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This evening's music features rock and roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Enjoy!

"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit."

-- John Quincy Adams

News and Opinion

Democratic Senator obtains a clue!

Holy crap! This is the most amazing thing to tumble out of the mouth of a Democrat in the Senate in years. Will the wonders never cease?

Dem senator compares Obama's moves in Syria to Putin's in Ukraine

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on Thursday called the Obama administration hypocritical for criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine when it has put troops into Syria without permission.

"How can we criticize the Russian incursion into Ukrainian sovereignty when we are carrying out escalating military operations in Syria without the permission and really even against the will of the sovereign nation?" he said.

Kaine pointed out that Russia's own military campaign in Syria is internationally legal — unlike the U.S.'s — because Syrian President Bashar Assad invited Russian forces in.

"We may think it's a bad idea, but in terms of the international legal justification for Russian activity in Syria, they've been invited in by a sovereign government," he said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Trump says what no other candidate will: the US is no longer exceptional

“Make America Great Again!”

That exclamation point ensures you won’t miss the hyperbolic, Trumpian nature of its promise to return the country to its former glory days. In it lies the essence of his campaign, of what he’s promising his followers and Americans generally – and yet, strangely enough, of all his lines it’s the one most taken for granted, the one that’s been given the least thought and analysis. And that’s a shame, because it represents something new in our American age. The problem, I suspect, is that what first catches the eye is the phrase “make America great” and then, of course, the exclamation point, while the single most important word in the slogan, historically speaking, is barely noted: again.

With that word, Trump crossed a line in American politics that until his escalator moment represented a kind of psychological taboo for politicians of any stripe and of either party, including presidents and potential candidates for that position. He is the first American leader or potential leader of recent times not to feel the need or obligation to insist that the US, the “sole” superpower of Planet Earth, is an “exceptional” nation, an “indispensable” country, or even in an unqualified sense a “great” one. His claim is the opposite: that, at present, America is anything but exceptional, indispensable or great, though he alone could make it “great again”. ...

Trump, in other words, is the first person to run openly and without apology on a platform of American decline. ...

As for the US being the planet’s “exceptional” nation, a phrase that now seems indelibly part of the American grain and that no president or presidential candidate avoids, it’s surprising how late it entered the lexicon.

As John Gans Jr wrote in the Atlantic in 2011: “Obama has talked more about American exceptionalism than Presidents Reagan, George HW Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush combined: a search on UC Santa Barbara’s exhaustive presidential records library finds that no president from 1981 to today uttered the phrase ‘American exceptionalism’ except Obama.” ...

Think of it as an irony, if you wish, but in promoting his own rise the ultimate American narcissist has also openly promoted a version of decline to striking numbers of Americans. For his followers, a major political figure has quit with the defensive BS and started saying it the way it is.

House Panel Approves Measure to Require Women to Register for Draft

The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved by a narrow margin an amendment to a defense bill to require women to register for the draft. ...

Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, proposed the amendment to lift the restriction on women registering for the selective service at a committee-wide mark-up session of the proposed fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

"Right now the draft is sexist. Right now the draft only drafts young men. Women are excluded,"[Hunter said during the session on Wednesday night.]

Hunter went on to explain that his generation has not seen the kind of warfare that requires a draft. ...

"A draft is because people started dying in the infantry and you need more bodies in infantry, that is what a draft is for. The administration would like to make this decision on its own. I think we should make this decision."

[Apparently Hunter eschews the term "cannon fodder." - js]

Hunter, who requested a roll-call vote on the measure, ended up voting against his own amendment. The amendment passed 32 votes to 30 votes, with strong support from female committee members.

Aleppo airstrikes kill at least 200

Yes, yes, but are there boots fighting on the ground?

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admits: US Troops in Iraq in Combat Operations

Speaking today at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Joe Dunford confirmed that US troops in Iraq are “fighting and dying” in combat operations, confirming that the October 22 death of a Army sergeant was in combat. ...

The White House didn’t appear to take Gen. Dunford’s comments favorably, insisting again today that US troops in Iraq are “not in a combat role,” and are merely in the country to “offer advice and assistance” to the Iraqi military.

Kunduz hospital bombing: US military to punish 16 servicemen over 2015 devastating air strike

Pentagon: 16 Face ‘Administrative Discipline’ Over Kunduz Hospital Attack

Pentagon officials say that 16 personnel, including one general, will face “administrative discipline” for their role in the October 3 US attack on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital on the outskirts of Kunduz, an attack which killed 42 civilians. There will be no criminal charges for anyone involved.

