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This evening's music features jazz saxophone player Lester Young. Enjoy!

"The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods [...] are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. ... Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan."

-- The Daily Dish

News and Opinion

The Shadow of Nazism Over US Torture Policy

All you have to do is read the CIA’s Torture Report and then compare notes with the criminal Nazi war policies: the practice of torture, illegal invasions, presidential assassinations of individuals that the U.S. President chooses to kill, including U.S. citizens, without trial, due process or burden of proof, psychological warfare, intrusive and illegal surveillance of national and international phone calls, e-mails, text communication, computers, homes, extraordinary rendition i.e. illegal kidnappings, locking prisoners up as “enemy combatants,” which means that they are denied all judicial and legal rights, prosecutions of ethical journalists/whistle-blowers, secret ciablack cells in which the same torture techniques that were used on Holocaust victims were-are applied to detainees, and worst of all: medical experimentation on human beings, “detainees,” to see how much pain and suffering they can endure. Many were murdered from the intensified torture practices.

As Mike Lofgren explained in his recent article “The Implication of the Torture Report“:

“Chillingly, ‘enhanced interrogation’ is a literal translation of the German verschärfte Vernehmung, a term introduced by a Gestapo directive of June 12, 1942, to describe permissible methods of interrogating prisoners. Post-World War II war crimes tribunals judged the techniques described in the directive—techniques strikingly similar to those employed six decades later by the cia—to be war crimes. It should also be noted that a Japanese sergeant at Changi Prison in Singapore was sentenced to 20 years at hard labor after World War II for waterboarding prisoners.”

... But here’s the worst of it. Historians have often asked the question: How could the German people allow someone like Hitler to rise to power? Why did they eagerly applaud Hitler’s racist speeches of hate and bigotry like sheep? Someday, historians will ask the same questions about the American people and their government concerning U.S. torture prisons at Abu Graib and Guantánamo Bay. Will Americans care? Will they be outraged that these crimes against humanity were committed in their names? Will they strongly demand an end to the cia-wars? Inevitably, I fear the answer to those questions. And that, perhaps, is the most disturbing revelation of all.

The Battle for Aleppo Shows That US Strategy in Syria Is in Tatters

The countryside north of Aleppo, Syria's largest city, is the latest crucial battlefield in the Syrian civil war — and it could also become the place where the United States' strategy to combat the so-called Islamic State in Syria falls apart.

The US-led coalition had been backing Aleppo rebels who were trying to capture the last stretch of border with Turkey controlled by the Islamic State, but those rebels were left stranded after a new offensive by Syrian regime forces earlier this month cut them off from other rebel areas. Now the Kurdish forces that have been the United States' closest allies in the fight against the Islamic State have seized the opportunity to attack these US-backed rebels, in an attempt to seize what's left of the territory they control in north Aleppo.

The fight in north Aleppo has also turned into a heated proxy battle between Russia and Turkey, who are not firing directly on each other but are going after each others' Syrian allies. The Kurds and their allies, who are enemies of Turkey, are advancing thanks to the same overwhelming Russian airstrikes that enabled the regime's recent gains. Turkey started shelling Kurdish positions inside Aleppo on Saturday, but the Kurds, apparently undeterred, have continued to seize new rebel-held towns.

The Islamic State, meanwhile, seems to be sitting back and watching its enemies tear each other apart.

A State Department official told VICE News on Sunday that the United States had reached out to both Turkey and the Kurdish units' political wing to urge them not to escalate tensions. So far American entreaties seem to have had little impact.

US Air Strike Hits Syrian Bakery, Kills 15 Civilians

An early dawn US air raid against the Syrian city of Shadadi ended with airstrikes hitting the city’s bakery, and killing 15 civilians who were lining up outside to buy bread just before the bakery opened, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. ...

It was unclear why the bakery was attacked, and the US isn’t commenting yet, though historically when the US attacks ISIS-held towns they focus on places with a lot of people, assuming they’re “command” structures. In this case, it was a purely civilian target.

This is the latest in a growing number of civilian deaths in attacks on ISIS-held towns, as the US-led coalition as well as the Russian military both pick up their air war against northern Syria. Though the US regularly faults Russia over the civilians killed in their strikes, they rarely touch on the substantial civilian toll of their own strikes.

