Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features soul singer and songwriter Otis Redding. Enjoy!

“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”

-- Arthur Conan Doyle

News and Opinion

US tech firms bypassing Pentagon to protect deals with China

Silicon Valley companies are shying away from selling cyberwarfare services to the Pentagon to avoid jeopardising their relationship with the Chinese market, a leading geopolitical strategist has suggested.

Peter Singer, an author and senior fellow at the New America Foundation thinktank, said the United States and China are engaged in a new cold war – being fought partly in cyberspace – that “could turn hot”. ...

“In the past the government led the way with innovation and industry followed,” said Singer, citing the Arpanet, a precursor to the internet, as an example. “Now it’s the private sector – as seen in the debate over encryption. This is changing the way that government leaders talk – the tone alternates between asking for help and threatening.”

In order to modernise national security operations, the US Department of Defense has been trying to woo Silicon Valley, with the Pentagon setting aside $18bn to invest in next-generation technologies including guided munitions, electronic warfare and robotics.

“The Secretary of Defence [Ash] Carter has come to Silicon Valley more times than he’s gone to war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan,” Singer said.

Despite the government’s best efforts, technology companies aren’t being so forthcoming as they frequently rely on China for both their supply chain and enormous customer base.

Congress tells FBI that forcing Apple to unlock iPhones is 'a fool's errand'

The Justice Department is on a “fool’s errand” trying to force Apple to unlock the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists, lawmakers told FBI director James Comey on Tuesday.

Lawmakers of both parties sharply challenged Comey as the House judiciary committee considered the FBI’s court order to unlock an iPhone owned by Syed Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, in December and was killed by law enforcement.

Legislators repeatedly accused the Justice Department of overreaching its authority and undermining both privacy and cybersecurity. Several endorsed Congress passing a law settling the boundaries – something Apple supports – and accused the FBI of trying to circumvent Congress by launching a lawsuit against Apple. ...

Comey said that neither Apple nor any other tech company ought to be permitted to create “warrant-free spaces” through the use of robust encryption, particularly as mobile and software manufacturers increasingly render user keys inaccessible to themselves.

“The logic of encryption will bring us to a place in the not too distant future where all of our conversations and all our papers and effects are entirely private,” Comey said.

[Heh, like there's something wrong with all of our conversations, papers and effects being entirely private? - js]

Congressman Suggests FBI Is Taking Advantage of San Bernardino Tragedy to Push Agenda

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said it was troubling “that in the middle of an ongoing congressional debate on this subject, the FBI would ask a federal magistrate to give them the special access to secure products that this committee, this Congress, and the administration have so far refused to provide.” He spoke at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, of which he is the ranking Democratic member.

“Why has the government taken this step and forced this issue?” he asked.

It was a rhetorical question.

“I suspect that part of the answer lies in an email obtained by the Washington Post and reported to the public last September,” Conyers said.

“In it, a senior lawyer in the intelligence community writes that ‘although the legislative environment towards encryption is very hostile today … it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.’”

Conyers continued: “I am deeply concerned by this cynical mindset. And I would be deeply disappointed if it turns out that the government is found to be exploiting a national tragedy to pursue a change in the law.”

For folks who would like a more detailed understanding of some of the legal issues involved in the current wrangle between Apple and the FBI, this analysis by Marty Lederman of the recent decision in New York where the FBI was attempting to use the same legal mechanism (the 1789 All Writs Act) to compel Apple to write them software to defeat iPhone security as relied on in the San Bernadino case is comprehensible to non-lawyers.

Magistrate Judge Orenstein’s Apple decision denies DOJ’s All Writs Act request

Judge Orenstein reasons that he cannot issue the order for the following reasons:

1. In enacting CALEA and other statutes, Congress has in effect prohibited issuance of an order such as the one the government has requested here (pp. 18-21).  ... Whether a limitation on these sorts of orders to Apple can “be reasonably inferred” from Congress’s “comprehensive statutory scheme,” including CALEA, will likely be the most important legal question going forward, in this and other, similar cases. ...

2. Because Congress specifically chose not to impose such obligations on companies such as Apple when it enacted CALEA and related statutes, and because it “considered and rejected” the idea of imposing such obligations when other proposals were put before it, Judge Orenstein reasons that an order here, even if not precluded by CALEA, would not be “agreeable to the usages and principles of law,” as the All Writs Act requires (pp. 21-26; see also p. 30 & n.25).  ...

