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This evening's music features early boogie woogie piano player and singer Cripple Clarence Lofton. Enjoy!

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security… This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.”

-- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free

News and Opinion

DoJ moves to prevent CIA official from detailing role in Bush-era torture

Donald Trump’s justice department has indicated it will seek to prevent the new deputy CIA director from telling a court about her role in Bush-era torture.

In a Wednesday filing in a federal court in Washington state, a team of US attorneys and justice department officials said the government “anticipates asserting the state secrets privilege” to prevent Gina Haspel from being deposed by two former CIA contractor psychologists.

The psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, are battling a lawsuit by representatives for four men who seek to hold them liable for torture they experienced in secret CIA prisons. Mitchell and Jessen designed for the CIA the so-called “enhanced interrogation” program that three of the men endured and which killed one of them.

As part of their defense, Mitchell and Jessen are seeking depositions from several former CIA officials, in order to claim that their actions ought to be immunized because they were working in service of the US government.

Haspel, a career CIA officer whom Trump selected as deputy director on 2 February, is among them. Haspel has been linked to torture at a CIA black site in Thailand where Mitchell and Jessen’s first torture test case, a man known as Abu Zubaydah, was waterboarded 83 times.

Years later, Haspel implemented an order by her then boss, Jose Rodriguez, to destroy videotapes of torture at the black site, an act confirmed recently by the former acting CIA director Michael Morell, who cleared Haspel of “any wrongdoing” in the tapes destruction.

CIA Cables Detail Its New Deputy Director’s Role in Torture

In August of 2002, interrogators at a secret CIA-run prison in Thailand set out to break a Palestinian man they believed was one of al-Qaida’s top leaders.

As the CIA’s video cameras rolled, security guards shackled Abu Zubaydah to a gurney and interrogators poured water over his mouth and nose until he began to suffocate. They slammed him against a wall, confined him for hours in a coffin-like box, and deprived him of sleep.

The 31-year-old Zubaydah begged for mercy, saying that he knew nothing about the terror group’s future plans. The CIA official in charge, known in agency lingo as the “chief of base,” mocked his complaints, accusing Zubaydah of faking symptoms of psychological breakdown. The torture continued.

When questions began to swirl about the Bush administration’s use of the “black sites,” and program of “enhanced interrogation,” the chief of base began pushing to have the tapes destroyed. She accomplished her mission years later when she rose to a senior position at CIA headquarters and drafted an order to destroy the evidence, which was still locked in a CIA safe at the American embassy in Thailand. Her boss, the head of the agency’s counterterrorism center, signed the order to feed the 92 tapes into a giant shredder.

By then, it was clear that CIA analysts were wrong when they had identified Zubaydah as the number three or four in al-Qaida after Osama bin Laden. The waterboarding failed to elicit valuable intelligence not because he was holding back, but because he was not a member of al-Qaida, and had no knowledge of any plots against the United States.

The chief of base’s role in this tale of pointless brutality and evidence destruction was a footnote to history — until earlier this month, when President Trump named her deputy director of the CIA. ...

ProPublica has combed through recently declassified documents, including CIA cables and Zubaydah’s own account of what he endured, and books by officials involved in the CIA’s interrogation program to assemble the fullest public account of [recently appointed deputy CIA director Gina] Haspel’s role in the [torture and] questioning of Zubaydah. The material we reviewed shows she played a far more direct role than has been understood.

The Illusion of Freedom: the Police State Is Alive and Well

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware. Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware. And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware. ...

The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism—delivered by way of sovereign citizens or radicalized Muslims—but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money. ...

If the team colors have changed from blue to red, that’s just cosmetic.

The playbook remains the same. The leopard has not changed its spots. ...

[Following are some of the issues that this article details. - js]

• Police haven’t stopped disregarding the rights of citizens.
• The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security haven’t stopped militarizing and federalizing local police.
• For-profit private prisons haven’t stopped locking up Americans and immigrants alike at taxpayer expense.
• The surveillance state hasn’t stopped spying on Americans’ communications, transactions or movements.
• The military industrial complex hasn’t stopped profiting from endless wars abroad.
• The Deep State’s shadow government hasn’t stopped calling the shots behind the scenes.
• And the American people haven’t stopped acting like gullible sheep.

Syrian peace talks to resume

UN's Syria envoy pledges 'serious try' as peace talks resume in Geneva

The UN special envoy to Syria has said he will give the latest round of peace talks that resumed in Geneva on Thursday “a serious try”, but cautioned against talking about a breakthrough in attempts to end the six-year civil war.