Saudi Plans for Syria Ground Invasion: Bluff or a Disaster in the Making?

Erdogan calls the Russians "brutal." There seem to be a lot of pots calling kettles black these days.

Turkey, Saudis Seek Backing for Syria Invasion

Having apparently gotten Saudi Arabia on board with the idea, Turkey is now seeking broader international support for the idea of a ground invasion into northern Syria, arguing that it’s necessary to stop the “brutal Russians” and to beat back the Kurds from the border. ...

Though Erdogan insists the Saudis and some unnamed EU nations are on board, it’s not clear to what extent that’s the case, as the Saudis and Russians are in the midst of key economic efforts, and probably don’t want to suddenly be at war with one another. Turkey’s government, by contrast, seems to be itching for a war with Russia.

Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception

If the tentative agreement on a Syrian ceasefire negotiated by the United States and Russia falls apart before it can be implemented, the reason will be the Obama administration’s insistence that Russian airstrikes are targeting “legitimate opposition groups.”

That is how Secretary of State John Kerry defined the issue on Saturday, repeating a propaganda theme that began, in a different form, as soon as the Russian air offensive in Syria began in late September of 2015. The Obama administration portrayed the Russian campaign in support of Syrian operations as hitting “moderate” opposition forces, suggesting that only strikes against ISIS would be legitimate.

Now Kerry insists that the “legitimate” armed organizations being hit by Russian airstrikes are separate from ISIS and Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the Nusra Front, both organizationally and physically. But the reality on the ground in Idlib and Aleppo provinces is that there is no such separation.

Information from a wide range of sources, including some of the groups that the United States has been explicitly supporting, makes it clear that every armed anti-Assad organization unit in those provinces is engaged in a military system controlled by Nusra. All of them fight alongside the Nusra Front and coordinate their military activities with it. ...

The official US posture on the current offensive in the Aleppo theater and the proposed ceasefire obscures the fact that a successful Russian-Syrian operation would make it impossible for the external states, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, to resupply the Nusra Front and Ahrar al Sham and thus end the military threat to the Syrian government as well as the possibility of Al Qaeda’s seizure of power in Damascus. ...

The Obama administration certainly understands that fact and has already privately adjusted its diplomatic strategy to take into account the likelihood that the Nusra Front will now be substantially weakened. But it cannot acknowledge any of that publicly because such a recognition would infuriate many hardliners in Washington who still demand “regime change” in Damascus whatever the risks.

Operation Sophia: Wikileaks reveals EU military plan to stop refugee influx

Beijing places missile launchers on disputed South China Sea island

China has placed surface-to-air missile equipment on one of the disputed islands in the South China Sea, newly published satellite images appear to show.

Tensions in the region could rise after two batteries of eight missile launchers and a radar system were deployed to Woody Island in the past week according to images taken by the private company ImageSat International.

The missile move has been confirmed by Taiwan which also claims sovereignty of the island.

The US spent millions planning an elaborate cyberattack on Iran

In the early days of President Obama’s administration, thousands of American military and intelligence officers worked to develop a plan that could feasibly take down critical infrastructure in Iran, according to a new documentary called Zero Days, which premieres tomorrow. The plan was codenamed Nitro Zeus, and if it had ever been deployed, it would have taken down parts of Iran’s civilian infrastructure, including its power grid, phone lines, and air defenses. The plan cost tens of millions of dollars to design and involved the placement of electronic implants in Iranian computer networks, in case it were ever decided to be implemented.

The New York Times and BuzzFeed News independently investigated the documentary’s claims. The reports claim Nitro Zeus was created as a contingency plan if the US / Iran nuclear negotiations never came to fruition; the US worried Israel would attack Iran’s nuclear arsenal and drag the US into a conflict. The plan was intended to render a conventional conflict unnecessary, or at least minimize it.

[Render a conventional conflict unnecessary? Sounds like a dubious claim to me. - js]

Israel’s rash behavior blew operation to sabotage Iran’s computers, US officials say

Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of both the CIA and the NSA, claims the goal of a potential Israeli strike on Iran would be to drag the US into war.

