheap Campaign Tactic Masquerading as Journalism and Social Activism

The concoction of the “Bernie Bro” narrative by pro-Clinton journalists has been a potent political tactic — and a journalistic disgrace. It’s intended to imply two equally false claims: (1) a refusal to march enthusiastically behind the Wall Street-enriched, multiple-war-advocating, despot-embracing Hillary Clinton is explainable not by ideology or political conviction, but largely if not exclusively by sexism: demonstrated by the fact that men, not women, support Sanders (his supporters are “bros”); and (2) Sanders supporters are uniquely abusive and misogynistic in their online behavior. Needless to say, a crucial tactical prong of this innuendo is that any attempt to refute it is itself proof of insensitivity to sexism if not sexism itself (as the accusatory reactions to this article will instantly illustrate).

It’s become such an all-purpose, handy pro-Clinton smear that even consummate, actual “bros” for whom the term was originally coined — straight guys who act with entitlement and aggression, such as Paul Krugman — are now reflexively (and unironically) applying it to anyone who speaks ill of Hillary Clinton, even when they know nothing else about the people they’re smearing, including their gender, age, or sexual orientation. Thus, a male policy analyst who criticized Sanders’ health care plan “is getting the Bernie Bro treatment,” sneered Krugman. Unfortunately for the New York Times Bro, that analyst, Charles Gaba, said in response that he’s “really not comfortable with [Krugman’s] referring to die-hard Bernie Sanders supporters as ‘Bernie Bros'” because it “implies that only college-age men support Sen. Sanders, which obviously isn’t the case.”

t is indeed “obviously not the case.” There are literally millions of women who support Sanders over Clinton. A new Iowa poll yesterday shows Sanders with a 15-point lead over Clinton among women under 45, while one-third of Iowa women over 45 support him. A USA Today/Rock the Vote poll from two weeks ago found Sanders nationally “with a 19-point lead over front-runner Hillary Clinton, 50 percent to 31 percent, among Democratic and independent women ages 18 to 34.” One has to be willing to belittle the views and erase the existence of a huge number of American women to wield this “Bernie Bro” smear.

Green Party on Sanders' Health Care Plan

Iowa caucus results are as unpredictable as this bizarre election season

As Iowans gather at caucus sites on Monday night to be the first people in the United States to help pick the next president, a blizzard will barrel over the plains. By the next morning, it will have dumped several inches of snow on the state as it heads north-west, leaving a trail of chaos and disruption.

This remains about the only clear prediction that anyone can make about what Iowa will look and feel like come Tuesday. This American primary season has been too volatile, dissentious and just plain eccentric for any over-confident forecast prior to the event.

The old rules, regarding financing, policy, gaffes, accuracy and media management, have ceased to apply. In normal times, for a candidate to call himself a ‘socialist’, skip the final debate, denigrate entire religious and national groups or have her emails the subject of a federal inquiry would damage, if not destroy, that candidate’s prospects. An endorsement by Iowa’s main paper, the Des Moines Register, was once universally regarded as a coveted prize; today, some see its support of Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio as a liability that paints them as establishment candidates.

US to stop approving oil fracking off California coast until review is complete

The federal government has agreed to stop approving oil fracking off the California coast until it studies whether the practice is safe for the environment, according to legal settlements filed Friday.

Separate deals reached with a pair of environmental organizations require the Department of the Interior to review whether well techniques such as using acid or hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to stimulate offshore well production threatens water quality and marine life.

The practices have been conducted for years in federal waters and were revealed when the Environmental Defense Center filed Freedom of Information Act requests, the organizations said.

“These practices are currently being conducted under decades-old plans with out-of-date or nonexistent environmental analysis,” said Brian Segee, an attorney for the Environmental Defense Center.

The agreements in Los Angeles federal court apply to operations off Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, where companies such as ExxonMobil operate platforms.

Bernie Sanders Says No to Fracked Oil Pipeline in Iowa, Will It Help Him in Today's Caucus?

Key Issue Ignored by Presidential Candidates: Food

"Why don't candidates talk about food?"

That's a question asked by the Des Moines Register's editorial board this weekend, who also pointed out that the "first-in-the nation caucuses are held in one of the world's great agricultural centers."

It should be a major issue for presidential candidates, the Register says, because

What we eat and how it’s produced are not jokes. These questions involve many of the nation’s major issues — including health care costs and quality, the federal debt, pollution, jobs and immigration — and they require leadership on the presidential level.

The editorial also points to research showing that Americans want to change the food system, have broad support for government incentives to encourage sustainable farming practices, and express strong concern that one-third of children today will develop type-2 diabetes. The editorial also notes the "wave of consolidation is sweeping through agriculture" that "will have ramifications throughout the food chain," such as the proposed Dow/DuPoint merger.

Republicans reject climate change fears despite rebukes from scientists

Last week, Fox News moderators asked only one question relevant to climate change, about whether Florida senator Marco Rubio would support regulation to lower emissions. Rubio said he would not: “I do not believe that we have to destroy our economy in order to protect our environment.”

On the trail, former Florida governor Jeb Bush interjected to say the free market would resolve climate change before government could.

“There’s someone in a garage somewhere,” he said, “parochially I hope it’s in Miami, that’s going to have a clue, to have an answer to this.” ...

Rubio and Cruz have both said they would pull the US out of the historic Paris climate accords, and with Bush and New Jersey governor Chris Christie said they oppose any measures that would “destroy” the economy or stifle business. Donald Trump, Bush and John Kasich have mocked the Paris summit as an unnecessary diversion. ...

Doing nothing also has its consequences, as south Florida businesses have tried to remind Republicans. By exacerbating flooding, water and energy crises and mass migration, climate change threatens to devastate the world economy – US gas industry included – according to a survey of 750 economists, conducted last year.

Zombie Lies – Environmental Edition

Also of Interest

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

How many smears on Sanders supporters can we debunk in one week?

Another Hillary Falsehood: She Didn’t Tell Banks to “Cut it Out” Pre Crisis; She Blamed Homeowners

The Bernie Campaign: The Democratic Party’s Biggest Insurrection in Decades

Democracy of the Billionaires

'An alternative exists': the US citizens who vowed to flee to Canada – and did

Cheap cab ride? You must have missed Uber’s true cost

UN Fiddles While Palestine Burns

Western Warmongers Have All the Answers, and They're All Wrong

Facing Execution at 72, Georgia’s Oldest Death Row Inmate Exposes Death Penalty’s Racist Roots

1970s anti-war student art

A Little Night Music

Lil' Son Jackson - Rockin' and Rollin' (Rock Me Baby)

Lil' Son Jackson - Cairo Blues

Lil' Son Jackson - Freedom Train Blues

Lil' Son Jackson - Blues Come To Texas

Lil Son Jackson - Groundhog Blues

Lil Son Jackson - Bad Whiskey And Bad Women

Lil' Son Jackson - Red River Blues