3. Reading he AWA to permit this sort of order would raise serious constitutional questions, because it would be a constitutionally dubious delegation to the judiciary to impose authority that is effectively “legislative” (pp. 26-31).

4. Judge Orenstein also holds, in the course of applying the New York Telephone considerations respecting an order under the All Writs Act, that the burdens on Apple would be “unreasonable,” including because the reputational harm to Apple would have a serious impact on its bottom line (pp. 38-45). 

Fight Over VICE News Journalist's Digital Messages Now in the Hands of a Judge

The question of whether copies of a reporter's instant messenger chats with an alleged terrorist should be turned over to the police is now in the hands of a Toronto judge.

Justice Ian MacDonnell's decision will resolve months of wrangling between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and VICE News, which is fighting a court order requiring it to turn over a journalist's records of digital messages to law enforcement.

The police claim the records contain crucial evidence in their case against a Canadian man claiming to be an Islamic State fighter, and who remains at large.

Lawyer Iain MacKinnon spent the morning arguing in court that the order should be quashed because it wouldn't produce any additional evidence of a crime, and that respecting the order would create a chilling effect on the press' ability to gather news. ...

But the police, MacKinnon pointed out, have a wealth of evidence against Shirdon — enough to charge him without requiring chat logs between him and Makuch. There is no relevant information in Makuch and Shirdon's conversations that hasn't already been published by VICE, MacKinnon said.

1,845 Erdoğan insult cases opened in Turkey since 2014

Turkey’s justice minister says as many as 1,845 cases have been opened against people accused of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan since he came to office in 2014.

Erdoğan has been accused of aggressively using a previously seldom-used law that bars insults to the president, as a way to muffle dissent. Those who have gone on trial include celebrities, journalists and even schoolchildren.

Critics say Erdoğan, who has been accused of increasingly authoritarian behaviour, even considers strong criticism as insults.

Ukraine joining Erdogan's coalition of the thin-skinned?

Ukraine Decree Bans Officials From Criticizing Government

The Ukrainian government has issued a new decree today barring all employees from publicly criticizing the government, or any of its institutions, or any of their colleagues. The ban is part of a new “ethics code” on loyalty, and threatens disciplinary action against violators.

Officials said the move to prevent criticism was necessary to “restore public faith” in the government after several damning leaks related to the Yatsenyuk government’s inability to get widespread corruption under control.

Indeed, just two weeks ago Prime Minister Yatsenyuk was asked to resign by President Poroshenko, and narrowly survived a vote of no-confidence by the parliament shortly thereafter. The effort seems designed to try to prevent a repeat vote.

Ceasefire in Syria - "We are cautiously optimistic"

‘Plan B’ and the Bankruptcy of US Syria Policy

US Secretary of State John Kerry provoked widespread speculation when he referred in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee last week to “significant discussions” within US President Barack Obama’s administration about a “Plan B” in Syria. The speculation was further stoked by a “senior official” who told CBS News that options under consideration included “‘military-like’ measures that would make it harder for the regime and its allies to continue their assault on civilians and US-backed rebels.”

But “Plan B” is more complicated than that. A report by CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr on 26 February leaves little room for doubt that the administration’s cupboard of policy options is actually bare. An unnamed “senior US official” at the Pentagon admitted that “Plan B” is actually “more an idea than a specific course of action”. In other words, the administration’s national security policymakers believe something more should be done in Syria, but they are not at all clear what could be done now.

The official said three options were under discussion, none of which is even close to being realistic in the present situation: an increase in US Special Forces on the ground, an increase in arms assistance to fighters opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and a no-fly zone.

Mosul dam engineers warn it could fail at any time, killing 1m Iraqis

Iraqi engineers involved in building the Mosul dam 30 years ago have warned that the risk of its imminent collapse and the consequent death toll could be even worse than reported.

They pointed out that pressure on the dam’s compromised structure was building up rapidly as winter snows melted and more water flowed into the reservoir, bringing it up to its maximum capacity, while the sluice gates normally used to relieve that pressure were jammed shut.

