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This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist and singer Mighty Joe Young. Enjoy!

"One of the main challenges for Left political economy is that the whole of Western political and economic infrastructure has been crafted to serve the goals of capitalist imperialism. ... In a very real sense the struggle is between conscious optimism that death, greed and destruction aren’t the base modes of human existence against dismal resignation that they are. The institutional backdrop is in no sense a neutral arbiter. It is the product of a Western id borne of war and strife as if they were facts of nature rather than human determination. This id feeds on manufactured fear, reflexively opposes alternative social visions and stands against efforts to forge a different path forward. The political choice is to work within this established set of social constraints or to push the contribution of human determination in a different direction from outside of it."

-- Rob Urie

News and Opinion

What the Guilty Verdict of Radovan Karadzic Tells Us About War Crimes After 9/11

Karadzic became the leader of Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s and made history in dark ways, but the latest twist, which occurred today, is unexpectedly bright — he has been convicted, after a long and open trial in the Hague, of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. This outcome is bright for reasons beyond the satisfaction of justice in the Balkans. At the moment, it might seem far-fetched to imagine that U.S. political and military officials will be held to account for torture and other war crimes they approved, condoned, or bore command responsibility for in the post-9/11 era. But it was even more unlikely in the 1990s to think that the hand of justice — the justice of a fair trial, not a mob’s noose or a precision-guided missile — would get close to Karadzic and his prime collaborators. ...

In 2014, President Obama made the headline-grabbing admission, “We tortured some folks.” Yet his long-overdue statement was not followed by the kind of legal consequences that have been required of other states and individuals that violated the laws of war. After all, it would not have been enough for the successors of Karadzic or Milosevic to simply admit that war crimes were committed and move on without trials. While a handful of low-level violators have been punished in the United States— some soldiers involved in abuses at Abu Ghraib have gone to prison, for instance — their commanders, whether with stars on their shoulders or tassles on their loafers, have lived unmolested by U.S. courts. ...

Many of the people who survived Karadzic’s crimes are long dead, as are many of the people who wrote about them. With this timeline in mind, it could well be a quarter century or more before a legal reckoning occurs for everything the U.S. government has done since Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four civilian jetliners on September 11, 2001.  ... The people who believed that Karadzic would never face justice now have something to celebrate, too. We should keep that in mind when we are told that we tortured some folks but nobody should be held responsible for it.

Lobbying Shop That Works for Egypt's Brutal Dictatorship Has Close Ties to Clintons

Hillary Clinton’s campaign website proclaims that as president, she would “continue her long-standing emphasis” on human rights.

But Clinton’s ties to a lobbying firm working for the government of Egypt, a country with an abusive human rights record, casts doubt on those words.

Under Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, government security forces have detained, charged or sentenced at least 41,000 people, according to Human Rights Watch. Human rights groups in Egypt say at least 124 people have died while in Egyptian prisons due to torture or negligence since Sisi came to power.

Since 2013, the Egyptian government has employed the Glover Park Group, a Washington firm run by former members of Bill Clinton’s administration, to lobby for it and to forge ties with congressional officials and media outlets, according to Foreign Agent Registration Act documents. One of the heads of Glover Park organized a fundraiser for Clinton in April 2014 that netted thousands of dollars for the candidate. Separately, employees of Glover Park have donated about $16,200 in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The Egyptian government is well placed to influence a future Hillary Clinton administration because of its ties to the Glover Park Group. Egypt has paid over $5 million to the lobbying firm. The strong links could help Egypt weather future criticism of its human rights violations during a new Clinton tenure in the White House.

[See article for more details. - js]

Navy SEAL Who Kept Photo of Osama bin Laden After Raid Suggests SEAL Team Six Operates Above the Law

The Big Lie About the Libyan War

In contemporary political debates, the Libya intervention tends to be remembered as an intra-administration soap opera, focused on the role Clinton — or Susan Rice or Samantha Power — played in advising Obama to go through with it. ... Five years on, it’s still not a matter of public record when exactly Western powers decided to topple Qaddafi. ...

From the Defense Department, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen informed David Gregory of Meet the Press, “The goals of this campaign right now again are limited, and it isn’t about seeing him go.” Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates echoed the administration line: “Regime change is a very complicated business. It sometimes takes a long time. Sometimes it can happen very fast, but it was never part of the military mission.”