Staffan de Mistura convened his first morning meeting with the delegation of the Syrian government. He was expected to meet opposition figures later in the day.

In what was clearly designed as a goodwill gesture, Russia on Wednesday formally requested the Syrian air force “to silence the skies in the areas touched by the ceasefire” – a request that leaves open the question of what the Syrian air force was doing by bombing in ceasefire areas in the first place.

Speaking on Wednesday, De Mistura gave no clues as to the precise format of the talks or their duration, but it is likely that the Syrian government and the opposition High Negotiations Committee will once again take separate rooms, with UN officials shuttling between them in an effort to find common ground.

“We are not having any excessive expectations, let’s be frank,” De Mistura said at a press conference. He said he hoped to maintain momentum and that neither side would try to disrupt the talks by provoking the other. “I think it will be worthwhile. We are going to give it a serious try.”

Poll: Majority of Americans Worried About War

Nearly two-thirds of Americans, divided sharply along party lines, are worried that the United States will become engaged in a major war in the next four years, according to results from the latest NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll

A plurality, 36 percent, are very worried about the United States' becoming engaged in a major war in the next four years, while 30 percent are somewhat worried. A quarter are not too worried, and just 8 percent are not at all worried.

While the vast majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Americans say they are worried (88 percent), Republicans and Republican-leaners are much less worried. About 4 in 10 say they are worried about a major war, while 60 percent say they are not worried.

More U.S. Troops May Be Needed Against ISIS in Syria, a Top General Says

More American troops may be needed in Syria to speed the campaign against the Islamic State, the top United States commander for the Middle East said on Wednesday.

“I am very concerned about maintaining momentum,” Gen. Joseph L. Votel, the head of the United States Central Command, told reporters accompanying him on a trip to the region.

“It could be that we take on a larger burden ourselves,” he added. “That’s an option.”

The current American strategy is to press the Islamic State from multiple directions by moving ahead with the offensive to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa even as Iraqi forces carry on their operation to take western Mosul.

Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters backed by the United States are to play the principal role in seizing Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s professed caliphate.

But one option being considered is for American troops to step up their support of the fighters by firing artillery, shooting mortars, helping with logistics and significantly expanding efforts to advise them, much as the United States is doing for Iraqi forces in the battle for Mosul.

Germany to expand army and send tanks to Lithuania as Nato-Russia buildup continues

Germany is to increase its army by 5,000 soldiers, the country's defence ministry has announced, bringing the total to 198,000 in 2024, at a time when US pressure is mounting on European Nato members to raise military spending.

In January, Germany sent a battlegroup of more than 1,000 to Lithuania as part of a Nato mission to protect its eastern border with Russia in response to its annexation of Crimea and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

It will now dispatch a number of tanks and armoured vehicles to Lithuania to support its existing defence deployment in the country.

France's far-right leader climbs in polls despite arrests of two aides

Just as new opinion polls show an improving chance for Marine Le Pen to win the first round of the upcoming French presidential election, the far-right candidate is facing scandal, with two of her aides taken in Wednesday for police questioning. The authorities are investigating whether the National Front leader improperly used European Parliamentary money to pay their salaries.

Le Pen, who is running on an anti-immigration, anti-EU platform, strongly denies any impropriety, calling the allegations a “political plot.” She is just the latest presidential candidate to be embroiled in controversy as the most open election in France’s history continues to bring surprises and allegations.

These allegations came in the same week that Le Pen was criticized for her refusal to wear a headscarf to meet a senior Islamic cleric in Lebanon, as well as her proposal for closer ties to Syrian President Bashar Assad. However, her stance against the acceptance of Islamic customs is likely to win her some votes in secular France.

Trump’s First Terror Arrest: A Broke Stoner the FBI Threatened at Knifepoint

The Department of Justice proudly announced the first FBI terror arrest of the the Trump administration on Tuesday: An elaborate sting operation that snared a 25-year old Missouri man who had no terrorism contacts besides the two undercover FBI agents who paid him to buy hardware supplies they said was for a bomb — and who at one point pulled a knife on him and threatened his family.