The Iraqi engineers also said the failure to replace machinery or assemble a full workforce more than a year after Islamic State temporarily held the dam means that the chasms in the porous rock under the dam were getting bigger and more dangerous every day. A contract with an Italian construction firm for carrying out urgent repairs has yet to be signed, but behind-the-scenes negotiations with Baghdad continue.

The engineers warned that potential loss of life from a sudden catastrophic collapse of the Mosul dam could be even greater than the 500,000 officially estimated, as they said many people could die in the resulting mass panic, with a 20-metre-high flood wave hitting the city of Mosul and then rolling on down the Tigris valley through Tikrit and Samarra to Baghdad.

Rights Groups Fault NATO General for Hyping ISIS in Refugees

Adding to a flurry of claims of ISIS infiltration by way of the influx of refugees into Europe, and as usual providing no evidence to back it up, NATO Genn. Philip Breedlove claimed the refugees are “masking the movement” of ISIS and allowing the group to “spread like a cancer” across Europe.

Breedlove’s comments are in keeping with those of a number of NATO member nations looking for an excuse to stop the flow of refugees, or at least confine them to Turkey, but human rights groups were quick to fault him for making it sound like the refugees were a large security problem, when almost no militants have been confirmed to have infiltrated with them.

Europe migrant crisis: EU to give emergency aid to help Greece cope

The Anti-Immigrant 'Soldiers of Odin' Are Expanding Across Europe

The Soldiers of Odin, a far-right vigilante group whose members have patrolled streets in Finland saying they want to protect locals from immigrants, have started spreading to other Nordic and Baltic countries, worrying authorities.

Named after the king of the gods in Norse mythology, the self-proclaimed patriots say they want to be the eyes and ears for the police who they say are struggling to fulfill their duties. But critics say they are jumping on the back of Europe's migration crisis to propagate a racist and dangerous agenda.

With some 250,000 asylum seekers moving into the region as a whole over the last year, fleeing brutal wars and desperate poverty in their home countries, the group has triggered fears of a rise in vigilantism.

The Soldiers are now expanding outside Finland, wearing similar black jackets adorned on the back with a Viking, his mouth covered with the relevant country's national flag, and the name of the group written in English. ...

In Norway, police have expressed concern about how the arrival of some 31,000 asylum seekers in the country of 5.2 million last year will affect far-right groups.

"We consider the threat from right-wing milieus to be increasing. The asylum issue is fuelling right-wing activity, radicalization and recruitment," said the Police Security Service in its latest threat assessment last month.

US supreme court takes on biggest abortion rights case in two decades

The US supreme court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday in the case of Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, the biggest abortion rights challenge in two decades. The case centers on an expansive anti-abortion law passed in Texas in 2013, which has already shuttered more than half the state’s 41 abortion clinics since taking effect. If the abortion providers who are challenging the law do not prevail, it could ultimately shut down all but nine or 10.

In Texas alone, there are 5.4 million women of reproductive age. With only a handful of clinics left, researchers have estimated that nearly 2 million women would live more than 50 miles from the nearest abortion clinic. Three-quarters of a million women would live more than 200 miles away. And because wait times for an abortion would skyrocket, the number of second-trimester procedures, which are more expensive, invasive and time-intensive, could double.

The plaintiffs are challenging two pieces of the law that subject abortion providers to onerous procedural standards most of them cannot meet. Such laws are often justified by legislators as an attempt to protect women’s health, even though abortion is exceedingly safe in the US.

The stakes in this case are especially high because the supreme court has never explicitly spelled out how far states can go in restricting abortion ostensibly to protect women’s health.

Though it has become the poster-child for restrictive abortion laws, Texas is not the first or only state to impose such regulations. That means the supreme court’s ruling will be felt far beyond its borders. If the court fails to rule in favor of abortion providers, it would at the very least uphold Texas’ regulations. At worst, the court’s decision could legitimate similar laws in other states.

Argentina’s President Macri Urges Congress to End 15-Year Feud with ‘Vulture Funds’

Argentina's President Mauricio Macri has urged the country's congress to approve a deal reached with the so-called "vulture funds" that foresees an end to one of the most brutal debt battles ever seen between a country and a creditor. ...

Although parts of his speech were greeted by heckling from the opposition, Macri appears likely to obtain the votes required to implement the deal before the April 14 deadline set by a US court. Congress must also revoke two laws that would block the debt-payment. Some observers say he may have to negotiate concessions on other parts of government policy to get these measures through.