Hayden made the remarks in a documentary film premiering this week at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film also quotes other sources in the US intelligence community who accuse Israel of disrupting a joint covert operation to sabotage computers used in Iran’s nuclear program by acting rashly and in opposition to agreed-upon plans. As a result, hundreds of millions of dollars that were invested in the operation went to waste.

The film, Zero Days, was directed by Alex Gibney, whose film Taxi to the Dark Side won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2008. ...

US Vice President Joe Biden was quoted in the film as saying in a meeting that the Israelis “changed the code” of the [Stuxnet] virus’s software. As a result, in opposition to the plan, the virus spread from nuclear program computers to many other computers in Iran, and from there, to computers around the world, even harming the computers of American companies. The unplanned spread of the virus led to the exposing of the operation and enabled the Iranians, with the help of information security experts from Belarus and Russia, to invent a “vaccine” for their computers to better defend the nuclear program. ...

“Ironically,” it is said in the film, “the secret formula for writing the code for the virus software fell into the hands of Russia and Iran – the country against which it was developed.”

France Extends Freedom-Threatening State of Emergency

Despite widespread criticism over its threats to fundamental rights, French lawmakers on Tuesday voted to extend the state of emergency for an additional three months.

The 212 to 31 vote by the National Assembly extends the powers, imposed following the November terrorist attacks, until May 26.

The powers afforded by the state of emergency allow, as the New York Times reports, "police to conduct raids of homes, businesses, associations and places of worship without judicial review and at any time. The police can place people under house arrest even if they do not have sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to detain or charge them."

"Our country is confronted with a terrorist threat more serious than any in our history," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told lawmakers Tuesday.

Yet, as the Times adds, the new powers have not been effective. "Less than 1 percent of raids have resulted in new terrorism investigations, the Interior Ministry acknowledges."

'Watershed Moment for Privacy' as Apple Refuses FBI Order to Create iPhone Backdoor

Apple president Tim Cook calls government demand 'chilling,' argues that it threatens the security and rights of people worldwide

Technology behemoth Apple is taking a hard stand against the U.S. government in a case it says could set a dangerous precedent for government overreach after a federal court ruled Tuesday that the company must assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and break into an iPhone recovered from one of the suspected San Bernardino shooters.

In an open letter posted online, Apple president Tim Cook states that the company opposes the court order (pdf), which essentially demands that Apple build a "backdoor to the iPhone." Such a move, Cook says, not only "threatens the security of our customers" but would have "implications far beyond the legal case at hand."

"The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers—including tens of millions of American citizens—from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals," he continues. "We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack."

What's more, he argues that the order signals a potentially dangerous expansion of the FBI's authority.

"The implications of the government’s demands are chilling," Cook adds. "If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge."

Indeed, technology publication Gizmodo said this dispute "could prove to be a watershed moment for privacy in the U.S."

The Supreme Court and the Non-Violent Settling of Elite Disputes

Cliven Bundy denied bail in Oregon following 2014 Nevada standoff

Cliven Bundy was denied bail on Tuesday at US district court in Portland, Oregon, where he is being held in connection with a 2014 standoff between armed militia and federal officers at his ranch in Nevada.

“If he’s released and goes back to his ranch, that’s likely the last the court will see of him,” judge Janice Stewart said, finding Bundy a danger to the community and a flight risk. She said that despite his lack of a criminal history, his refusal to pay grazing fees going back nearly two decades and his fomenting of the armed standoff made it clear that Bundy has little interest in complying with federal court orders. ...

Bundy is accused of recruiting hundreds of supporters to his ranch in 2014, where the US bureau of land management was making arrangements for his cattle to be impounded due to unpaid grazing fees and fines dating back to 1998.

Student debt protests planned after armed marshals arrest man for old loans

Seven US marshals armed with automatic weapons turned up at Paul Aker’s home in Houston, Texas, last week to arrest him over a $1,500 student loan debt dating back to 1987. ...

Aker said he was arrested, shackled and taken to federal court. “I was told: ‘You owe $1,500.’ I just couldn’t believe it,” he told Fox 26. “I was taken before a judge surrounded by seven marshals.” ...

