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This evening's music features blues singer, songwriter and pioneer of the blues harp John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson. Enjoy!

“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.”

-- Hunter S. Thompson

News and Opinion

Trump’s “Moderate” Defense Secretary Has Already Brought Us to the Brink of War

Did you know that the Trump administration almost went to war with Iran at the start of February?

Perhaps you were distracted by Gen. Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser or by President Trump’s online jihad against Nordstrom. Or maybe you missed the story because the New York Times bizarrely buried it in the midst of a long piece on the turmoil and chaos inside the National Security Council. Defense Secretary James Mattis, according to the paper, had wanted the U.S. Navy to “intercept and board an Iranian ship to look for contraband weapons possibly headed to Houthi fighters in Yemen. … But the ship was in international waters in the Arabian Sea, according to two officials. Mr. Mattis ultimately decided to set the operation aside, at least for now. White House officials said that was because news of the impending operation leaked.” ...

Am I exaggerating? Ask the Iranians. “Boarding an Iranian ship is a shortcut” to confrontation, says Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, former member of Iran’s National Security Council and a close ally of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Even if a firefight in international waters were avoided, the Islamic Republic, Mousavian tells me, “would retaliate” and has “many other options for retaliation.” ...

There’s a reason Mattis is nicknamed “Mad Dog.” There’s a reason his militant maxims — or “Mattisisms” — include telling Marines under his command in Iraq to “be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet,” and telling an audience in California: “It’s fun to shoot some people. … I like brawling.”

Is this the kind of “restraint” that we can expect from Mattis? Trump was rightly lambasted over his January raid in Yemen that led to the deaths of a U.S. Navy SEAL and at least 15 Yemeni women and children, but it was the defense secretary, joined by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who persuaded the neophyte president that the SEALs’ attack on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would be a “game changer.” It was the gung-ho Mattis who, according to Reuters, told Trump that he “doubted that the Obama administration would have been bold enough to try it.” And this week, we learned, it is Mattis to whom Trump wants to give free rein to launch raids, drone strikes, and hostage rescues without prior presidential approval. What could possibly go wrong?

Trump Retreats on Detente with Russia

Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday to a joint session of Congress was a reasonably well-crafted and well-delivered exercise in communicating his case to the nation. ... Though sounding not unlike boiler-plate language that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama might have used, those words did contain the possible seeds of a less warlike strategy. Trump said: “America is willing to find new friends and to forge new partnerships where shared interests align. We want harmony and stability, not war and conflict. America is friends today with former enemies. We want peace, wherever peace can be found. America is friends today with former enemies. Some of our closest allies decades ago fought on the opposite side of these terrible, terrible wars.”

Depending on the strength of one’s powers of self-delusion, those last words might be construed as a hint: just wait, allow me to get my footing and establish my popularity in Congress and in the broad public and I will come back and deliver on my détente aspirations.

But it is an inescapable reality that the firing of Flynn and Trump’s retreat from his foreign policy intentions were precipitated by the powerful collusion between the intelligence services, particularly the CIA, and the mainstream media with a clear intent to either neuter Trump by forcing a policy reversal on Russia détente or remove him through some form of impeachment. The phoniness of the McCarthyite charges of Russian connections used to smear Trump and his entourage has been well explained in recent articles by Professor Stephen Cohen in The Nation and by Gareth Porter at Consortiumnews.com. ...

State is said to have been purged in its policy-making “seventh floor” during the week of Secretary Tillerson’s European travels. ... Any purge of the CIA and Pentagon has not even begun. The ability of neocons and hardliners at the Pentagon to sabotage presidential policy was demonstrated last September when a promising collaboration between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov over a cease-fire in Syria was torn to shreds by an “accidental” attack by U.S. and Allied fighter jets on a Syrian government outpost at Deir ez-Zor that killed nearly 100 Syrian soldiers. If these recalcitrant Cold Warriors in America’s “power ministries” remain untouched, they will be in a position to create provocations at any time of their choosing to override Trump’s planned détente policies. To do so would be child’s play, given the close proximity of U.S. and Russian forces in Ukraine, in Syria, in the Baltic States, on the Baltic Sea and on the Black Sea.

