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This evening's music features singer, songwriter, bandleader and multi-instrumentalist Ike Turner. Enjoy!

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

News and Opinion

Evo Morales: Latin America Must Fight US Coups with 'Democratic Revolution'

Bolivian president urges left-wing leaders to prevent new era of 'subservient governments'

Bolivian President Evo Morales called on leftist governments in South America to counter U.S. plans to control the region with a "democratic revolution."

"In some countries it should be like a wake-up call where [governments] must start permanent conferences to relaunch democratic and cultural revolutions for Latin America and the Caribbean [region]," Morales said during an interview in Cuba on Monday night with the program Cubavisión, according to TeleSUR.

"It is the plan of the American empire that wants to regain control of Latin America and the Caribbean, and especially in South America, and there surely is an ambition to establish a United States presence in these countries and recover subservient governments as a model, as a system," he continued. ...

Morales warned Monday that U.S.-backed opposition parties in Brazil and Venezuela seek to roll back socialist programs implemented over the years by leftist governments.

"When the right wing returns to power they will remove the socialist benefits and shrink the state, which will generate a reaction," he said.

This Confirms It was a Coup: Brazil Crisis Deepens as Evidence Mounts of Plot to Oust Dilma Rousseff

Rand Paul ties release of 9/11 docs to defense bill

Sen. Rand Paul wants to use a defense policy bill to force the Senate to wade into a larger fight over declassifying 28 pages from a 2002 review of the 9/11 terror attacks.
The Kentucky Republican has filed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to force the public release of the 28 secret pages, which could shed light on connections between the Saudi government and al Qaeda.

Paul's amendment comes weeks after the Senate unanimously approved legislation allowing the families of 9/11 victims to sue countries that supported perpetrators of the terrorist attacks. ...

Obama is under increasing pressure to declassify the 28 pages. A decision is expected in June.

It appears that despite the fact that Obama is really good at killing people, it hasn't deterred people from taking leadership roles in jihadi groups, which just seem to keep growing larger, nastier and more capable militarily.

Afghan Taliban Selects an Islamic Scholar to Succeed Leader Killed in US Drone Strike

The Afghan Taliban has named an Islamic legal scholar to succeed former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour, selecting one of the leader's former deputies just days after confirming his death in a US drone strike at the weekend.

Haibatullah Akhundzada was named the new leader of the group on Wednesday. A United Nations report published last year named Akhundzada as the former chief of the sharia-based justice system under the Taliban's five-year rule over Afghanistan, which ended with their ouster in 2001.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of a feared network blamed for many deadly bomb attacks in Kabul in recent years, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, will serve as deputies.

Within an hour of the announcement, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a shuttle bus carrying court employees west of the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing as many as 11 people and wounding several others, including children.

The announcement, following a meeting of the Taliban's main shura, or leadership council, ended days of confusion during which the Taliban declined to confirm the death of Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan on Saturday.

Jihadists unleash death squads as Iraqi forces advance on stronghold of Fallujah

Isis execution squads have appeared in the streets of Fallujah, a city 40 miles west of Baghdad, with orders to kill anybody trying to flee or surrender as government forces advance towards this Isis stronghold. “Groups of Isis fighters are saying they will kill anybody in Fallujah who leaves their house or waves a white flag,” says Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a political activist who spoke by phone to relatives and friends in the city.

Iraqi army units started an offensive east of Fallujah on Monday morning after heavy shelling and airstrikes overnight. Mr Dulaimi said that Shia militias known as the Hashd al-Shaabi were joining in the bombardment with a home-made-rocket called “the Nimr”, named after the leader of the Saudi Shia minority, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who was executed by the Saudi authorities in January this year.  

The loss of Fallujah, a Sunni commercial hub on the main road to Jordan, would be a serious blow to Isis. Its capture of the city so close to Baghdad at the beginning of 2014 was the extremist Sunni movement’s first spectacular military victory. An interesting development on Monday was a report that three Isis gunmen were killed inside Fallujah which would be a first sign of armed resistance by local people to Isis.