The reports come as students and graduates are preparing for a series of meetings on the Capitol demanding action over escalating student debt. Students from Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college company that went bankrupt last year, will on Wednesday be joined by students from other for-profit colleges including the Art Institutes, ITT Tech, and the University of Phoenix in a “fight back against educational debt” protest.

Last year, 15 former Corinthian students launched the nation’s first student debt strike, refusing to pay back loans incurred to attend for-profit Corinthian Colleges.

Oil loses nearly 4 percent as hopes over Saudi, Russia deal fade

Brent oil fell almost 4 percent on Tuesday, erasing early gains after top producers Russia and Saudi Arabia dashed expectations of an outright supply cut by agreeing only to freeze output if other big exporters joined them.

Benchmark Brent prices jumped briefly through $35 a barrel after Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to keep output at January levels, in what could be the first joint OPEC and non-OPEC deal in 15 years. ...

Oil prices have fallen by more than 70 percent in the past 20 months, driven down by near-record production both from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers, such as Russia.

Tuesday's early rally ran out of steam as investors weighed the chances of an output freeze while Iran remained absent from the talks and determined to raise production. Sources familiar with Iranian thinking on supply said Tehran would be willing to consider a freeze once its production had reached pre-sanctions levels.

Architect of 2008 bailout says US banks still pose 'nuclear' threat to economy

America’s biggest banks present a “nuclear” threat to the US economy and should be broken up, a Federal Reserve policymaker and architect of the 2008 banking bailout said Tuesday.

Neel Kashkari, the head of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, said the US’s biggest banks were still “too big too fail” and Congress should consider “bold transformational solutions to solve this problem once and for all”.

“I believe the biggest banks are still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy,” Kashkari said in his first public speech since becoming a Fed policymaker in January. “A very crude analogy is that of a nuclear reactor. The cost to society of letting a reactor melt down is astronomical. Given that cost, governments will do whatever they can to stabilize the reactor before they lose control.”

Kashkari, who is best known for organising the $700bn government-funded bank bailout in 2008, said “serious consideration” should be given to “breaking up large banks into smaller, less connected, less important entities”. Another solution, he said, was to turn the big banks into public utilities by “forcing them to hold so much capital that they virtually can’t fail”.

He said existing measures under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law designed to prevent another banking system collapse do not go far enough and warned that “we won’t see the next crisis coming”.

From an interesting interview with Michael Hudson:

Michael Hudson: The Federal Reserve and the Global Fracture

The Federal Reserve supports the status quo. It would not want to create a crisis before the election. Today it is part of the Democratic Party’s re-election campaign, and its job is to serve Hillary Clinton’s campaign contributors on Wall Street. It is trying to spur recovery by resuming its Bubble Economy subsidy for Wall Street, not by supporting the industrial economy. What the economy needs is a debt writedown, not more debt leveraging such as Quantitative Easing has aimed to promote. But the Fed is in a state of denial that the U.S. and European economies are plagued by debt deflation.

The Fed uses only one policy: influencing interest rates by creating bank reserves at low give-away charges. It enables banks too make easy gains simply by borrowing from it and leaving the money on deposit to earn interest (which has been paid since the 2008 crisis to help subsidize the banks, mainly the largest ones). The effect is to fund the asset markets – bonds, stocks and real estate – not the economy at large. Banks also are heavy arbitrage players in foreign exchange markets. But this doesn’t help the economy recover, any more than the ZIRP (Zero Interest-Rate Policy) since 2001 has done for Japan. Financial markets are the liabilities side of the economy’s balance sheet, not the asset side.

The last thing either U.S. party wants is for the election to focus on this policy failure. The Fed, Treasury and Justice Department will be just as pro-Wall Street under Hillary. There would be no prosecutions of bank fraud, there would be another bank-friendly Attorney General, and a willingness to subsidize banks now that the Dodd-Frank bank reform has been diluted from what it originally promised to be.