The deal, announced on Monday, outlines the payment of $4.65 billion dollars to several different funds that had refused to join negotiations that restructured most of Argentina's debts after the country defaulted in 2001.

Their demand to be paid the full amount was met by an equally stubborn response from the previous Argentine government headed by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner who called them "vulture funds."

The deal means that the funds — led by Paul Singer's Elliott Management — are now willing to accept a 25 percent cut off their original claim. Singer is one of the top donors to the presidential campaign of Marco Rubio. ...

Finance Minister Alfonso Prat-Gay said that bank loans totaling $15 billion dollars, which will enable the country to make payments to all its creditors, have already been secured. ...

Tuesday also brought a protest against the deal outside the presidential palace in the Plaza de Mayo square. "They are taking the country backwards, once again binding us to enormous debt. It is a crap deal," said Pablo Dilo, a 34-year-old teacher.

The FDA now officially belongs to Big Pharma

It is hard to believe only four senators opposed the confirmation of Robert Califf, who was approved today as the next FDA commissioner. Vocal opponent Bernie Sanders condemned the vote from the campaign trail. But where was Dick Durbin? Where were all the lawmakers who say they care about industry and Wall Street profiteers making money at the expense of public health?

Califf, chancellor of clinical and translational research at Duke University until recently, received money from 23 drug companies including the giants like Johnson & Johnson, Lilly, Merck, Schering Plough and GSK according to a disclosure statement on the website of Duke Clinical Research Institute.

Not merely receiving research funds, Califf also served as a high level Pharma officer, say press reports. Medscape, the medical website, discloses that Califf “served as a director, officer, partner, employee, advisor, consultant or trustee for Genentech.” Portola Pharmaceuticals says Califf served on its board of directors until leaving for the FDA.

In disclosure information for a 2013 article in Circulation, Califf also lists financial links to Gambro, Regeneron, Gilead, AstraZeneca, Roche and other companies and equity positions in four medical companies. Gilead is the maker of the $1000-a-pill hepatitis C drug AlterNet recently wrote about. This is FDA commissioner material? ...

Califf’s confirmation amounts to a handover of the agency to Big Pharma.

World's super rich keep buying up luxury goods in face of wealth decline

The global super rich continued to splash out on super-yachts and luxury goods last year, despite a decline in their overall wealth in the wake of financial market turmoil.

According to the latest wealth report from estate agents Knight Frank, published on Wednesday, sales of super-yachts – boats longer than 24 metres – soared 40% in 2015, with the rich roaring off to ever more far-flung destinations, such as the Antarctic and outposts in Asia, rather than their traditional ports of call in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. ...

So-called investments of passion such as art, cars, stamps and jewellery remain popular among the super rich. Knight Frank’s art index rose by a muted 4% last year, but a number of records were set in the world’s auction houses.

The Craziest Video You’ll Ever Watch on JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon

Two interesting things happened this week in Jamie Dimon’s world: two gutsy attorneys, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, published a book comparing JPMorgan Chase to the Gambino crime family, explaining how the bank could and should be prosecuted under RICO statutes for serial frauds against the investing public. Taking a diametrically different tack, Bloomberg Markets magazine editor, Joel Weber, fawned over Dimon in a Bloomberg TV interview, repeatedly asserting that Jamie Dimon is all about the customer.

This Bloomberg video is so hilarious we had to watch it several times to make sure it wasn’t satire.  As Weber makes his case that Dimon is all about the customer, his Bloomberg colleague, Stephanie Ruhle, is having none of it, reminding the obviously star-struck Weber that the big banks are hated in this country for good reason. Instead of acknowledging the serial frauds at JPMorgan, Weber suggests (and this is the belly laugh/roll on the floor part) that banks are hated because when you go to a car dealer to buy a car you walk out with one. But if you go into a bank for a loan or credit card, it might turn you down. This brand of logic is on a par with Hillary Clinton suggesting that Wall Street was lavishing millions of dollars on her in speaking fees because she was kind to Wall Street during 9/11.

Citigroup Fined Again For Fraudulent Credit Card Practices

Citigroup once again faces government fines for committing fraud in its credit card division. On February 23, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) fined Citigroup and its consumer division Citibank for the way it handles selling credit card debt.