Despite officials presenting this as “punishment,” the actions are overwhelmingly a slap on the wrist, with officials saying six of the 16 were sent for counseling, two were ordered to take new training courses, one was temporarily suspended and seven were issued “letters of reprimand.”

The Joke of U.S. Justice and “Accountability” When They Bomb a Hospital

Ever since the U.S. last October bombed a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the U.S. vehemently denied guilt while acting exactly like a guilty party would. First, it changed its story repeatedly. Then, it blocked every effort – including repeated demands from MSF – to have an independent investigation determine what really happened. As May Jeong documented in a richly reported story for The Intercept yesterday, the Afghan government consistently admitted that the hospital was targeted, claiming that doing so was justified, and they wanted to publicly endorse calls for an independent investigation, which the U.S. refused to let them do; what is beyond dispute, as Jeong wrote, is that the “211 shells that were fired . . . were felt by the 42 men, women, and children who were killed.” MSF insisted the bombing was “deliberate,” and ample evidence supports that charge.
Despite all this, the U.S. military is about to release a report that, so predictably, exonerates itself from all guilt; it was, of course, all just a terribly tragic mistake. Worse, reports The Los Angeles Times‘ W.J. Hennigan, “no one will face criminal charges.” ...

Yesterday in Syria, an MSF-run hospital was targeted with an airstrike, almost certainly deliberately, by what was very likely the Syrian government or the Russians, killing at least 50 patients and doctors, including one the last pediatricians in Aleppo. On behalf of the U.S. Government, Secretary of State John Kerry pronounced: “We are outraged by yesterday’s airstrikes in Aleppo on the al Quds hospital supported by both Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which killed dozens of people, including children, patients and medical personnel.” On the list of those with even minimal credibility to denounce that horrific airstrike, Kerry and his fellow American officials do not appear.

Libya ‘Unity Govt’ Warns Factions Against Attacking ISIS City of Sirte

Libya’s UN-backed “unity government” has today issued a statement warning all factions in the country against trying to capture the main ISIS city in the country, Sirte, saying that no offensives should happen until a unified military command under their control is created. ...

With the UN pressuring everyone to submit to the “unity” group since it managed to successfully sneak into the country from neighboring Tunisia, the group is also hoping to consolidate all the various militias and militaries in the country into a single force under their command.

The fear that someone might take Sirte away from ISIS before such a unity military is in place is that it would increase the negotiating power of whoever has that territory, and could allow them to branch out on their own or back one of the other governments in Libya. Ironically, it seems they’ve decided it’s safer to leave the city in ISIS hands.

Libya: Who's running the country?

Burundi on the Brink: A Year of Violence, and the World Isn't Sure What to Do

Last April, Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza announced that he would seek a controversial and possibly unconstitutional third term in office. The declaration from the former rebel leader, who became president after a decade-long civil war ended in 2005, plunged his country into political upheaval that worsened following his reelection in July.

Over the past year, the United Nations Security Council has watched his government repress protests as dissidents and members of the opposition are tortured, killed, or disappeared. A panel of experts appointed by the council has meanwhile informed it of Rwanda's role in arming members of Burundi's opposition, escalating the violence.

Nkurunziza has dismissed deadlines set by the African Union as well as its failed attempt to impose an AU peacekeeping force on the country without the consent of the government. In December, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power told colleagues that the country was "going to hell." But it was unclear what the Security Council would do about it. ...

Like Rwanda, Burundi experienced genocide in the 1990s. Though the dispute between Nkurunziza and his opposition centered on an interpretation of the country's constitution, which limits the number of consecutive presidential terms to two, the specter of ethnic bloodshed always loomed large. After the country's constitutional court agreed that the president had been appointed to his first term by parliament rather than directly elected — a decision that an exiled judge from the court later said was coerced — the country broke out in politically motivated violence.

Amid the unrest, some 250,000 Burundians have fled to neighboring countries.

Only One of Six Air Force F-35s Could Actually Take Off During Testing

Five of six Air Force F-35 fighter jets were unable to take off during a recent exercise due to software bugs that continue to hamstring the world’s most sophisticated—and most expensive—warplane.

During a mock deployment at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, just one of the $100 million Lockheed Martin F-35s was able to boot its software successfully and get itself airborne during an exercise designed to test the readiness of the F-35, FlightGlobal reports. Nonetheless, the Air Force plans to declare its F-35s combat-ready later this year.