It looks like the Democrats have found another pile of, um, material to throw against the wall to see if it will stick.

Jeff Sessions did not disclose meetings with Russian ambassador during Trump campaign

Donald Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions twice spoke with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential campaign.

The Washington Post, citing justice department officials, first reported that Sessions met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak once in September 2016, when US intelligence officials were investigating Russian interference in the presidential election, and once in the summer of that year. ...

Sessions, a former senator from Alabama who was among Trump’s early and most vocal surrogates on the campaign trail, did not disclose the conversations when asked under oath during his Senate confirmation hearing in early 2017 about possible contacts between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.

When Sessions was asked during his 10 January testimony to the Senate judiciary committee how he would respond if he learned of communications between the Trump campaign and Russian officials leading up to the election, he said he was “not aware of any of those activities”.

While the committee was considering his nomination, the panel’s top Democrat, Senator Patrick Leahy, also raised the issue of communications with Russia in a written questionnaire.

“Several of the president-elect’s nominees or senior advisers have Russian ties,” Leahy wrote, before asking Sessions point-blank: “Have you been in contact with anyone connected to any part of the Russian government about the 2016 election, either before or after election day?”

“No,” Sessions responded.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for Sessions, denied he had deceived the Senate. “There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” Flores said in a statement, noting Sessions had over 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors last year.

David Cay Johnston: As Jeff Sessions Scandal Brews, We Need a Public Probe of Trump's Ties to Russia

Major Papers Target AG Sessions Over Russia

On Wednesday night, the big three papers, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal all ran articles attacking the Trump administration over their supposed "ties" to Russia.

Yet, in the tradition of anti-Russia hype in the American media, on close inspection, the stories end up amounting to nothing but further evidence of America’s "permanent government," its Cold War agenda, and their attempt to overturn, or at least "hem in," the policy decisions made by the new administration on the issue of U.S. relations with Russia.

[See article for detailed description of the major media propaganda. - js]

Sweden reintroduces compulsory military service as tensions with Russia increase

Sweden has reintroduced mandatory conscription as a result of growing worries over Russia’s increased military manoeuvres in the Baltic states, with a recent study suggesting the current Nato force would no longer adequately protect the region.

The plan was introduced by the current Social Democrat-Green coalition and has received cross-party support from main opposition party the Moderates, as well as the Liberals.

Separatist rebels seize factories and mines in eastern Ukraine

Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday took control of dozens of businesses and coal mines, including several belonging to a foundation of the country's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, who has provided humanitarian aid to millions of civilians.

Ukrainian right-wing nationalists and war veterans have blocked rail trafficfrom rebel-held territory since January, disrupting trade and vital coal shipments from the east to territory controlled by the government. The forces implementing the blockade say the trade helps fund rebels in a nearly three year conflict. More than 10,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.

"We are proud that the blockade has hit the pockets of the occupiers. We should call a war and stop business in blood and all trade with the occupied territories," parliament member Semen Semenchenko, a blockade advocate, told AP.

The Ukrainian government opposes the blockade and has warned of blackouts and factory closures if coal is not transported. But as it faces nationalist pressure in parliament President Petro Poroshenko has done nothing to break the blockade.

"The consequences of the blockade are ruinous to the government of our state," Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Rebels said earlier this week they would take over Ukrainian-owned companies if the government did not move to lift the blockade.

Ex-CIA agent to avoid jail, extradition in cleric's kidnapping

An American ex-CIA agent convicted by an Italian court of involvement in the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric on a Milan street will avoid extradition to Italy and will instead be set free, according to her lawyer.

The news came less than 24 hours after the Italian president granted Sabrina de Sousa partial clemency on the eve of her expected extradition from Portugal to serve a prison sentence for her alleged role in the kidnapping. ...

De Sousa, who has dual U.S.-Portuguese citizenship, had been due to arrive Wednesday in Milan to start serving her sentence. The palace noted that because her sentence was reduced to three years, she could have served out the remainder of her term outside prison.