No one gets on a boat like this because they'd like to buy the latest iPhone... pic.twitter.com/WLQcXOwuzs

— MSF Sea (@MSF_Sea) May 25, 2016

Staggering Rescue of Over 5,600 Off Libyan Coast Offers Damning Indictment of Migrant Crisis

As humanitarian groups plead with European officials to allow refugees safe passage—and as Europe closes its borders to asylum seekers—more and more people are risking their lives in the treacherous sea crossing from North Africa to Europe, with disastrous results.

The Italian Coast guard announced Wednesday morning that a staggering 5,600 migrants had been rescued from treacherous waters off the coast of Libya in only the last 48 hours—straining all search and rescue agencies in the region to absolute capacity.

On Tuesday alone, 3,000 asylum seekers were rescued in 23 separate operations.

The Italian navy reported on Wednesday afternoon that a boat holding 590 migrants had capsized in the Mediterranean, killing 7. The rescue operation is ongoing.

There are few calls for #SAFEPASSAGE more powerful than this. It's 2016 and this is still happening on the Med. pic.twitter.com/YLaEzS2mov

— MSF Sea (@MSF_Sea) May 25, 2016

This week's rescues bring the number of migrants saved in Mediterranean waters to 37,000 so far this year.

Does Russia Have Reason to Fear?

In April 1970, at what was roughly the halfway point in the 40-year Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Richard Nixon’s Nation Security Adviser Henry Kissinger thought he smelled a rat. Kissinger told an incredulous Nixon that the Soviets were stirring up trouble in the Middle East, attempting to provoke a war between the Israelis, Syrians and Jordanians in order to distract the United States from what it was really up to: building a naval base at Cienfuegos Bay in Cuba.

Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, recounts in his diaries that: “On September 18 we had received word that the Soviets were building a submarine base in Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba.” By Sept. 24 word had leaked to the press and that same day Nixon and Kissinger, according to Haldeman, “gave [Soviet Ambassador Anatoly] Dobrynin an ultimatum and over the next few weeks…the Soviets backed down and abandoned the base.”

Well, not quite. As NYU historian and Nation contributor Greg Grandin expertly lays out in his groundbreaking account of Kissinger’s legacy, Kissinger’s Shadow, the Cienfuegos affair was little more than a figment of Kissinger’s fevered imagination. According to Grandin, “The Soviets didn’t back down because there was nothing to back down from.” Indeed, “Reconnaissance flights photographed every inch of Cienfuegos and couldn’t find one piece of heavy equipment that could be put to building such a port.”

If various accounts of the Nixon era – by among others, Haldeman, Grandin, Robert Dallek and Richard Reeves – are anything to go by, Kissinger was more than a touch unsound. But the basic premise behind his imaginary Cienfuegos threat was not altogether baseless (even if there never was to be a Soviet base): the U.S. did have definable security interests in preventing the Soviets from developing a military base 90 miles from U.S. shores.

Today, as NATO places troops and missile defense installations in Eastern Europe, we might ask ourselves if the Russian Federation has similar definable security interests in its own backyard. Since the end of the Cold War, the American foreign policy establishment seems to have done a complete 180-degree turn and now, of late, has decided that countries, above all Russia (and as regards the South China Sea, China), do not.

Seven Ukraine Soldiers Killed in Deadliest Fighting in a Year

At least seven Ukrainian soldiers were killed and nine others wounded in the last 24 hours as the military and eastern rebels traded shelling along the frontier between their territories. This is the deadliest single day of violence in Ukraine in a year, according to officials.

The two sides have been in a state of ceasefire since February of 2015, and while allegations of violations on both sides are quite common, it is rare for them to lead to any serious casualties. It is unclear what sparked this latest violence.

Ukrainian officials, as is always the case, blamed the Russian Federation, accusing them of “occupying” Donetsk and demanding an immediate surrender. Ukraine has repeatedly talked up war with Russia since their 2014 regime change, which ousted a pro-Russian government in favor of a Western-backed, right-wing government.

Israel's new government: Far-right Lieberman named defense minister

Israel coalition deal brings in its most hard-right government ever

Ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman becomes defence minister

Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has cemented a coalition deal that will usher in the most rightwing nationalist government in the country’s history.