Supreme Court Gives FBI More Hacking Power

The Supreme Court on Thursday approved changes that would make it easier for the FBI to hack into computers, many of them belonging to victims of cybercrime. The changes will take immediate effect in December, unless Congress adopts competing legislation. ...

The rule change, sent in a letter to Congress on Thursday, would allow a magistrate judge to issue a warrant to search or seize an electronic device if the target is using anonymity software like Tor. Over a million people use Tor to browse popular websites like Facebook every month for perfectly legitimate reasons, in addition to criminals who use it to hide their locations. ...

The Supreme Court ruling also expands the warrants to allow the FBI to hack into computers in five or more districts that have been hacked, such as those infected by a botnet—a type of malware that gives criminal hackers the power to take over many innocent “zombie” computers to distribute spam or spread viruses.

This part of the ruling would allow the FBI to search the victim’s property, explained Amie Stepanovich, senior policy counsel for digital rights group Access Now in a message to The Intercept. 

New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship

A newly published study from Oxford’s Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study, the Washington Post this morning described this phenomenon: “If we think that authorities are watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious.”

The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87% of Americans were aware), there was “a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned ‘al-Qaeda,’ “car bomb’ or ‘Taliban.'” People were afraid to read articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of suspicion. The dangers of that dynamic were expressed well by Penney: “If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate.”

As the Post explains, several other studies have also demonstrated how mass surveillance crushes free expression and free thought. A 2015 study examined Google search data and demonstrated that, post-Snowden, “users were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the US government” and that these “results suggest that there is a chilling effect on search behavior from government surveillance on the Internet.” ...

There is a reason governments, corporations, and multiple other entities of authority crave surveillance. It’s precisely because the possibility of being monitored radically changes individual and collective behavior. Specifically, that possibility breeds fear and fosters collective conformity. That’s always been intuitively clear. Now, there is mounting empirical evidence proving it.

FBI bought $1m iPhone 5C hack, but doesn't know how it works

The FBI doesn’t know how the hack used to unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone 5C works, and yet it paid in the region of $1m for the mechanism, which can used again to unlock any other iPhone 5C running iOS 9, according to reports. ...

The FBI bought a physical mechanism used to unlock the phone, but does not know the details of the hack that makes it work. The identity of the hackers who made it is also such a closely guarded secret within the US law enforcement agency that its director does not know who it is. ...

The FBI confirmed that it would not tell Apple about the security flaw exploited in the hack, partly because the law enforcement agency does not know how it works. It is unknown whether the hackers sold the flaw to any other agencies or third-parties, but if it is not disclosed to and fixed by Apple, it could leave anyone with an iPhone without a fingerprint sensor at risk of having their smartphone hacked.

Letter Details FBI Plan for Secretive Anti-Radicalization Committees

Of the plans put forward by the federal government to identify and stop budding terrorists, among the least understood are the FBI’s “Shared Responsibility Committees.”

The idea of the committees is to enlist counselors, social workers, religious figures, and other community members to intervene with people the FBI thinks are in danger of radicalizing — the sort of alternative to prosecution and jail time many experts have been clamoring for. But civil liberties groups worry the committees could become just a ruse to expand the FBI’s network of informants, and the government has refused to provide details about the program.

The Intercept has obtained a letter addressed to potential committee members from the FBI, outlining how the process would work. While the letter claims that committees will not be used “as a means to gather intelligence,” it also makes clear that information from the committees may be shared widely by the FBI, including with spy agencies and foreign governments, and that committee members can be subpoenaed for documents or called to testify in cases against the people they are trying to help. At the same time, committee members are forbidden even from seeking advice from outside experts without permission from the FBI. ...

The FBI would refer “potentially violent extremists” to the SRC, whose members would design an intervention plan, possibly including mental health or substance abuse treatment and help with education or housing. ...

“Our society has established a number of protective zones where you’re allowed to be candid: with your doctor, your religious clergy, even to a certain extent within a school system, with student privacy laws,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. “This program that the FBI is setting up seems not to acknowledge those privileges, and in fact, seems to be intent on undermining them.”

Egyptian cleric defends CIA agent convicted over his rendition

The radical Egyptian cleric who was kidnapped in Milan by the CIA in 2003 has come to the defence of a former CIA officer convicted for her alleged role in his extraordinary rendition.

Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, who is known as Abu Omar, told the Guardian in a telephone interview that he believed Sabrina De Sousa, who faces imminent extradition to Italy, was a scapegoat and ought to be pardoned by Italy’s head of state, Sergio Mattarella. De Sousa, a 60-year-old dual American and Portuguese citizen, faces a four-year prison sentence and is due to be extradited from Portugal on 4 May.

“Sabrina and the others who were convicted are scapegoats. The US administration sacrificed them. All of those higher up in the hierarchy are enjoying their immunity,” he said. “These people higher up, without doubt they should be convicted in this case. They should face trial.”

The remarks mark an extraordinary turn of events in a story that has vexed the US and Italian governments since Abu Omar’s case became public in 2005, exposing in great detail the inner workings of a highly classified and controversial Bush-era counter-terrorism programme. The case also exposed US allies’ help in conducting the secret programme. Abu Omar’s views on De Sousa were first reported by ADNKronos, a wire agency.

Justin Trudeau: 'We Have Discriminated Against Indigenous Children for Generations'

Justin Trudeau spent Thursday in Shoal Lake 40, a reserve of around 250 people located along the Ontario and Manitoba border that has been on a boil water advisory for two decades. ...

In an interview with VICE News during his Shoal Lake 40 visit, Trudeau was asked about a recent ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, that found the federal government discriminates against First Nations children living on reserves by not providing the same level of child welfare funding that children living off reserve are entitled to.

"We have discriminated against Indigenous children for generations, for decades, for centuries," said Trudeau, who pointed to his government's recent budget that allocates what he describes as "never-before-seen levels of funding for Indigenous communities" at $8.4 billion over the next five years. ...

The prime minister went on to discuss his government's plans to repeal the Indian Act — the piece of controversial federal legislation that dictates the way First Nations reserves govern themselves. Earlier this month, the justice minister told Parliament the Act was akin to shackles on First Nations peoples. ...

Shoal Lake 40 Chief Erwin Redsky urged Trudeau to act on his promises. "Your words are welcome, but unfortunately, we have a whole museum full of fine Canadian promises that are unfilled," Redsky wrote in a statement following the visit. "Achieving a respectful, equitable nation to nation relationship is going to take real stamina."

"Canadians really need to look in the mirror," he continued. "Our experience is that Canada has been a racist, colonial liar and thief. It's a sad fact that needs to be acknowledged so can all move on ... For the sake of all our children, I'm urging you to end the patterns of the past and be the collaborative partner and ally Canada promised to be."

“We Were Elected to Say No to the Creditors”: Varoufakis on Resigning as Greek Finance Minister

Obama did avert financial catastrophe. But his economic legacy is mediocre

Telling us ‘it could have been worse’ is not a very compelling legacy

Obama has been on a legacy-building press tour lately, most recently talking up his economic record in an interview with the New York Times. His main regret, reminiscent of the classic job interview cop-out “my biggest flaw is that I’m just too hard of a worker!” is that he failed to tell voters what a great job he did in managing the recovery: “If we had been able to more effectively communicate all the steps we had taken to the swing voter, then we might have maintained a majority in the House or the Senate”.

Obama has been called a lot of things – aloof, imperious, over-intellectual, secret Muslim – but poor communicator is not one of them. No president has been a better orator, or more media-savvy, since the Great Communicator [Ronald Reagan] himself. ...

The chief accomplishment Obama has been touting is job growth: somewhere between 9.3 and 13.6m new jobs over two terms, depending how you measure it, with unemployment falling from 10% at the height of the recession to 5% today. ... But job growth isn’t everything. Job quality matters a lot, and wage figures paint a less rosy picture. Real median hourly wages have risen as well, but barely: just 7% over the past 7 years. One can see this in where job growth is happening. Those jobs projected by the Labor Department to grow the most over the next decade are concentrated in low wage service industries: personal care aides (median income, $20,980), fast food workers ($18,910), retail salespeople ($21,780), customer service reps ($31,720). A greater share of jobs today are part-time than before the recession.

Over half of all income growth between 2009 and 2014 went to the top 1% of all income earners, who saw their incomes rise 27%, while the bottom 99% got a raise of 4%, according to Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. Median household incomes have only recovered to what they were in 1996, meaning for the vast majority of Americans, the recovery has been one in name only.

As a president who arrived at the White House in the midst of the worst economic crisis in generations, Obama deserves credit for staving off catastrophe. As one who leaves seeking a legacy, he might look for a more compelling one than “it could have been worse.”