Now, contrast Gates’s assertion in 2011 with what he told the New York Times last month:

“I can’t recall any specific decision that said, ‘Well, let’s just take him out,’” Mr. Gates said. Publicly, he said, “the fiction was maintained” that the goal was limited to disabling Colonel Qaddafi’s command and control. In fact, the former defense secretary said, “I don’t think there was a day that passed that people didn’t hope he would be in one of those command and control centers.”

This is scarcely believable. Given that decapitation strikes against Qaddafi were employed early and often, there almost certainly was a decision by the civilian heads of government of the NATO coalition to “take him out” from the very beginning of the intervention. ...

During the theatrical and exhaustive Benghazi hearing in October 2015, Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) asked Clinton about a video clip that read, “‘We came, we saw, he died [meaning Qaddafi].’ Is that the Clinton doctrine?” Clinton replied, “No, that was an expression of relief that the military mission undertaken by NATO and our other partners had achieved its end.” Yet, this was never the military mission that the Obama administration repeatedly told the world it had set out to achieve. It misled the American public, because while presidents attempt to frame their wars as narrow, limited, and essential, admitting to the honest objective in Libya — regime change — would have brought about more scrutiny and diminished public support. The conclusion is clear: While we should listen to what U.S. and Western officials claim are their military objectives, all that matters is what they authorize their militaries to actually do.

Britain and Jordan’s secret war in Libya

Britain has launched covert military operations in Libya against Islamic State (IS) militants with the support of Jordan, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Soldiers from the elite Special Air Services (SAS) regiment have been sent to tackle an emerging IS threat in Libya as part of a global war against the group, and Britain has recruited Jordanian special forces to provide local intelligence, according to Jordanian King Abdullah II Ibn Hussein.

It is the first official confirmation that British troops are operating inside Libya against IS.

MEE has obtained a detailed account of a meeting Abdullah held with US congressional leaders in January, when he revealed the previously unreported deployment of British and Jordanian special forces in Libya.

According to the account, sent on the condition of anonymity by a source close to the meeting, Abdullah said that he expected covert military operations in Libya to increase after the meeting, which was held in the week of 11 January. He told his American audience that Jordanian special forces would be embedded with their British counterparts. ...

He did not reveal the size or scope of the operations in Libya, where IS has seized control of territory amid a political vacuum that has emerged in the chaos since former leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and later killed in a NATO-backed 2011 uprising.

Libya's Tripoli Government Declares a State of Emergency

Libya's Islamist-backed government in the capital, Tripoli, has declared a state of emergency after reports that four members of the rival United Nations' unity government have arrived.

The west has pinned hope for resolving Libya's chaos and blocking the Islamic State group's growth there on the unity government, which is brokered by the United Nations and headed by Fayez Serraj, who is yet to enter the capital later this month.

Blackwater Founder's Latest Scheme: Money Laundering for Libyan Officials Through a Chinese Bank

Saudi Arabia campaign leaves 80% of Yemen population needing aid

It is difficult to view Saudi Arabia’s relentless war of attrition in Yemen as anything other than a destructive failure. The military intervention that began one year ago has killed an estimated 6,400 people, half of them civilians, injured 30,000 more and displaced 2.5 million, according to the UN. Eighty per cent of the population, about 20 million people, are now in need of some form of aid.

The Saudis’ principal aim – to restore Yemen’s deposed president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi – has not been achieved. If they hoped to contain spreading Iranian regional influence, that has not worked, either. If the US-backed coalition’s campaign was intended to combat terrorism, that too has flopped. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), in particular, and Islamic State (Isis) have profited from the continuing anarchy. ...

Already one of the world’s poorest countries before fighting escalated last year, Yemen now faces widespread famine. Food shortages are being exacerbated by a growing bank and credit crisis, Oxfam warned this week.

“The destruction of farms and markets, a de facto blockade on commercial imports, and a long-running fuel crisis have caused a drop in agricultural production, a scarcity of supplies and exorbitant food prices,” Oxfam said. Sajjad Mohamed Sajid, Oxfam’s country director, said: “A brutal conflict on top of an existing crisis ... has created one of the biggest humanitarian emergencies in the world today – yet most people are unaware of it. Close to 14.4 million people are hungry and the majority will not be able to withstand the rising prices.”