The CFPB ordered Citigroup to pay $8 million — $5 million in restitution and $3 million in fines — for “selling credit card debt with inflated interest rates and for failing to forward consumer payments promptly to debt buyers.”

In a separate action, the CFPB ordered Citibank to comply with a court order from New Jersey which requires the bank to pay $11 million to consumers and forgo the collection of roughly $34 million from an estimated 7,000 consumers. The court order came after it was revealed that Citibank had lied about how high the interest rate was on the debt being sold to collection agencies, while also not forwarding payments customers made to the companies that had bought those debts.

DNC Chair Joins GOP Attack On Elizabeth Warren's Agency

Payday lenders have been gunning for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the day President Barack Obama tapped Elizabeth Warren to set up the new agency. They've had plenty of help from congressional Republicans -- longtime recipients of campaign contributions from the payday loan industry. As the CFPB has moved closer to adopting new rules to shield families from predatory lending, the GOP has assailed the agency from every conceivable angle -- going after its budget, attempting to tie its hands with new layers of red tape, fomenting conspiracy theories about rogue regulators illegally shutting down businesses and launching direct attacks on payday loan rules themselves.

To date, the GOP blitz has resulted in a few close shaves for the young agency, but no actual defeats. But the industry has cultivated a powerful new ally in recent weeks: Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.).

Wasserman Schultz is co-sponsoring a new bill that would gut the CFPB's forthcoming payday loan regulations. She's also attempting to gin up Democratic support for the legislation on Capitol Hill, according to a memo obtained by The Huffington Post.

The DNC chair isn't the first Democrat to defend payday lenders. A handful of House Financial Services Committee members consistently join the GOP's payday loan boosterism. But support from such backbenchers has been politically impotent. Wasserman Schultz, by contrast, is the nominal head of the Democratic Party. Her support undercuts efforts by liberals in Congress to draw contrasts with Republicans on economic issues.

It's Time for DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to Ride Off into the Sunset

It is time for her to go. More important, it's time for Hillary Rodham Clinton to insist that she go.

In addition to putting the Congress behind some of the worst predatory bastards in America, this move also gives the lie to anything HRC says about her dedication to reigning in financial crimes. Moreover, this puts the DNC squarely on the other side of the issue from both Bernie Sanders and Senator Professor Warren and, therefore, on the other side of the issue from about 90 percent of some voters she is going to need desperately in the fall. ...

This is nothing new for DWS, who's been looking out for these creeps for quite some time because they nest in thousands of seedy strip malls up and down Florida. But to have her presiding over a presidential campaign that has as its driving force the financial crimes that tanked the economy, crimes that reach all the way from Goldman Sachs down to Sunrise Gotcher Money Here on Route 4 in Lakeland, is bad politics on all angles.

Latino Vote Helps Bernie Sanders Surge to Victory in Colorado in Massive Democratic Caucus Turnout

'The Revolution Has Begun': After Super Tuesday Wins, Sanders Looks Ahead

[http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/03/02/revolution-has-begun-after-s... Having notched Super Tuesday victories in Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Vermont, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign says it's "going all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and beyond."

The results in the 11 states that voted March 1, seven of which went to Hillary Clinton, widened the former secretary of state's delegate lead against Sanders and reinforced her support among minority voters. Some even suggested that Clinton's solid Super Tuesday performance would increase pressure on Sanders to drop out of the race.

But at a rally Tuesday night with more than 4,000 supporters in his home state of Vermont—where he won resoundingly with 86 percent of the vote—and in a statement Wednesday morning, Sanders stressed his determination to carry his message to voters in all 50 states.

"At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted, 35 states remain," he told the crowd in Burlington, where he once served as mayor. "And let me assure you, we are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace to every one of those states."

"People should not underestimate us," Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver added in an email to supporters late Tuesday night.]

Super Tuesday: Few Surprises as Clinton and Trump Win 7 States Each, Sanders Gains 4

It looks like Clinton and her minions are trying to defend her against investigations into her manifest corruption in office by casting them as partisan witch hunts. I wonder how many times that trick will work.

Clinton chief attacks State Dept. watchdog

John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, says there are “serious questions” about the integrity of the State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The OIG is locked in an increasingly contentious fight with Clinton’s campaign on a host of issues, including her use of a private email account during her time as secretary of State.

It has also reportedly subpoenaed the Clinton Foundation for documents related to charity projects and is investigating close Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s work as a “special government consultant” while she worked at State.