Two Former U.S. Presidents Simultaneously Advocate for a Close Family Member as the Next U.S. President

Americans love to mock the British for choosing — in the 21st century — to live under a monarchy and honor the hereditary succession of a royal family. I enthusiastically participate in that derision. Few concepts are as antithetical to reason and democratic liberty as anointing families that are vested with an entitlement to wield power through dynasty and lineage.

The U.S. officially has no formal royal families, but clearly loves dynastic political power. As the U.S. becomes increasingly oligarchical — all of its institutions, including its political ones, dominated by a tiny number of extremely rich families — it is natural that all forms of hereditary power will flourish. There are still examples of people from backgrounds devoid of family wealth or influence attaining political power — Barack Obama certainly qualifies — but it’s virtually impossible for them to succeed without the overwhelming support of those oligarchical circles.

Dynastic power is not a new phenomenon in the U.S., but this past week featured a particularly vivid illustration of how potent it is. The two U.S. presidents prior to President Obama — Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — made appearances on the campaign trail to urge Americans to elect their favorite candidate, which, in both cases, happens to be a close family member.

Amazing archival video appears to show the arrest of a young Bernie Sanders as a student activist in Chicago

On August 5, 1963, Jerry Temaner was a young filmmaker on location of the growing protest movement emerging in Chicago. On the South Side of the city, in a community called Englewood, black families were coming together to boycott the proposed "construction" of a new school on the corner of 73rd & Lowe. The plan, which sounds just as ridiculous today as it likely did 53 years ago, was to build the entire school out of a collection of mobile homes called Willis Wagons.

As expected, families in the community weren't having it and the protests on the proposed site where the mobile homes would be placed were fierce. Of course, nobody there had any idea that one of the young men in their midst, protesting the racism among schools and housing on the South Side, was a man who would one day run for President, Bernie Sanders. ...

Now, it appears obscure archival footage filmed on that very day by Temaner, one of the co-founders of Kartemquin Films, a legendary documentary film company in Chicago, shows the arrest of a young Bernie Sanders.

This Superdelegate Just Confirmed Sanders Supporters’ Worst Fears

At least one Democratic superdelegate isn’t afraid to thwart the will of the people.

Patrick Leahy, Vermont’s senior U.S. Senator, is planning to use his superdelegate vote at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to support Hillary Clinton, regardless of who voters from his state pick in the primary.

As of right now, Leahy would be solidly in the minority of Vermont voters. According to the latest polling results from ISideWith.com, Bernie Sanders has 60 percent support with over 11,000 votes cast for both Democratic and Republican candidates. Donald Trump comes in a distant second with 11 percent support, and Hillary Clinton comes in behind Trump with a mere 10 percent of the vote.

The Deepening Economic Crash and the 2016 Election

If this bizarre election year needed one thing twist, it is now likely to play out against a deepening economic crisis. Advantage: Trump and Sanders.

The global economy is weakening, due to a perfect storm of a cratering economy in China, a crash of oil prices, slower growth in the Third World and a realization by central banks that they can't fix what's broken. There is a lot of whistling past the graveyard that the U.S. can somehow continue our (rather tepid) recovery, but in a global economy, no country is an island.

Fears of a recession push the stock market downward; then the wipeout of stock values helps bring that recession nearer. (Who said markets were rational?)

Consumers benefit for now from the cheaper gas prices at the pump. But with wage growth minimal, and real careers giving way to a succession of on-demand "gig" jobs, that's small comfort.

As the election year wears on, you can expect Republicans to blame the economic slide on the Obama Administration and the Democrats. You can expect Hillary Clinton to intensify her attacks on Bernie Sanders as the candidate of tax increases and big government. And you can expect the economic anxiety that drives the Trump and Sanders campaigns only to grow.

Air Pollution Kills 5.5 Million People a Year — Over Half of Them in China, India

Air pollution caused more than 5.5 million premature deaths in 2013, with more than half of those occurring in China and India, according to a new study, and pollution mortalities are expected to continue rising.

Researchers found that poor air quality in China and India — the world's fastest growing economies — killed 1.6 million and 1.4 million people in those nations, respectively. Emissions from power plants, automobiles, industrial manufacturing, and inefficient heating systems and stoves have become a leading cause of death and disease worldwide, even as air pollution has decreased in high-income countries.