Hedges: "We Bomb Them, They Bomb Us"

US Marines Expand Combat Role, Participating in Iraq Offensive

US Marines from Firebase Bell fired illumination rounds early in the battle to help see ISIS forces during the pre-dawn attacks, and also provided supporting fire for Iraqi troops advancing into the villages. ...

Despite this, Pentagon officials are still trying to argue semantics, insisting we shouldn’t consider Firebase Bell a “coimbat outpost” as much, despite its role in combat, because it’s located a bit behind the front lines near Mosul.

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that more Marines are being deployed to Iraq soon, and that they will be participating in direct combat. It is unclear, then, why officials are so desperate to portray today’s involvement in combat as something less.

War in Syria: Russia and US agree to speed up peace talks

Secret Trial Begins of Leading Turkish Journalists Facing Life Sentences For Espionage

Two prominent Turkish opposition journalists have gone on trial and face possible life sentences on charges of espionage, after publishing footage purportedly showing the state intelligence agency sending weapons to Syria. The court ruled on Friday the trial will be held behind closed doors.

Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of newspaper Cumhuriyet, told Reuters he would use his trial, which has drawn international condemnation, to refocus attention on the story that landed him in the dock.

Dundar, 54, and Erdem Gul, 49, Cumhuriyet's Ankara bureau chief, stand accused of trying to topple the government with the publication last May of video footage apparently showing Turkey's state intelligence agency overseeing weapons shipments into Syria in 2014.

"We are not defendants, we are witnesses," Dundar said during an interview at his office, insisting he would show the footage in court despite a ban.

"We will lay out all of the illegalities and make this a political prosecution ... The state was caught in a criminal act and it is doing all that it can to cover it up." ...

After being arrested in November, Dundar and Gul spent 92 days in jail, almost half of that time in solitary confinement, before the constitutional court ruled last month that pre-trial detention was unfounded because the charges stemmed from their journalism.

Humanitarian Groups Refuse to Partake in 'Mass Expulsion' of Refugees

In a stinging rebuke to Europe's political leaders, four prominent humanitarian groups are ceasing operations in refugee camps on several Greek islands this week because of what they characterize as human rights violations in the wake of the controversial EU-Turkey refugee deal.

"We will not allow our assistance to be instrumentalized for a mass expulsion operation, and we refuse to be part of a system that has no regard for the humanitarian or protection needs of asylum seekers and migrants," said Marie Elisabeth Ingres, the head of the Doctors without Borders (MSF) mission in Greece, on Tuesday.

The EU-Turkey deal, which involves trading refugees between Europe and Turkey in a "one-for-one" scheme, requires the construction of "detainment centers" to hold refugees for indefinite periods while asylum applications are processed.

The aid organizations MSF, Save the Children International, Oxfam, and the Norwegian Refugee Council all describe the "unlawful and unjustified" detainment of asylum seekers as an egregious violation of human rights, and argue that taking part would constitute both a betrayal of their core values as well as international law. ...

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) announced (pdf) on Wednesday that it would also suspend operations on the Greek island of Chios, a so-called "hotspot" where many asylum seekers land in their attempt to reach Europe, which is being transformed into a detention center. The organization "determined that it is no longer possible to implement humanitarian activities" on Chios, as the NRC "will not and cannot be associated with any system designed to facilitate return and detention."

Obama Arrives in Argentina Amid Protests Against his Visit

Israeli Rights Group Releases Video of Soldier Executing Wounded Palestinian Suspect

An Israeli soldier was arrested on Thursday after a rights group published clear video images of him shooting a wounded, immobilized Palestinian suspect in the head following a knife attack in the West Bank city of Hebron earlier in the day.

The graphic, distressing video was posted online by B’Tselem, an Israeli group that provides cameras to Palestinians to help them document human rights abuses in the West Bank territory that has been under military rule since Israel first occupied it in 1967. ...

Several Palestinian and Israeli observers were struck by the fact that no one around the soldier who fired the shot seemed to treat the incident as unusual — suggesting that such extrajudicial killings of suspected attackers have now become “routine,” as critics have charged. ...

Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List of predominantly Arab parties in Israel’s parliament, wrote on Twitter: “Israel has turned in recent months into a place in which executions are carried out in public with the encouragement of cheering mobs.”

B’Tselem, which has repeatedly raised the alarm about the shooting of wounded suspects, said that the authorities were to blame for excusing previous incidents that were less clearly documented. “Extrajudicial street killings are the direct consequence of inflammatory remarks made by Israeli ministers and officials, augmented by the general public atmosphere of dehumanization,” the group wrote.

Think the NSA Can't Hack an iPhone Without Apple's Help? Think Again.

New photos of Oregon wildlife refuge reveal damage done by Bundy standoff

Photos released by Fish and Wildlife Service show protesters trashed buildings and damaged facilities, with the occupation’s overall costs running at least $6m

Images from the Malheur national wildlife refuge in rural Harney County – where anti-government activists, led by Ammon Bundy, staged a takeover in January to protest federal land-use regulations – show piles of garbage, offices turned upside down, abandoned camping gear, food and alcohol, broken walls and excavated grounds.

Government officials who run the bird sanctuary have also revealed that the cost of the occupation for the federal agency is at least $6m – a number that could grow as workers continue to assess and repair damage.

Since the high-profile occupation, which drew armed militiamen from across the country, began 2 January at the headquarters of the refuge, protest leaders have insisted that they were not damaging any public property and were instead cleaning up facilities.

But after dozens of activists joined the occupation – some working on federal computers, rummaging through office records and artifacts, building roads and trenches and establishing group living quarters on site – officials say the damage was significant and costly.

It's Getting Harder to Pay the Rent in America

It's been more than 15 years since Congress increased funding for the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, the government's primary method for encouraging construction of affordable housing. On Thursday, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is to announce a plan that calls for Congress to spend 50 percent more on the program, enough to build as many as 400,000 homes over the next decade.

That makes the Democrat's plan an ambitious attempt to increase the stock of affordable rental housing, one that comes in the face of potential opposition by a Republican majority, along with the legislative gridlock of a presidential election year. It’s also just a drop in the bucket.

There are 3.9 million low-income households that lack access to affordable housing, according to Cantwell's office. Just as troubling, the number of U.S. households spending 50 percent of their income on rent could increase to 15 million by 2025, according to a study by Harvard’s Joint Center on Housing Studies and Enterprise Community Partners.

US economic slowdown not as sharp as feared

US economic growth slowed in the fourth quarter, but not as sharply as previously estimated, with fairly strong consumer spending offsetting the drag from businesses trying to cut stock levels.

Gross domestic product increased at a 1.4% annual rate instead of the previously reported 1% pace, the Commerce Department said on Friday in its third GDP estimate.

GDP growth was initially estimated to have risen just 0.7%. The economy grew at a rate of 2% in the third quarter and expanded 2.4% for all of 2015.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected that fourth-quarter GDP growth would be unrevised at a 1% rate.

High Court Asks Administration to Weigh in on Predatory Lending Case

A Supreme Court order this week forces the Obama Administration to make a decision: either save consumers tens of billions of dollars at the expense of debt collectors, car loan specialists, and student lenders, or defend those financial entities.

In a one-line order, the justices on Monday asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, the legal representative for the federal government in Supreme Court matters, to file a brief in the case of Madden v. Midland Funding, “expressing the views of the United States.”

In Madden, a class-action case, borrowers argued that loans sold by a bank to a debt collector should be subject to the usury law in New York state, which limits the interest rate that can be charged. The 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and Midland Funding appealed to the Supreme Court. Legal experts are following the case closely, since it could, after nearly 40 years, herald a return to prominence for state-based usury laws, a key safeguard against predatory lending.

“Does the White House stand for consumer protection, or will it support Wall Street when no one is looking?” asked Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University. Levitin, a pioneer of the argument that state usury laws apply to non-banks, believes the White House’s views will likely determine whether the Supreme Court takes the case. ...

If the administration advises the court to hear Madden, it would presumably signal that it wants them to overturn the 2^nd Circuit ruling, which would be a victory for the financial industry.

MoveOn Petition: Draft Bernie Sanders as Independent If He Loses Democratic Nomination

Here's a fun bit of clicktivism. Click on the link above and tell MoveOn to fully support and promote the poll.