Robert Lorenzo Hester of Columbia, Missouri, didn’t have the $20 he needed to buy the 9-volt batteries, duct tape, and roofing nails his new FBI friends wanted him to get, so they gave him the money. ... The only contact Hester had with ISIS was with the two undercover agents who suggested to him that they had connections with the group. The agents, who were in contact with him for five months, provided him with money and rides home from work as he dealt with the personal fallout of an unrelated arrest stemming from an altercation at a local grocery store. ...

While Hester clearly appears to be a troubled and volatile individual, as evidenced by the incident at the grocery store parking lot, there appears to be little to suggest that he had the wherewithal or capacity to carry out a terrorist attack without the guidance and assistance provided by the two agents. His case is similar to many others in which individuals in financial, legal or psychological distress have been befriended by undercover FBI agents or government informants and coaxed into developing a terrorist plot.

Hester agreed to go along with the agents’ plans, even when they described to him in detail their violent intentions. But that – and buying the hardware supplies requested by the agents – appears to be all he did. There is no evidence that he had ever been in touch with actual terrorists or had developed a plot of his own. Some of what he agreed to go along with in this case also came after an undercover agent had pulled out a knife and threatened to kill him and his family.

U.S. mobile internet speed lags behind more than 30 countries, study says

United States’ mobile internet speeds are slower than more than 30 countries, including South Korea, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, and most of Europe, according to a new report from wireless-mapping company OpenSignal.
Using data from the more than 1 million ordinary smartphones that have downloaded OpenSignal’s app, the company collected data speeds from 87 countries from November 2016 to January 2017.

Supreme court orders new hearing over inmate's ‘racially tainted’ death sentence

The US supreme court on Wednesday ordered a new court hearing for a black Texas prison inmate who claims improper testimony about his race tainted his death sentence. The justices voted 6-2 in favor of the inmate, Duane Buck. Buck had tried for years to get federal courts to look at his claim that his rights had been violated when jurors were told by a defense expert witness that Buck was more likely to be dangerous in the future because he is black. ...

Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion that the federal appeals court that heard Buck’s case was wrong to deny him a hearing. “There is a reasonable probability that Buck was sentenced to death in part because of his race,” Roberts said in his opinion. “This is a disturbing departure from the basic premise that our criminal law punishes people for what they do, not who they are.” ...

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. “Having settled on a desired outcome, the court bulldozes procedural obstacles and misapplies settled law to justify it,” Thomas said.

Madison, Wisc. to Pay $3.3M to Family of Tony Robinson, a Black Teenager Shot by Police

ACLU lawsuit alleges Milwaukee's police stopped thousands of black and Latino residents for no reason

The American Civil Liberties Union slapped the City of Milwaukee with a class action lawsuit on Wednesday, alleging that its police officers conduct a “high-volume, suspicionless stop-and-frisk program” that disproportionately targets black and Latino residents. The practice also fuels deep racial inequality in the city’s criminal justice system, which has incarcerated half of the black men in the city, lawyers also argue.

Filed on behalf of six black plaintiffs, the lawsuit contends that in 41 percent of the 33,343 stops that took place between Jan. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2012, Milwaukee police did not record a reasonable suspicion for conducting the stop, required by 1968 Supreme Court case Terry v. Ohio. As a result, the practice violates residents’ civil rights under the Fourth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. ...

Attorneys in the case against Milwaukee are challenging stop and frisk on the same constitutional grounds as attorneys challenging New York’s stop and frisk program. Both cases also cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1968 ruling in Terry v Ohio, which determined pedestrian stops are only constitutional if an officer can claim there was a suspicion that a person was  armed and dangerous, based on “specific and articulable facts.”

Islamophobia grows louder in North Carolina: 'Can we not kill them all?'

Tom Jones, a soft-spoken man with white hair and wearing a slate-gray jacket, held up a copy of The Terrorist Next Door by the conservative author Erick Stakelbeck in the private dining room of a seafood restaurant in Kernersville, North Carolina, on a recent Thursday evening. Reading from the text, Jones recited to about 20 of his fellow hard-right activists: “Brotherhood-linked organizations are establishing networks throughout the Bible belt.” Turning his head from right to left, he paused for dramatic effect and remarked: “I think that’s where we live.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, a culturally conservative organization founded in 1928 that briefly took power in Egypt after the Arab Spring, is the focal point of paranoid rightwing fears about a supposed Islamic plot to infiltrate and subvert American institutions from within and impose sharia law. ...

Jones’s presentation was repeatedly interrupted by comments about killing Muslims from Frank del Valle, a staunchly anticommunist Cuban immigrant, with little or no pushback from the others in the room. “Can we not kill them all?” Del Valle asked, about 15 minutes into the presentation, during a discussion about the differences between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.