The deal sees the ultranationalist politician Avigdor Lieberman – a former nightclub bouncer – become defence minister, the second most important cabinet post behind the prime minister. ... Israel’s government is now dominated by far-right and nationalist politicians in key positions including the education, defence, culture and justice portfolios, among others.

Lieberman arrives in the Israeli defence ministry with a long history of harsh public remarks targeting both Israelis of Palestinian descent, the wider Arab world and Palestinians.

He has called for the reconquest of Gaza and the bombing of Egypt’s Aswan dam, and described Arab lawmakers in the Knesset as “traitors”. ...

International reaction has [...] been critical, with a New York Times editorial describing Lieberman’s appointment as a “risky and cynical” move and saying it is now “entirely possible to imagine Israel’s relations in the region and beyond moving backward”.

Israel’s Army Goes to War With Its Politicians

In most countries, the political class supervises the defense establishment and restrains its leaders from violating human rights or pursuing dangerous, aggressive policies. In Israel, the opposite is happening. Here, politicians blatantly trample the state’s values and laws and seek belligerent solutions, while the chiefs of the Israel Defense Forces and the heads of the intelligence agencies try to calm and restrain them.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer last week of the post of defense minister to Avigdor Lieberman, a pugnacious ultranationalist politician, is the latest act in the war between Mr. Netanyahu and the military and intelligence leaders, a conflict that has no end in sight but could further erode the rule of law and human rights, or lead to a dangerous, superfluous military campaign.

The prime minister sees the defense establishment as a competitor to his authority and an opponent of his goals. Putting Mr. Lieberman, an impulsive and reckless extremist, in charge of the military is a clear signal that the generals’ and the intelligence chiefs’ opposition will no longer be tolerated. Mr. Lieberman is known for ruthlessly quashing people who hold opposing views. ...

In Israel’s short history, army commanders and the heads of the intelligence agencies have often advocated the use of force and in many cases showed contempt for the law and human rights. Political leaders have typically been more measured. ...

What caused the army and the intelligence agencies to become, relatively speaking, doves while the politicians have become the hawks? In the last three decades, the army and the intelligence agencies have become more cautious about breaking the law. The threat of prosecutions in the International Criminal Court has helped. Also, the defense agencies are motivated only by national interest, rather than ideology, religion or electoral considerations. Top army and intelligence officers are also intimately familiar with the nature of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories — and its price.

But above all, the clash between the political and defense establishments can be summed up in two words: Benjamin Netanyahu. ... “I have known many prime ministers,” Meir Dagan, the former director of the Mossad told me. “Not one of them was pure or holy. But almost all had one common quality — when they reached the point where their own personal interest touched upon the national interest, it was the national interest that prevailed.” But, Mr. Dagan said, Mr. Netanyahu was a rare exception.

Greece debt relief: Eurozone reaches deal on 10.3 billion euro bailout plan

Striking Workers Shut Down France's Oil Depots, Move to Blockade Nuclear Plant

Striking workers with the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), one of France's largest unions, are clashing with French government forces after the union members blockaded oil refineries and depots in response to President François Hollande forcing unpopular labor reforms through parliament earlier this month.

Hollande's proposed legislation would make it easier to fire employees, increase employees' work hours, and move jobs offshore, in defiance of France's long history of labor protections.

The blockades shut down a quarter of the France's gas stations and forced the country to dip into reserve petrol supplies.

France's President François Hollande was forced to deny that the country was facing a nationwide uprising akin to the worker and student uprising of May 1968, as riot police clashed with protesters around the country late Tuesday evening and early Wednesday morning.

The government dispatched the riot police to shut down picket lines, reports France24:

Police used water cannons in the early hours of Wednesday to dislodge some 80 unionists who were blocking a fuel depot at Douchy-les-Mines, in northern France, union and police officials said. Other depots were unblocked by police on Tuesday.

Undeterred, CGT chief Philippe Martinez told France Inter: "We will carry on."

39,000 Verizon Workers Enter Sixth Week on Strike in Biggest U.S. Labor Action in Years

Well, of course rules proposed by a neoliberal like Obama are not going to hurt business.