In evaluating de Sousa’s request for clemency, Mattarella took into account “that the United States has interrupted the practice of extraordinary renditions,” a reference to the Obama administration’s decision to halt the program.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard calls for the US to stop aiding terrorists like Al-Qaeda and ISIS

U.S.-allied militia agrees to hand villages to Syrian govt

A U.S.-allied militia in northern Syria said on Thursday it would hand over villages on a front line where it has been fighting Turkish-backed rebels to Syrian government control, under an agreement with Russia.

The villages will be surrendered to the Syrian government in the coming days, an official in the Manbij Military Council told Reuters. An earlier statement by the council said the villages would be handed to Syrian border guards.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara the report was false, but added there was an agreement with Russia that Syrian government and opposition forces should not fight each other in that area.

The villages west of the city of Manbij have been a focus of fighting between the Turkish-backed rebels and the Manbij Military Council, the U.S.-allied militia, since Wednesday.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said this week Manbij was the next target of Ankara's campaign in northern Syria following the capture of nearby al-Bab from Islamic State last week.

U.S. general says no evidence of YPG attacks from Northern Syria on Turkey

The top U.S. commander in the campaign against Islamic State delivered a robust defense of America's Kurdish YPG allies in Syria on Wednesday, saying he had seen no evidence linking them to attacks on Turkey from Northern Syria in the past two years.

"Of those YPG fighters, I've talked to their leaders and we've watched them operate and they continually reassure us that they have no desire to attack Turkey, that they are not a threat to Turkey, in fact that they desire to have a good working relationship with Turkey," Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend told a Pentagon news briefing, speaking remotely via video conference.

In Confirmation Lovefest, Senators Tell Future Spy Chief He May Be Too Nice for the Trump Administration

Former Sen. Dan Coat's wife Marsha and professional sports came up more frequently than CIA black sites and NSA surveillance powers during the Director of National Intelligence nominee’s confirmation hearing with the Senate intelligence committee Tuesday. ...

Coats promised to work to streamline the development process for satellites at the National Reconnaissance Office, attend meetings of the National Security Council, cooperate with Congress’s investigation into alleged Russian hacking during the election, and tell the president the truth whether he wants to hear it or not. ... But several senators who called Coats a friend — nearly all of whom asked about his “lovely wife,” as former Sen. Saxby Chambliss referred to her — expressed reservations about Coats’s kindhearted nature, his “Mr. Rogers” personality, and the potential that the White House would steamroll him during internal meetings and discussions. ...

Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who has been an outspoken critic of the intelligence community, came out swinging with specific questions and demands of Coats. While Coats had no trouble to responding to Wyden’s questions about Russia, he refused to commit to publishing the number of Americans swept up in the NSA’s foreign intelligence dragnet, or release public updates on why that estimate hadn’t been completed yet. ...

Coats also seemed to question laws against torture, including a 2015 Senate amendment to the defense budget, which in turn bolstered a 2009 executive order from President Obama. As a senator, Coats voted against that amendment, and while he told the committee his job would be to fully comply with the law, he also left open the possibility for extreme measures in a “ticking time bomb” scenario. In a situation “where you know something terrible is going to happen to the American people in a short amount of time” and “you don’t have time to go through the process that the Army Field Manual requires” Coats said, “I do think it’s at least worth a discussion relative to the situation that might occur.”

Silencing the net

Internet shutdowns by governments are becoming more frequent and systematic. Access Now, a human rights group focused on an open and free internet, documented 56 internet shutdowns in 18 countries last year, a spike from the 15 shutdowns reported in 2015.

“We first saw this as an issue during the Egypt uprising in early 2011 when telcos shut off all domestic access to the internet,” noted Peter Micek, global policy and legal counsel for Access Now. Most regions have been hit with an internet shutdown lasting anywhere from a few hours to weeks. Brazil, Malaysia, Algeria, Turkey, India, and North Korea all experienced at least one shutdown in the past two years.