Revelations about the violent talk spread rapidly through North Carolina’s Muslim community when the news broke on 18 February. “The community is completely traumatized,” Abdullah Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University, said. “When they hear someone talk about killing Muslims, they know that could happen to any of their loved ones. When they hear about that meeting, it just brings up the maximum level of fear.” Antepli said Muslims in North Carolina were talking about looking for employment in other states so they could move to areas, such as the north-east, that are perceived as more hospitable.

Refugees Flee Donald Trump’s America

In the pin-drop silence of a winter night in Emerson, Manitoba, residents say if you listen closely, chances are you’ll hear the sound of feet crunching against the snow. It used to happen once every so often, but now with greater frequency — asylum seekers walking north across the train tracks that run parallel to the Canada-U.S. border and emerging in this tiny town. ...

So far this year, 77 people have entered Canada illegally through the Manitoba border, a sharp rise from 2014, when a total of 146 migrants were intercepted. In Quebec, that number jumped from 42 in January of 2015 to 452 last month. At the end of January, chaos ensued after U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on immigration that shut out visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. ...

An agreement that prevents people entering through the US from seeking asylum in Canada is driving more and more refugees underground, forcing them endure extreme weather conditions to walk across illegally. The Canadian government has no plans to revisit that arrangement, but Trudeau said on Tuesday that Canada will continue to accept those who make it across.

Mexico: Government rejects 'hostile' Trump immigration rules as US talks loom

Mexico will not accept Trump's immigration plans, says foreign minister

Mexico has indicated it will not accept the Trump administration’s new immigration proposals, saying it will go to the United Nations to defend the rights of immigrants in the US.

Luis Videgaray, Mexico’s foreign minister, was responding to Donald Trump’s plans to enforce immigration rules more vigorously against undocumented migrants, which could lead to mass deportations to Mexico, not just of Mexicans but also citizens of other Latin American countries.

“We are not going to accept it because we don’t have to accept it,” Videgaray said, according to the Reforma newspaper. “I want to make clear, in the most emphatic way, that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept measures that one government wants to unilaterally impose on another.”

Trump admin ordered to produce list of travelers detained under ban

A federal judge in New York ordered Donald Trump's administration to produce a list of all people detained as part of his executive order that limited travel and immigration from seven countries and temporarily shut down the U.S. refugee program.

Brooklyn federal Judge Carol Bagley Amon delivered the order Tuesday, asking for the names of people held for questioning or processed from Jan. 28 at 9:37 p.m. — when another Brooklyn judge halted part of the ban that allowed for deportations — to Jan. 29 at 11:59 p.m. ...

The order was delivered as part of a case filed by two Iraqi nationals who were detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The restraining order issued in Brooklyn on Jan. 28 expired Tuesday.

Deportation orders threaten Trump's own turf: the real estate market

Is Donald Trump, the property tycoon turned president, about to bust the housing market? That’s potentially one of the unanticipated impacts of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, according to demographics experts and immigrants’ rights groups.

The effect of the mass deportations outlined in Department of Homeland Security memos released this week may not only affect real estate values at the lower and middle end of the housing market, they warn: they could resonate up to the top of the housing chain, testing the entire system in ways that are both novel and not clearly understood.

“There are consequences for the economy and the whole of society, and the public doesn’t understand the value immigrants bring to the housing market,” warns Dowell Myers, director of the Population Dynamics Research Group at the University of California.

“They represent a large share of the demand supporting house values. If you were to subtract any part of that demand, it would jeopardize house values across the board.”

In a comprehensive 2013 study, Immigrant Contributions to Housing Demand in the United States, Myers estimated that in this decade, immigrants nationwide will account for 32.2% of the growth in all households, 35.7% of growth in homeowners and 26.4% of growth in renter households.

Trump’s New Immigration Crackdown Has Private Prison Investors Salivating

GEO Group, one of the largest private prison corporations in the world, hailed President Donald Trump’s newly-announced immigration plans on a call with investors Wednesday and said that even more business could be on the way if a Republican congressional proposal to expand the incarceration of certain immigrants make it into law. ...