'The state stole my raise': workers sue Alabama over 'racist' wage law

Fast-food workers from Birmingham, Alabama, are suing their state legislature after it passed a law that put a stop to their expected pay raise.

Nine months ago, the workers scored a major victory as Birmingham became the first city in the deep south to pass a law enacting a higher minimum wage. At the time, the city council agreed to increase the local minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 by July 2016 and to $10.10 by July 2017. The victory was short-lived as the state legislature passed a law earlier this year, prohibiting cities from increasing their local minimum wage, voiding Birmingham’s ordinance.

On Thursday, Birmingham fast food workers, Alabama’s chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Greater Birmingham Ministries filed a federal civil rights lawsuit arguing that HB-174, passed two months ago, is tainted “with racial animus”. Most of the Birmingham workers who would have received a pay hike in July were African American, according to Richard Rouco, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs. ...

According to Rouco, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, if Birmingham were allowed to raise its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, it would result in a raise for more than 40,000 workers, most of whom are African American. About 74% of Birmingham’s residents are black and almost third of them live in poverty.

A darkly fascinating read:

43 years in solitary: 'There are moments I wish I was back there'

Before walking out of jail a free man in February, [former Black Panther activist] Albert Woodfox spent 43 years almost without pause in an isolation cell, becoming the longest standing solitary confinement prisoner in America. He had no view of the sky from inside his 6ft by 9ft concrete box, no human contact, and taking a walk meant pacing from one end of the cell to the other and back again. ...

Of all the terrifying details of Woodfox’s four decades of solitary incarceration – the absence of human touch, the panic attacks and bouts of claustrophobia, the way they chained him even during the one hour a day he was allowed outside the cell – perhaps the most chilling aspect of all is what he says now. Two months after the state of Louisiana set him free on his 69th birthday, he says he sometimes wishes he was back in that cell.

“Oh yeah! Yeah!” he says passionately when asked whether he sometimes misses his life in lockdown. “You know, human beings are territorial, they feel more comfortable in areas they are secure. In a cell you have a routine, you pretty much know what is going to happen, when it’s going to happen, but in society it’s difficult, it’s looser. So there are moments when, yeah, I wish I was back in the security of a cell.”

He pauses, then adds: “I mean, it does that to you.” ...

The most disturbing part of freedom, Woodfox says, has been the dawning realisation since his release that in America in 2016 there is very little sense of political or social struggle. When he entered prison in the 1970s the country was on fire with political debate; now, as he puts it, “everybody seems to be ‘Me, me, me, me, me.’ It’s all about me, what I need and how I’m going to get it.”

Susan Sarandon: I’m more afraid of Hillary’s war record than Trump’s wall

Susan Sarandon appeared Wednesday night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” where she explained why she had to “break up” with Hillary Clinton.

The actress has drawn criticism for suggesting she would rather see Donald Trump elected than Hillary Clinton, if Sanders fails to win the Democratic presidential nomination — but she claimed her words were taken out of context.

“Wait a minute — I said some people say (Trump would bring the revolution faster),” Sarandon said. “I’m more afraid of, actually, Hillary Clinton’s war record and her hawkishness than I am of building a wall, but that doesn’t mean that I would vote for Trump.”

Susan Sarandon Broke Up With Hillary

Trump, Cruz aides advised Guatemalan candidate vowing televised executions

The two men hired by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to spearhead their presidential campaigns in California are, for the moment, rivals in what could be the most important primary race of 2016.

But four years ago, Tim Clark and Ron Nehring, who are running the California campaigns for Trump and Cruz respectively, worked as paid advisers to a campaign to elect a Guatemalan presidential candidate whose platform included a call for public executions.

Clark and Nehring, the Guardian can reveal, spent six weeks in Guatemala in 2011 working as advisers to Manuel Baldízon, a rightwing populist and business tycoon who campaigned on the promise of broadcasting the executions of criminals on TV.

The pair of Republican political consultants, now at the helm of competing presidential campaigns in California, were paid to advise Baldízon by what Clark elliptically refers to as “business interests”. ...

Last year, an investigation by a UN-backed anti-impunity organization exposed the widespread infiltration in Guatemalan politics by criminal groups and business interests seeking political favors and public contracts.

Guatemalan political parties receive half their financing through corruption, according to the report published in July 2015 by CICIG. “Guatemala is the perfect country to commit electoral crimes without consequences,” said director of CICIG Ivan Velasquez Gomez at the time. ...

Baldízon’s Lider party spent almost three times the amount legally allowed in the 2011 campaign that Clark and Nehring worked on, Citizen Action concluded.