Obama Overtime Plan Won’t Hurt Businesses, Executives Admit

Business interest groups and their allies engaged in hyperbolic rhetoric about the supposed negative impact of overtime regulations before they were announced last week. By changing a salary threshold, the new rules will make millions of workers newly eligible to be paid for their overtime hours.

“Businesses will be forced to look for cuts in the face of such massive costs,” Competitive Enterprise Institute policy analyst Trey Kovacs predicted. Right-wing economist analyst Michael Carr even worried that the overtime rules could help start another recession.

House Speaker Paul Ryan warned that it would “cause people to lose their livelihoods.” ...

But in investor calls over the past week, executives at some leading American retailers quietly admitted that the rule will only have a modest impact on their bottom lines, if any at all.

Ex-teacher who says Noah's Ark killed dinosaurs loses board of education bid

When Texas takes up always-contentions revisions of science and social studies coursework in 2017, a former schoolteacher who believes dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark and Democrats killed John F Kennedy won’t have a vote.

Mary Lou Bruner lost her Republican primary runoff for a seat on the powerful Texas state board of education on Tuesday night, just two months after a near-outright victory that would have put her on the brink of having a say in what more than five million schoolchildren learn in classrooms and read in textbooks.

The 69-year-old Bruner has posted on Facebook claims that Barack Obama is a gay prostitute, climate change is a hoax concocted by Karl Marx and that Obama’s healthcare overhaul was an orchestrated plot to wipe 200 million people from the US population. She also wrote that the flood from the biblical story of Noah’s Ark is what destroyed the dinosaurs, not a meteor as “concocted” by atheists.

In March, Bruner came within two percentage points of avoiding a runoff altogether. But Republican voters flocked this time to Keven Ellis, a local school board president in Lufkin who ran a mainstream campaign.

Native Americans implore France to halt artifact sale

Native American leaders have pleaded with France to “look beyond short-term profit” and “do what is right in the eyes of humanity” by halting an auction of hundreds of objects sacred to their spiritual beliefs.

The artifacts scheduled to go up for bidding in Paris at the Eve auction house next week include a Plains war shirt made with hair from human scalps and a rare ceremonial shield. They are expected to fetch tens of thousands of euros.

Native Americans contend that whereas wealthy European buyers merely see something exotic and beautiful to adorn their walls, to them the objects are imbued with life.

“When these objects have been created for ceremonies within our community, a spirit goes into them,” Bradley Marshall, of the Hoopa Valley Tribal council of California, told a press conference on Tuesday. “When we create the objects, we’re in prayer, we’re breathing life into the object. And so these objects are not just a mere object in some fancy collection. These objects are living beings to us. These objects are part of our family; these objects are part of who we are as a people; these objects have a sacred purpose within our community. At the auction coming up on Monday is one of these objects." ...

Since 2013, such auctions have been a diplomatic wrinkle between the US and France, where US laws prohibiting the sale of Native American ceremonial items hold no weight.

Ahead of the latest sale in Paris, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian held an “emergency meeting” on Tuesday with at least two tribes, the State Department and Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Steve Pearce, a US Republican representative from New Mexico who has proposed a congressional resolution urging federal agencies to seek the items’ return, was also present.

Will Sanders Appointees Shake Up the Convention?

Well, now, there's loyalty for you. Clinton's poodle-dog DWS has done the dirty work of rigging the primaries for Hillary Bloodyhands and now Hillary is ready to throw DWS under the bus as a sacrificial offering to angry Bernie supporters in order to proceed to the next stage of her ambitions.

Dems Reportedly Asking: Has Debbie Wasserman Schultz Become 'Too Toxic'?

Democratic Party insiders are reportedly discussing whether to remove Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) before this summer's nominating convention in Philadelphia.

"There's a strong sentiment that the current situation is untenable and can only be fixed by her leaving," a senior Democratic aide told The Hill. "There's too much water under the bridge for her to be a neutral arbiter."

Rep. Wasserman Schultz, of Florida, has faced accusations of displaying a pro-Hillary Clinton bias throughout the 2016 campaign. These tensions came to a head last week, after Nevada's Democratic convention devolved into chaos and gave Bernie Sanders supporters more evidence that the primary process has been rigged in favor of the establishment candidate. ...