The Trump administration’s announcement on Tuesday that it will end so-called “catch-and-release” policies — effectively requiring longer detention times for certain undocumented immigrants arrested at the border — could bring in new business for the firm. “I believe ICE has been visiting various facilities to expand its capacity,” George Zoley, the chief executive of the company, noted. Undocumented immigrants arrested in other parts of the country will likely be detained in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities; the firm manages 26 federal prison centers

Responding to a question from Deutsche Bank analyst Kevin McVeigh about whether demand from government might require the firm to build out additional detention capacity, Zoley raised the prospect of “Kate’s Law,” legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, that would impose a mandatory five-year minimum sentence for aliens who illegally re-enter the country. ...

Geo Group isn’t the only company celebrating the Trump/GOP immigration agenda. CoreCivic, the private prison firm formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, announced on its earning call earlier this month that the firm expects new business. “When coupled with the above average rate of crossings along the southwest border, these executive orders appear likely to significantly increase the need for safe, humane, and appropriate detention bed capacity that we have available,” CoreCivc chief Damon Hininger noted.

New Law Would Let Arizona Treat Organized Dissent as Organized Crime

The Arizona Senate on Wednesday voted to expand racketeering laws to allow police to arrest anyone involved in a protest and seize their assets, treating demonstrators like organized criminals.

The law, SB 1142, also expands the definition of a riot to include any damage to property, and allows police to make arrests when they suspect a protest will turn violent—even before it actually has.

The Arizona Capital Times explains:

[T]he real heart of the legislation is what Democrats say is the guilt by association—and giving the government the right to criminally prosecute and seize the assets of everyone who planned a protest and everyone who participated. And what's worse, said Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, is that the person who may have broken a window, triggering the claim there was a riot, might actually not be a member of the group but someone from the other side.

"This is a total perversion of the RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations] process, the racketeering process, and I see major Constitutional issues down the line," Farley told the Associated Press. "I don't think this is going to do anything but get us into more lawsuits."

The chilling of First Amendment rights in Arizona comes as Republican-dominated state legislatures push a wave of anti-protest legislation nationwide.

Voter anger boils over at yet another Republican town hall

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas tried hard to avoid made-for-TV confrontations at his first Trump-era town hall Wednesday night.

So much for that. ...

The assembled Arkansans repeatedly roared their disapproval and shook hundreds of sheets of red construction paper to express their anger. For two hours, Cotton stood with his hands clasped or arms tucked behind his back, a tight-lipped and limp smile on his face, as his constituents interrupted him with a wide variety of boos and chants, including “Do your job!,” “Tax returns!”

Woman tells Tom Cotton that without coverage for preexisting conditions, she will die. Watch what happened. pic.twitter.com/2scYP097Ef

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 23, 2017

Cotton tried to appease the crowd, but again and again his olive branches were used against him, especially when policy questions came up. He said he didn’t agree with President Trump’s recent tweet that some members of the media were “enemies of the American people.” Still, the crowd was more concerned with 25-year-old Kati McFarland, who said she suffers from severe Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and said that without the Affordable Care Act “I will die.” Chants of “ACA” soon reverberated throughout the auditorium, and the crowd refused to let Cotton move on until they felt he had satisfactorily answered McFarland’s question. ...

As organizers hoped, some clips from the event quickly spread online and became grist for cable news. Local media outlets also covered the event extensively. But the question still remains what Cotton and other congressional Republicans will do when they return to Washington next week.

Yes, liberals are planning town hall protests. It's called democracy

Americans are flooding into town halls across the country. Fearful that their country is being torn apart, they are turning out to protest their representatives in record numbers. But Donald Trump is not impressed. In a sneering tweet, the president dismissed the “so-called angry crowds” at town hall events as “planned by liberal activists”. We’ll take that as a compliment.

More than two dozen progressive activist groups are using ResistanceRecess.com, a site posted just last week by MoveOn.org, to search among more than 500 local congressional events around the country. Anyone can RSVP for an event and get a reminder email. So yes, that’s evidence of planning – apparently more planning than goes into a typical executive order issued by this White House.

But here’s the thing: the crowds are unmistakably real, and the anger runs deep.

Many of those showing up at town hall events have never done anything like that in their lives. Just like the participants in the millions-strong Women’s March and the spontaneous airport protests, the people filling these town hall events are acting with moral urgency – and with a deeply responsible sense of civic duty. Now it’s up to members of Congress to decide how to respond.

Police make arrests at Standing Rock in push to evict remaining activists

Only a few dozen people remained at the Dakota Access pipeline protest encampment on Wednesday night after the state’s eviction deadline saw most of the activists leave voluntarily amid a show of force from law enforcement in riot gear.