Noam Chomsky: Young Bernie Sanders Supporters are a "Mobilized Force That Could Change the Country"

Leak of Cancer-Causing Chemical Forces Residents of Canada’s 'Chemical Valley' Indoors

Around dinner time yesterday, sirens wailed in Sarnia, Ontario, warning residents to get inside as a cancer-causing chemical leaked into the air from a nearby Shell refinery.

People shut their doors and windows tight to stop the benzene, a sweet-smelling, highly-flammable carcinogen, from seeping into their homes.

Roads near the plant were temporarily closed, but have since re-opened. Residents are now free to leave their homes. Air monitoring is underway and crews are investigating the cause of the leak, according to a hazardous materials alert.

It's an all-too-familiar song and dance for locals, who have dubbed the industry-saturated area "Chemical Valley." The region is home to about 40 percent of Canada's petrochemical industry, according to a 2007 Ecojustice report, and in 2011 the World Health Organization crowned Sarnia's air the worst in Canada. The air smells of gasoline, asphalt, and bad eggs, according to VICE Canada's documentary on the issue. ...

According to the Globe and Mail, hospital case data from the 1990s showed the overall cancer rate for men living in Sarnia was 34 percent higher than the provincial average.

In Sarnia last year, there were 16 alerts of hazardous material leaks, industrial fires and air quality warnings. Spilled and leaked substances included hydrogen sulfide, methyl chloride, hydrocarbons and benzene.

More tigers poached in India so far this year than in 2015

More tigers have been killed in India already this year than in the whole of 2015, a census showed Friday, raising doubts about the country’s anti-poaching efforts.

The Wildlife Protection Society of India, a conservation charity, said 28 of the endangered beasts had been poached by 26 April, three more than last year.

Tiger meat and bones are used in traditional Chinese medicine and fetch high prices. ...

India is home to more than half of the world’s tiger population with 2,226 in its reserves according to the last count in 2014.

Why is Congress Trying to Give Military Half a Wildlife Refuge it Doesn't Want?

The U.S. House Armed Services Committee (HASC) added a rider late Wednesday evening to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that transfers control of more than half of Nevada's sprawling Desert National Wildlife Refuge to the U.S. Air Force.

"Here we go again on Desert National Wildlife Refuge," said Defenders of Wildlife president and CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark. "Another rider added last night undermines management of our largest national wildlife refuge in the lower 48 by transferring primary jurisdiction of more than 800,000 acres to the Air Force, a responsibility the Department of Defense has neither requested nor is necessary for continued training exercises on and adjacent to the refuge." ...

The overreaching rider is part of a trend: this is only the latest attempt by the House Armed Services committee, long dominated by Republicans, to demolish endangered species protections through the NDAA, the annual "must-pass" legislation that authorizes annual military spending. ...

Another damaging rider included in the bill "overturns a public planning process to conserve greater sage-grouse and blocks their protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for at least a decade," writes Defenders of Wildlife. "Another rider passed as an amendment during the committee markup yesterday blocks ESA protections for the imperiled lesser prairie-chicken and the critically endangered American burying beetle."

"We've seen proposed a parade of egregious anti-environmental riders that'd serve to undermine the crucial protections in place for our wildlife, our wild lands, and the climate" in NDAA negotiations in recent years, writes the Natural Resource Defense Council's Bobby McEnaney. "These activities show no signs of abating. [...] This should be an instrument to set defense policy, not wipe vulnerable species from the planet or transfer pristine public lands to private interests."

Also of Interest

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

Searching for Ground Truth in the Kunduz Hospital Bombing

The Push to Make Sanders the Green Party’s Candidate

Top Advisor Says Sanders Missed Opportunity on Foreign Policy

Why Do Progressives Cling to Hillary?

Forget Bernie Bros — the Worst Trolls Work in Corporate Media

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says WikiLeaks was reckless

Bloomberg Outs Zero Hedge Today; Zero Hedge Strikes Back

NYT Photographer Maurício Lima, 2016 Pulitzer Winner, Denounces Globo and the “Coup” in Brazil

A Little Night Music

Chuck Berry - No Particular Place To Go

Chuck Berry - You Never Can Tell

Chuck Berry - Havana Moon

Chuck Berry - Memphis Tennessee

Chuck Berry and Johnnie Johnson - House of Blue Lights

Chuck Berry - Rip It Up

Chuck Berry - School Days

Chuck Berry - Around And Around