A source within the OIG contacted The Hill claiming that the office has grown increasingly partisan, accusing it of having an “anti-Clinton” bias.

Told by The Hill about the remarks, Podesta described the source as a “whistleblower” whose comments called into question the integrity of the OIG investigations.

[Heh,looks to me like the Clintonistas are grabbing at straws. - js]

An OIG official strongly disputed the source’s account.

NRA Lobbyist Will Co-Host Hillary Clinton Fundraiser

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has called her support for gun control laws a key differentiator from her opponent Bernie Sanders, who she claims isn’t tough enough on the industry. But in mid-March, a Clinton campaign fundraiser will be co-hosted by a lobbyist whose clients have included the National Rifle Association (NRA). ...

Jeff Forbes has represented the NRA since 2009 and as of the last quarter of 2015 was still registered to lobby for the organization.

Max Blumenthal: GOP Elite Prefer Losing the White House over a Trump Presidency

This is an excellent article by military expert Andrew Bacevich. It's worth reading in full, here's a taste:

What Trumpism means for democracy

[Trump] has already transformed the tone and temper of American political life. If he becomes the Republican nominee, he will demolish its structural underpinnings as well. Should he prevail in November, his election will alter its very fabric in ways likely to prove irreversible. Whether Trump ever delivers on his promise to “Make America Great Again,” he is already transforming American democratic practice. ...

Trumpism is not a program or an ideology. It is an attitude or pose that feeds off of, and then reinforces, widespread anger and alienation.

The pose works because the anger – always present in certain quarters of the American electorate but especially acute today – is genuine. By acting the part of impish bad boy and consciously trampling on the canons of political correctness, Trump validates that anger. The more outrageous his behavior, the more secure his position at the very center of the political circus. Wondering what he will do next, we can’t take our eyes off him. And to quote Marco Rubio in a different context, Trump “knows exactly what he is doing”. ...

For further evidence of Trump’s genius, consider the skill with which he plays the media, especially celebrity journalists who themselves specialize in smirking cynicism. Rather than pretending to take them seriously, he unmasks their preening narcissism, which mirrors his own. He refuses to acknowledge their self-assigned role as gatekeepers empowered to police the boundaries of permissible discourse. As the embodiment of “breaking news”, he continues to stretch those boundaries beyond recognition.

In that regard, the spectacle of televised “debates” has offered Trump an ideal platform for promoting his cult of personality. Once a solemn, almost soporific forum for civic education – remember Kennedy and Nixon in 1960? – presidential debates now provide occasions for trading insults, provoking gaffes, engaging in verbal food fights, and marketing magical solutions to problems ranging from war to border security that are immune to magic. For all of that we have Trump chiefly to thank. ...

American democracy has been decaying for decades. The people know that they are no longer truly sovereign. They know that the apparatus of power, both public and private, does not promote the common good, itself a concept that has become obsolete. They have had their fill of irresponsibility, lack of accountability, incompetence, and the bad times that increasingly seem to go with them. So in disturbingly large numbers they have turned to Trump to strip bare the body politic, willing to take a chance that he will come up with something that, if not better, will at least be more entertaining.

Fracker Aubrey McClendon, Ex-Head of Chesapeake Energy, Indicted for Bid Rigging

The Justice Department announced Tuesday night that it had charged Aubrey K. McClendon,an Oklahoma wildcatter who turbocharged the shale revolution by buying up gas fields across the United States, with conspiring to suppress prices paid for oil and natural gas leases.

The indictment says that Mr. McClendon, who led Chesapeake Energy before he was forced to step down three years ago, orchestrated a conspiracy in which two oil and gas companies colluded not to bid against each other for the purchase of several leases in northwestern Oklahoma from late 2007 to early 2012.

According to the Justice Department, the companies decided who would win the leases, with the winning bidder allotting an interest in the leases to the other company.

“McClendon instructed his subordinates to execute the conspiratorial agreement, which included, among other things, withdrawing bids for certain leases and agreeing on the allocation of interests in the leases between the conspiring companies,” the department said in a statement. ...

The indictment was filed on Tuesday in United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. The department said this was the first case resulting from a continuing federal antitrust investigation into price fixing, bid rigging and other anticompetitive conduct in the oil and natural gas industry.