Shutdowns vary in execution, from limited blocks on certain social media sites to putting entire towns offline. When these shutdowns occur, government authorities often cite national security as their primary motivation. Julie Owono, head of the Africa desk at Internet Without Borders, notes that “most documented shutdowns occurred within an intense political context, be it contested elections or citizens protesting in the streets.” For instance, months after a failed coup in Turkey, users in the country reported repeated blocks on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Governments don’t have an internet kill-switch within reach — they need the support of telecoms operators to pull off a shutdown. By issuing a court order or legal request, government authorities can require telecoms to implement a block list of select sites or even disconnect certain locations from internet access. Telecoms providers are bound by national regulations and license agreements, so few companies decide to go rogue on government requests.

New Bill Would Force NYPD to Disclose Its Surveillance Tech Playbook

Legislation introduced today by New York City council members Dan Garodnick and Vanessa Gibson would finally compel the NYPD — one of the most technology-laden police forces in the country — to make public its rulebook for deploying its controversial surveillance arsenal.

The bill, named the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) act, would require the NYPD to detail how, when, and with what authority it uses technologies like Stingray devices, which can monitor and interfere with the cellular communications of an entire crowd at once. Specifically, the department would have to publicize the “rules, processes and guidelines issued by the department regulating access to or use of such surveillance technology as well as any prohibitions or restrictions on use, including whether the department obtains a court authorization for each use of a surveillance technology, and what specific type of court authorization is sought.”

The NYPD would also have to say how it protects the gathered surveillance data itself (for example, X-ray imagery, or individuals captured in a facial recognition scan), and whether or not this data is shared with other governmental organizations. A period of public comment would follow these disclosures.

Heh, how quickly they forget! The Chinese should be thanking Hillary Clinton and the Democrats for the dodge of using "fake news" accusations to cover up uncomfortable facts.

China is dismissing unfavorable media reports as fake because that's what Trump does

In his short political career, Donald Trump has made a habit of dismissing unfavorable media reports as “fake news.” Now it seems Beijing is taking a leaf from his playbook, using the term to attempt to discredit foreign media reports on Thursday which claimed a prominent human rights lawyer was tortured in government custody. ...

Referring to the state-run Xinhua news agency report, Zhang Baohui, a political scientist at Hong Kong’s Lingnan University said that “Xinhua’s usage of this term should be attributed to Trump.” ...

Xinhua, the mouthpiece for the ruling Communist Party, published an article Thursday describing international media reports on the alleged torture of Chinese attorney Xie Yang as “nothing but cleverly orchestrated lies.” “The stories were essentially fake news,” read the article.

Keiser Report: Financial Toxicity in the US

Only $20m in existing funds found to pay for Mexico wall, document says

Donald Trump’s promise to use existing funds to begin immediate construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border has hit a financial roadblock, according to a document seen by Reuters.

The rapid start of construction, promised throughout Trump’s campaign and in an executive order issued in January on border security, was to be financed, according to the White House, with “existing funds and resources” of the Department of Homeland Security.

But so far, the DHS has identified only $20m that can be redirected to the multibillion-dollar project, according to a document prepared by the agency and distributed to congressional budget staff last week.

The document said the funds would be enough to cover a handful of contracts for wall prototypes, but not enough to begin construction of an actual barrier. This means that for the wall to move forward, the White House will need to convince Congress to appropriate funds.

Dreamer detained by Ice agents while in process of Daca status renewal

A young woman applying for the renewal of her Daca status was arrested and detained by immigration agents in Jackson, Mississippi, on Wednesday, shortly after she addressed a press conference in support of undocumented migrants’ rights.

Daniela Vargas, a 22-year-old who came to the US as a seven-year-old child from Cordoba, Argentina, had told the rally how she dreamed of returning to college and becoming a math teacher, according to her attorneys.

Shortly after the event, as she was driven along an interstate highway by a friend, she was pulled over by Immigration and Customs Agents (Ice) and arrested, said immigration attorney Nathan Elmore. ... Elmore said his firm had not heard from Vargas since her arrest earlier on Wednesday, but he believed she had been transferred to Ice detention in Louisiana. He would not comment on whether the arrest was retaliation for Vargas’s conversations with the media.