Poll: Sanders within striking distance of Clinton in Wisconsin

The former first lady is up by a margin of 50 percent [to] 44 percent with only 5 percent of the electorate undecided in Emerson College's poll. The poll shows similar demographic trends as in other contests, with Sanders leading with voters between 18 and 54 years of age but Clinton leading with older voters. ...

There are 86 pledged delegates up for grabs in Wisconsin on April 5, which will be awarded proportionally based on results in congressional districts. The Emerson poll found that the candidates split the state's eight districts.

Emerson polled 354 likely Democratic primary voters between March 20 and March 22 with a margin of error of 5.2 percent.

The Democrats have launched a smarmy, patronizing effort to neutralize the left’s best check on Hillary Clinton

No Democrat would ever insist Bernie Sanders drop out of the race, Sen. Sherrod Brown told Politico this week. “I don’t think any Democrat should call on him to get out,” he said. “Almost no Democrat I know would say that. And shouldn’t.”

The Democrats won’t force him out of the race, no; they’ll just smother him with smarmy condescension.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, for instance, tells Politico that “what’s important is not whether or not he gets out, but how he campaigns. If the contrast is now about what separates us from Donald Trump, then I think it’s fine.” Did you hear that, Sanders? You have McCaskill’s permission to continue campaigning as long as you only speak about how Democrats are better than Donald Trump. “It’s good [for Sanders] to continue to raise the concerns that people have,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen says, similarly, “but I think it ought to be in the context of, ‘This is the difference between the Democrats and Republicans in this race.’ ” It’s unclear where either McCaskill or Shaheen got the perception that Sanders is campaigning to be the rapid-response director of the Democratic National Committee. And it’s also not as if Sanders has been especially vicious with Clinton this race.

White House Petition to Investigate Arizona Primary Reaches 100,000 Signatures

A petition calling for an investigation into voter suppression in the Arizona primary has 100,000 signatures, requiring an official White House response. Even though the petition’s creator set a deadline of April 21 to reach the 100,000 signature goal, the petition went viral, reaching 100,000 in less than 48 hours.

The petition demands the Obama Administration investigate the irregularities prevalent throughout Arizona on Tuesday night, particularly in regard to the untold thousands of registered Democrats who showed up in precinct databases as independents or members of third parties, meaning they could only vote on provisional ballots that aren’t actually counted. Because Arizona is a closed primary state, only voters registered as Democrat, Republican, or Green are guaranteed to be counted in the final vote.

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry

In February, Harvard researchers published an explosive paper in Geophysical Research Letters. Using satellite data and ground observations, they concluded that the nation as a whole is leaking methane in massive quantities. Between 2002 and 2014, the data showed that US methane emissions increased by more than 30 percent, accounting for 30 to 60 percent of an enormous spike in methane in the entire planet’s atmosphere.

To the extent our leaders have cared about climate change, they’ve fixed on CO2. Partly as a result, coal-fired power plants have begun to close across the country. They’ve been replaced mostly with ones that burn natural gas, which is primarily composed of methane. Because burning natural gas releases significantly less carbon dioxide than burning coal, CO2 emissions have begun to trend slowly downward, allowing politicians to take a bow. But this new Harvard data, which comes on the heels of other aerial surveys showing big methane leakage, suggests that our new natural-gas infrastructure has been bleeding methane into the atmosphere in record quantities. And molecule for molecule, this unburned methane is much, much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.

The EPA insisted this wasn’t happening, that methane was on the decline just like CO2. But it turns out, as some scientists have been insisting for years, the EPA was wrong. Really wrong. ... These leaks are big enough to wipe out a large share of the gains from the Obama administration’s work on climate change—all those closed coal mines and fuel-efficient cars. In fact, it’s even possible that America’s contribution to global warming increased during the Obama years.

Subsidized to the End: Not Even Corporate Welfare Can Save Big Coal

This year, two energy companies that have each received billions of dollars in subsidies and financial support from the federal government are going into bankruptcy. You might think, in this post-Solyndra political environment, that conservative commentators and politicians would be lining up at the Fox News studios to call for some heads to roll.