Ten activists were arrested on the road near the camp, but police did not enter the camp, according to the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, who spoke at a press conference Wednesday evening. Burgum said the eviction had gone “very smoothly” and that he expected the government to have “unfettered access to the camp starting tomorrow”.

The closure of Oceti Sakowin, the central camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, by officials in the state marks yet another blow to the movement that attracted indigenous activists and environmentalists from across the globe to demonstrate against the oil pipeline.

As the afternoon deadline passed, a group remained at camp, some singing and praying as police closed in. A sheriff’s spokeswoman told the Guardian that police had begun taking activists into custody after 4pm local time and that roughly ten people had been arrested.

“Some people are trying to do final cleanup, and there are still people there who are going to remain until they are removed,” Stephanie Big Eagle, a member of the Yankton Sioux tribe, said Wednesday morning. “I’m worried for their safety, we all are. We’re praying for them.”

After leaving Oceti, she and others gathered on Wednesday morning at Sacred Stone, a separate anti-pipeline camp nearby.

We Have to Keep Fighting: Water Protectors Vow Continued Resistance to DAPL as Main Camp Is Evicted

Deep sea life faces dark future due to warming and food shortage

The deep ocean and the creatures that live there are facing a desperate future due to food shortages and changing temperatures, according to research exploring the impact of climate change and human activity on the world’s seas.

The deep ocean plays a critical role in sustaining our fishing and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well as being home to a huge array of creatures. But the new study reveals that food supplies at the seafloor in the deepest regions of the ocean could fall by up to 55% by 2100, starving the animals and microbes that exist there, while changes in temperature, pH and oxygen levels are also predicted to take their toll on fragile ecosystems.

The situation, the authors note, is exacerbated by drilling for oil and gas, dumping of pollutants, fishing and the prospect of deep-sea mining.

“We need to wake up and start really realising that [with] the deep ocean, even though we can’t see it … we are going to be having a huge effect on the largest environment on the planet,” said Andrew Sweetman, the co-author of the research from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. “It is pretty scary.”

Emails Reveal EPA Chief Scott Pruitt’s Dirty Dealings With Oil and Gas Industry

Emails released Tuesday night illustrate the remarkably close relationship between EPA head Scott Pruitt and the oil and gas industry while he served as Oklahoma’s attorney general. ... The 7,500 documents reveal a new example of oil and gas industry operatives drafting and editing text Pruitt submitted to a federal agency, and they show how Oklahoma Gas & Electric and American Electric Power, both of which contributed to Pruitt’s election campaigns, reviewed documents pertaining to at least one rule affecting utility rates.

The emails contain thousands of references to and communications with the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, which has ties to ALEC, the conservative group that drafts “model” pro-business legislation. Pruitt’s office seemed to operate in conjunction with the council, which helped coordinate press for the attorney general and regularly released his blog posts on their newsletter, “Freedom Flash.” ... The emails also show employees’ attempts to make the work of the attorney general’s office confidential. ...

In keeping with this effort to keep Pruitt’s communications private, the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office still has not released all the emails the Center for Media and Democracy first requested more than two years ago. Even after Oklahoma Judge Aletia Haynes Timmons criticized the office for its “abject failure” to follow the open records law, the AG’s office withheld an unspecified number of documents on the grounds that they were privileged. Many of those that it did release were redacted. Judge Timmons ruled that the attorney general’s office has to supply additional records by February 27.

Also of Interest

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

California Resists Trump on Immigration

Heaven has 'extreme vetting'? When Republicans legislate from the Bible

Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change - declassified CIA document

NYT’s Fake News about Fake News

What JPMorgan and Citigroup Have in Common When It Comes to Crime

How Banks Want To Make It Easier To Launder Money

Israel’s Dead-End Dilemma

Lancet Study on Life Expectancy by 2030 Confirms Poor US Performance

The DNC Chair Debate Accidentally Gave Progressives A Lesson On How To Win This Thing

Bolivia's salt flats – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Pine Top's Boogie Woogie

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Brown Skin Girls

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Streamline Train

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Clarence s Blues

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Strut That Thing

Cripple Clarence Lofton - The Fives

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Sweetest Thing Born

Cripple Clarence Lofton - Mis Taken Blues

Cripple Clarence Lofton - I Don't Know

Cripple Clarence Lofton - You Done Tore Your Playhouse Down