Research indicates Trump travel ban was based on misleading data

Donald Trump has relied upon a dubious statistic to support his ban on travel to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries, terrorism researchers and databases indicate. ... Though Trump did not specify the source for his data, several terrorism scholars have identified it as a justice department compilation released last year by Jeff Sessions, now Trump’s attorney general. ...

“Those figures are technically correct if you count only international terrorism-related cases as calculated by the Department of Justice, but it is substantively misleading because it doesn’t include domestic terrorism and it does include a large number of cases that pose no threat to the United States,” said Charles Kurzman, a University of North Carolina professor who tallies data on American Muslim extremists.

“That would include people attempting to travel abroad, financing of movements abroad, sometimes in very small amounts, and a couple hundred cases from the years right after 9/11, with no known link to terrorism, that are nonetheless included on that list.”

Asylum Seeker Battling Brain Tumor Removed from Texas Hospital in Handcuffs, Taken to Private Jail

Police chiefs object to Trump's efforts to involve them in immigrant deportations

Police chiefs from across the US, including several from states that voted for Donald Trump, are resisting White House moves to force them to become more involved in deporting undocumented immigrants.

In a joint letter, more than 60 law enforcement heads are appealing to Trump in all but name to soften his aggressive drive to enlist police officers in the highly contentious job of deporting millions of immigrants living without permission in the country. They object to being thrust into “new and sometimes problematic tasks” that will undermine the balance between the local communities they serve and the federal government, and “harm locally-based, community-oriented policing”.

The letter is signed by 61 current and former local police chiefs and sheriffs, many of whom come from states won by Trump last November including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina and Texas. The political diversity and geographic spread of the signatories underlines the deep apprehension felt by many within the law enforcement community toward the president’s plans to beef up their role in rounding up, detaining and ultimately deporting huge numbers of people.

U.S., HSBC urge court to block release of money laundering report

Lawyers for the U.S. government and HSBC Holdings Plc on Wednesday urged a federal appeals court to block release of a court-appointed monitor's report on how HSBC is working to improve its money laundering controls.

The monitor who prepared the report was appointed as part of a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement in which HSBC admitted to violating U.S. sanctions laws and failing to stop Mexican and Colombian cartels from laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds through the bank.

HSBC agreed to pay a $1.92 billion fine and to be monitored by former New York prosecutor Michel Cherkasky, now the executive chairman of the compliance company Exiger, for five years. Under the deal, Cherkasky's reports on the bank's progress have not been public.

Hubert Dean Moore, an HSBC mortgage customer, moved to release one of the reports in late 2015. U.S. District Judge John Gleeson, who was overseeing the deferred prosecution agreement but has since left the bench, granted Moore's motion last year.

Jenny Ellickson, arguing for the government on Wednesday, said Gleeson had improperly interfered with prosecutors' work.

Police say they were 'authorized by McDonald's' to arrest protesters, suit claims

Police claimed they had “authorization from the president of McDonald’s” to arrest protesting fast food workers, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed on Wednesday against the city of Memphis, Tennessee.

The suit alleges that local police engaged in a “widespread and illegal campaign of surveillance and intimidation” against a local chapter of the Fight for $15 fast-food worker organization as it campaigned for an increase in the minimum wage and union rights for fast food workers.

Officers followed organizers home after meetings, ordered workers not to sign petitions and blacklisted organizers from city hall, according to the suit. They claimed to have been authorized by McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast food chain, and in one incident a McDonald’s franchisee joined police in tailing protesters.

The suit alleges that a campaign of harassment began after Memphis workers participated in a nationwide day of protest on 4 September 2014. Since then, police officers have repeatedly threatened workers with arrest during protests, at one point telling them they had “authorization from the president of McDonald’s to make arrests”. On “multiple occasions” officers “seemed to take direction from McDonald’s”, the complaint charges. ...

The suit, brought against the city, Mayor James Strickland and the police director, Michael Rallings, alleges that the police have violated a 1978 consent decree that banned political surveillance following revelations the department had spied on civil rights activists, war protesters and other “radicals” for years.