But, no. Even though these companies have benefited from enough federal subsidies to make the Solyndra loan look like pocket change, there's no outrage. Because they are coal companies (not solar), the story isn’t about how the federal government spent decades propping them up, it’s about how the president’s Clean Power Plan is taking them down. ...

In “Corporate Welfare for Coal,” Greenpeace reveals that the vast majority of coal production for three of the country’s biggest mining companies occurs on American public lands. Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, and Cloud Peak Energy together account for roughly 40-percent of all the coal mined in the United States. And most of that coal, by a long margin, is federally subsidized public coal, largely from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas. ...

That the nation’s biggest coal miners complain routinely about federal policies while getting most of their coal from federal land would be, on its own, pretty ironic.

“Coal companies like Peabody are biting the hand that feeds, attacking federal policies like the Clean Power Plan even while they depend on federal coal for most of the coal they mine,” said Greenpeace Energy Campaign Director Kelly Mitchell.

The irony is even greater still. The policies and practices that guide federal coal leases actually provide massive subsidies to the mining companies. In effect, coal companies aren’t only biting the hands that feeds—they are biting the hand that feeds them a high quality meal for marked down prices.

Environmentalists Converge on New Orleans To Disrupt Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas Lease Sale

Hundreds of Gulf Coast residents and environmentalists from across the country protested against a federal lease sale of 44.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to the oil and gas industry yesterday in New Orleans.

The group marched from Duncan Plaza to the Mercedes-Benz Superdome — where the sale was held — calling for an end to drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and an immediate hiring of a thousand workers to clean up and repair aging oil infrastructure, including rigs, platforms, pipelines and refineries.

They included Gulf Coast residents and local environmental organizations 350 Louisiana, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Bridge the Gulf and Vanishing Earth. Members of national groups Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Oil Change International, Indigena, Bold Nebraska, Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, the Center for Biological Diversity, Rethink Energy, Tar Sands Blockade and Rainforest Action Network also took part in the protest.

No effort was made to stop the protesters from entering the Superdome or the room where the auction took place. While the protest had been publicized since February on social media, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) seemed caught off guard.

The protesters chanted throughout the lease sale, which lasted about an hour and a half. They drowned out the voice of BOEM Gulf of Mexico Regional Director Michael Celata who was calling out the bids and announcing the lease winners.

Alabama Taps BP Spill Funds for Another Upscale Beach Project

Alabama has started building a controversial hotel and convention center on the Gulf of Mexico with money meant to compensate the state for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, sidestepping a court ruling that barred it from using other restoration funds.

It's the second time in recent months that cash-strapped Alabama has tapped into the same pool of funds for a controversial project, raising questions among watchdog groups about how that money is being spent. Environmental groups call it another example of state officials playing fast and loose with money that was supposed to be spent restoring the Gulf after the 2010 blowout, which still leaves tar balls washing up on the state's roughly 100-mile coastline. ...

Alabama is grappling with another financial crunch, leaving Gov. Robert Bentley threatening to veto the budget state lawmakers just sent him this week. The two-term Republican is not only embroiled in a sex scandal, he's also under fire for giving some senior officials raises of more than $70,000 while public services face cuts.

So state officials are boasting that the $135 million, 350-room oceanfront hotel and conference center won't cost taxpayers a dime. It would replace a more modest state park lodge that was wiped out in 2004, when Hurricane Ivan slammed into the beach resort of Gulf Shores. It's the second most-expensive project to date in the Gulf restoration effort, behind a $318 million effort to restore Louisiana's coast and barrier islands.

Also of Interest

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

Chomsky, Snowden, Greenwald: A Conversation on Privacy Livestream

Bernie Sanders and the Burden of Empire

We Asked NSA’s Privacy Officer If U.S. Spying Powers Are Safe With Donald Trump. Here’s What She Said.

Obama’s Curious Interview

Putin's unreported genius ob Ukraine currency warfare

How Republicans are gaming the voting system to tip the 2016 election in their favor

A Little Night Music

Mighty Joe Young - Drivin' wheel

Mighty Joe Young - Big Talk

Mighty Joe Young - Early In The Morning

Mighty Joe Young - Bluesy Josephine

Mighty Joe Young - Why, Baby

Mighty Joe Young - As The Years Go Passing By

Mighty Joe Young - Just A Minute