"Air pollution ranks fourth globally as a risk factor for death in the world," Michael Brauer, a public health researcher at the University of British Columbia, said. "It's one of the big ones."

El Niño is causing global food crisis, UN warns

Severe droughts and floods triggered by one of the strongest El Niño weather events ever recorded have left nearly 100 million people in southern Africa, Asia and Latin America facing food and water shortages and vulnerable to diseases including Zika, UN bodies, international aid agencies and governments have said.

New figures from the UN’s World Food Programme say 40 million people in rural areas and 9 million in urban centres who live in the drought-affected parts of Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi and Swaziland will need food assistance in the next year.

In addition, 10 million people are said by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) to need food in Ethiopia (pdf), and 2.8 million need assistance in Guatemala and Honduras.

Millions more people in Asia and the Pacific regions have already been affected by heatwaves, water shortages and forest fires since El Niño conditions started in mid-2015, says Ocha in a new briefing paper, which forecasts that harvests will continue to be affected worldwide throughout 2016.

Landmark Survey Shows For-Profit Water is a Risky Rip-Off

With Flint's water supply still tainted and undrinkable, one advocacy group is spotlighting the benefits of publicly owned, locally managed water systems, which it says could help ensure that the Michigan health crisis doesn't repeat itself across the country.

In a new survey (pdf), the largest of its kind, Food & Water Watch (FWW) documents how the dominant trend in the U.S. is toward public ownership of water and sewer systems, while showing that the alternative—large, for-profit, privately owned systems—are often more expensive and less reliable. 

Indeed, FWW's analysis finds that nearly nine out of 10 people in the country receive their water service from a publicly owned utility, leading the advocacy organization to propose establishing a steady, dedicated source of federal funding for such water systems that could pay for the replacement of lead pipes in schools and homes and rehabilitate aging water systems across the country.

"From emergency management in Michigan to failed privatization experiments across the country, corporate influence has failed U.S. water systems," said FWW executive director Wenonah Hauter on Tuesday. ...

Meanwhile, "many of our community water systems are over 100 years old, and in desperate need of repair," she added. "Rather than running water systems like businesses, or worse, handing them over to corporations, we need increased federal investment in municipal water. With this federal funding, we can help avoid future infrastructure-related catastrophes." ...

According to FWW, federal contributions to water utility improvement projects peaked in 1977 at 63 percent of what was needed, dropped to record lows of 7 percent in 2006, and after a slight boost to 12 percent in 2010, fell back to 9 percent in 2014. From 1977 to 2014, federal funding for water utilities fell 74 percent after accounting for inflation. President Obama's most recent proposed budget cuts funding to the State Revolving Funds for water infrastructure by another 11 percent.

These numbers make communities more vulnerable to privatization, the organization argues.

Coalition of US states pledge to accelerate renewable energy efforts

A bipartisan group of governors from 17 states has pledged to accelerate their efforts to create a green economy in the US by boosting renewables, building better electricity grids and cutting emissions from transport.

An accord signed by the governors states that the US must “embrace a bold vision of the nation’s energy future” by reducing emissions, transitioning to clean energy sources and ensuring that infrastructure isn’t risked by extreme weather events such as floods and wildfires.

The agreement sets out commitments to expand renewable energy and energy efficiency and integrate solar and wind generation into electricity grids. These grids will be “modernized”, the accord states, to improve energy reliability. ...

The governors are from California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. These states are home to around 40% of the US population.

Also of Interest

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

The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people

Why Not Being Friends With A War Criminal Like Henry Kissinger Matters

Thomas Piketty on the rise of Bernie Sanders: the US enters a new political era

The Supreme Court Has Murdered The US Constitution

Former Goldman Sachs’ Guy Is Channeling Bernie Sanders

A Little Night Music

Lester Young - Blues for Greasy

Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio - These Foolish Things

Lester Young - Mean To Me

Lester Young & Coleman Hawkins - Jumpin' with the Synphony Sid

Billie Holiday w/Lester Young - Fine And Mellow

Count Basie w/Lester Young - Lester Leaps In

Lester Young - Blue Lester