Robots won't just take our jobs – they'll make the rich even richer

Should robots pay taxes? It may sound strange, but a number of prominent people have been asking this question lately. As fears about the impact of automation grow, calls for a “robot tax” are gaining momentum. Earlier this month, the European parliament considered one for the EU. Benoît Hamon, the French Socialist party presidential candidate who is often described as his country’s Bernie Sanders, has put a robot tax in his platform. Even Bill Gates recently endorsed the idea.

The proposals vary, but they share a common premise. As machines and algorithms get smarter, they’ll replace a widening share of the workforce. A robot tax could raise revenue to retrain those displaced workers, or supply them with a basic income.

The good news is that the robot apocalypse hasn’t arrived just yet. Despite a steady stream of alarming headlines about clever computers gobbling up our jobs, the economic data suggests that automation isn’t happening on a large scale. The bad news is that if it does, it will produce a level of inequality that will make present-day America look like an egalitarian utopia by comparison. ...

What’s so bad about wealth without labor? It depends on who owns the wealth. Under capitalism, wages are how workers receive a portion of what they produce. That portion has always been small, relative to the rewards that flow to the owners of capital. And over the past several decades, it’s gotten smaller: the share of the national income that goes to wages has been steadily shrinking, while the share that goes to capital has been growing. ... Capital liberated from labor means not merely the end of work, but the end of the wage. And without the wage, workers lose their only access to wealth – not to mention their only means of survival. They also lose their primary source of social power. So long as workers control the point of production, they can shut it down. The strike is still the most effective weapon workers have, even if they rarely use it any more. A fully automated economy would make them not just redundant, but powerless.

Crony Capitalism at Work? Trump Adviser Carl Icahn Strong-Arms Ethanol Lobby to Save His Company Millions

Critics are charging that billionaire investor Carl Icahn has used his position as Donald Trump’s deregulatory czar to strong-arm the ethanol lobby into agreeing to a change that will save one of Icahn’s companies $200 million a year. ...

The backdrop for this drama is the government’s renewable fuel standard, which requires all gasoline sold in America to contain a minimum volume of renewable sources — generally corn-based ethanol. One of the more arcane elements of the current rule is that oil refiners are responsible to make sure the rule is followed – not the gasoline wholesalers (or “blenders”).

Icahn is the majority owner of CVR Energy, a refiner which does not have the infrastructure to blend ethanol. As a result, CVR must buy renewable fuel credits to comply with their obligation. In its most recent SEC filing, CVR stated it spent $205.9 million last year on renewable fuel credits. Shifting the point of obligation to blenders would relieve CVR of that expense. “That’s big money, even to a billionaire,” Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program at Public Citizen, told The Intercept.

And all of a sudden this week, the top renewable-fuels trade organization reversed its previous position and announced that it had reached an agreement with Icahn, on his terms. ... On Tuesday, a Trump spokesperson denied an executive order was imminent. But the same day, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), the ethanol industry’s top trade group, struck a deal with Icahn, agreeing to change the point of obligation in exchange for an increase to how much ethanol must be placed in gasoline. Under the deal, the 15 percent ethanol blend, or E15, would be mandatory year-round; currently that mandate is relaxed in the summertime.

Hopium overdose?

The anti-Trump movement just had its first big election test

Last November, Connecticut Democrat Greg Cava ran for a state Senate seat, garnering just 32 percent of ballots and losing by more votes — 17,000 — than he received. On Tuesday, he had the opportunity to run for the seat again in a special election. Once again, he lost.

And yet Cava’s campaign headquarters, located on the second floor of a dingy photo studio in Watertown, Connecticut, may very well be ground zero for the future of the Democratic Party.

“I see our loss as a beacon of hope,” Cava’s campaign manager, Aaron Schrag, said the morning after the polls closed. “People from all sides of the political aisle worked together on this campaign because they saw value in coming together for a common cause.”

Tuesday’s special election in Connecticut’s deeply red 32nd district — a Democrat has not held the state Senate seat for well over a century — took place after the Republican who originally beat Cava vacated the seat to take a different position. And though Cava lost again, early results show it was by only 1,800 votes. If he had won, it would have given Democrats control of the Connecticut Senate.