Wow, Fracker Aubrey McClendon had a really bad week!

Aubrey McClendon, indicted former CEO, dead in car crash

Aubrey McClendon, the former energy company chief executive who was indicted in federal court on a conspiracy charge Tuesday, died in a car crash Wednesday, police said. He was 56.

“He pretty much drove straight into the wall,” Oklahoma City Police Department Capt. Paco Balderrama told KFOR.

Police Sgt. Ashley Peters said McClendon was the only person in the SUV when it slammed into a concrete bridge pillar shortly after 9 a.m. “There was plenty of opportunity for him to correct and get back on the roadway and that didn’t occur," Balderrama added.

Alaska's mild winter means snow has to be shipped in before Iditarod dog race

A lack of snow in Anchorage, Alaska, is forcing organizers of the famous Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to ship tons of it in by train for the event’s ceremonial start on Saturday.

The mild winter in Anchorage, the state’s largest city, also could mean a shortened version of the 11-mile route, a fan-friendly event that is held a day earlier than the actual start of the race. On Saturday, temperatures are expected to be above freezing. ...

Iditarod officials couldn’t immediately be reached Tuesday, but CEO Stan Hooley told the Alaska Dispatch News that the ceremonial start may need to be shortened after days of higher temperatures further eroded the minimal snow on area trails.

The 2016 Elections Will be Pivotal in the Fight Against Climate Change

Climate Activist Who Chained Herself to Shell Vessel Argues Necessity Defense

A climate activist who chained herself to a Shell vessel last year to protest oil drilling in the Arctic argued this week that she was compelled to act to prevent environmental catastrophe.

Chiara D'Angelo, 21, who climbed the vessel's anchor chain with a sign that read, "Save the Arctic" and locked her harness to the side of the ship for three days and nights in Bellingham, Washington in May 2015, faces a possible $20,000 fine for crossing the so-called "safety zone" around the ship.

But in a hearing with the Coast Guard on Monday, D'Angelo and her attorney invoked what's known as the "necessity defense," arguing that her actions were far less dangerous than the risks posed by allowing the ship to depart for the Arctic's Chukchi Sea, where the oil giant was poised to undertake "one of the riskiest offshore drilling operations of all time," as D'Angelo told the Bellingham Herald.

Shell had planned to explore for oil in the remote and vulnerable northern waters despite warnings from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that the operation posed a 75 percent chance of a spill, risking the food supply for native Alaskans, who rely on fishing and marine hunting for subsistence.

Right-to-Know Fight Heats Up as Pro-GMO DARK Act Advances

Defying the rights of Americans who overwhelmingly want to know more about what they eat, a Senate committee on Tuesday advanced legislation that will block states from requiring that foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMO) be labelled.

The so-called Denying Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act (pdf) passed the Senate Agriculture Committee 14-6. It now moves to the upper chamber's floor, setting up a Congressional battle as Vermont prepares to become the first state to implement a mandatory GMO labeling law.

The federal bill pre-empts state laws by establishing a national voluntary labeling standard for foods made with GMOs, similar to the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 that passed the House in July. The Senate bill has reportedly gone through significant negotiations to garner bipartisan support. But opponents, including Wenonah Hauter, executive director of watchdog Food & Water Watch, argue that "more compromise will not fix the problem at the bill's core."

"Blocking state laws that require GMO labeling will strip away the ability of states to protect the public’s right to know what is in their food," Hauter said Tuesday. "Any version of this bill that would result in anything less than mandatory on-package labeling is unacceptable."

Also of Interest

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

Dump Hillary, and Dump Her Fast: The Democratic Establishment is on a Suicide Mission, and it Will End With Trump

Clinton Announces When She Will Disclose Her Healthcare Insurance Improvement Plan: She’ll Announce It Just as Soon as the Republican Presidential Candidates Tell Us Theirs

Clinton Will Build Her Biggest Lead on March 15. Sanders Will Erode It After That.

Building on the Syrian Truce

San Francisco homeless camp razed amid questions of long-term solution

A Little Night Music

Otis Redding - Hard To Handle

Otis Redding - Tramp

Otis Redding - Just One More Day

Otis Redding - Satisfaction

Otis Redding - A Change Is Gonna Come

Otis Redding - Cigarettes and Coffee

Otis Redding Live Olympia Paris 1966