Major Israel Donor Smears and Obama Lobbying Led to Ellison's Defeat for DNC Chair

Private investor divests $34.8m from firms tied to Dakota Access pipeline

Norway’s largest private investor is divesting from three companies tied to the Dakota Access pipeline, a small victory for the Standing Rock movement one week after the eviction of the main protest encampment.

Storebrand, a sustainable investment manager with $68bn in assets, sold off $34.8m worth of shares in Phillips 66, Marathon Petroleum Corporation, and Enbridge, the company announced Wednesday. The three companies are partial owners of the pipeline.

“We hope that our actions and the actions of other likeminded investors in either divesting or calling for an alternative [pipeline] route will make some sort of an impact,” said Matthew Smith, the head of Storebrand’s sustainability team.

In addition to the protest encampments, opponents of the pipeline have waged divestment campaigns against the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners. Using the slogan Defund DAPL, activists have also urged individuals and institutions to move money out of banks that are financing pipeline construction, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America.

The Seattle City Council voted this month not to renew the city’s contract with Wells Fargo over the bank’s involvement with the pipeline project, removing $3bn from the bank’s coffers. Other cities are considering similar moves.

Environmentalists urge French bank not to finance Texas fracking project

Environmental groups have called on a French bank not to help finance a fracked-gas export terminal planned for south Texas.

A report released on Wednesday urges BNP Paribas and its US subsidiary, Bank of the West, to state it will not finance any projects for liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals and to adopt a policy of not backing LNG export schemes. One of the proposals, the Texas LNG terminal, would be built on 1,000 acres of land, potentially making it the largest facility of its kind in the country.

“It’s a destructive fossil fuel infrastructure project in the Gulf coast in one of the relatively untouched parts,” said Jason Opeña Disterhoft of the Rainforest Action Network.

He said there “is some hypocrisy” in BNP’s involvement given that the company touts its green credentials. In the wake of the 2015 Paris agreement to address climate change, the bank said it was committed to responsible investment, such as financing renewable energy rather than coalmining, and minimising atmospheric pollution as a result of its business activities.

Oklahoma suffers more earthquakes than any other non-Western state, study finds

Oklahoma, the home state of new Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, suffers more natural and man-made earthquakes than any other state in the central and eastern United States.

The state endured more large earthquakes in 2016 than in any previously recorded year, according to a study released Wednesday by the U.S. Geological Survey on natural and induced earthquakes. ... Man-made earthquakes are primarily caused by wastewater disposal, a process where water from oil and gas operations is injected into deep underground wells. That weakens fault lines, which can then trigger earthquakes. Additionally, fracking, in which liquids are injected at high pressure into subterranean rock, can lead to earthquakes.

Oklahoma has been hit hardest; its seismic risk now rivals California’s, the study found. The state also experienced its largest-ever recorded earthquake this year, when the town of Pawnee was struck by a quake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale. ...

Though USGS scientists reported that humans were causing earthquakes in 2013, Oklahoma didn’t acknowledge it until 2015. Pruitt’s silence on the issue, his multiple lawsuits against the EPA while he was Oklahoma attorney general, and his close relationship to the oil industry have environmental activists extremely worried about his leadership of the EPA.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: Donald in Wonderland

Healthcare Workers Proclaim ‘Sanctuary Union’, Push for Medicare for All in California

Trump Wants You to Think All the Immigrants He’ll Deport Are Criminals. They’re Not.

Socialist Response to Trump’s Address to Joint Session of Congress

Minerals found in shipwreck and museum drawer 'show we are living in new epoch'

A Little Night Music

John Lee Williamson - Wonderful Time

John Lee Williamson - Sugar Mama Blues

Sonny Boy Williamson 1 - Rub A Dub

John Lee Williamson - Sloppy Drunk Blues

John Lee Williamson - Apple Tree Swing

John Lee Sonny Boy Williamson I - Mean Old Highway

John Lee Williamson - Better Cut That Out

John Lee Williamson - She Was a Dreamer

John Lee Williamson - Check Up On My Baby

John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson - Hoodoo Hoodoo