Now, The Hill reports, Democrats backing Clinton "worry Wasserman Schultz has become too divisive a figure to unify the party in 2016, which they say is crucial to defeating presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in November." ...

ndeed, a pro-Clinton Democratic senator told The Hill: "There have been a lot of meetings over the past 48 hours about what color plate do we deliver Debbie Wasserman Schultz's head on."

The brilliant @RaniaKhalek on Clinton supporters' tactic: "disagreeing w/them [online] is equivalent of harassment" https://t.co/Cv8ghbCTNG

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 24, 2016

Virginia's Governor — a Longtime Hillary Clinton Ally — Is Under Federal Investigation

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, is reportedly under investigation by the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) over campaign contributions he received from a Chinese businessman.

The inquiry is based, at least in part, on donations that McAuliffe received during his 2013 gubernatorial campaign, according to CNN, which broke the news of the investigation on Monday. Investigators are said to be scrutinizing a $120,000 donation from Chinese businessman Wang Wenliang, among other campaign contributions. Wenliang has permanent residency status in the US, a spokesperson told CNN.

The FBI has also examined McAuliffe's role on the board of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), a charitable foundation that Bill Clinton started after he exited the White House in 2000. The Clintons are longtime friends of the governor, and they both backed him during his 2013 campaign. Wenliang has also donated to CGI, but CNN quoted US officials briefed on the investigation as saying they have found no evidence of wrongdoing by the foundation. ...

McAuliffe is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and he worked previously on presidential campaigns for both Clintons. The governor is also involved in Hillary Clinton's 2016 White House bid, and he campaigned for her earlier this year in his home state of Virginia, which will be a major swing state in the general election in November.

State Department faults Clinton for emails and cybersecurity risks

Hillary Clinton “did not comply” with federal record keeping rules as Secretary of State by bypassing a government email system and failing to turn over all her email from a homebrew server before leaving the State Department, according to an investigative report.

The report by the State Department Inspector General also said that Clinton and her top aides — Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan and Cheryl Mills — refused to cooperate in the review. ...

Clinton was also faulted for keeping some emails that involved government business after she left office.

Hillary Clinton Is Criticized for Private Emails in State Dept. Review

In a report delivered to members of Congress on Wednesday, the inspector general said that Mrs. Clinton “had an obligation to discuss using her personal email account to conduct official business” with officials responsible for handling records and security but that inspectors “found no evidence” that she had requested or received approval from anyone at the department to conduct her state business on a personal email. ...

It also added new detail about Mrs. Clinton’s motivation for using the private server, which she has said was set up for convenience. In November 2010, her deputy chief of staff for operations prodded her about “putting you on state email or releasing your email address to the department so you are not going to spam.” Mrs. Clinton, however, replied that she would consider a separate address or device “but I don’t want any risk of the personal being accessible.” ...

The State Department issued numerous warnings dating back a decade about the cyber-security risks of using personal emails accounts for government business, the report said, and Mrs. Clinton was personally sent a memo in 2011 warnings of hackers trying to target unclassified, personal email accounts. She was also given a classified, in-person briefing on the dangers, the report said. ...

IG report reveals #Clinton private server was hacked in 2011 & advisors warned not to send her anything sensitive. https://t.co/EpYXqn4XcY

— unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) May 25, 2016

The report also disclosed an attempt to hack into Mrs. Clinton’s server in January 2011.

It said a “nondepartmental adviser” to Bill Clinton — apparently Bryan Pagliano, who installed the private server — informed the department that he had shut down the system because “someone was trying to hack us and while they did not get in, I didn’t want to let them have a chance.”

The attack continued later that day, prompting another official to write to two of Mrs. Clinton’s top aides, Cheryl Mills and Jake Sullivan, to warn them not to send Mrs. Clinton “anything sensitive.” She explained that she would “explain more in person.”

Protests at Donald Trump rally overshadow Washington primary win

Donald Trump easily won the Washington state primary on Tuesday, but his victory was overshadowed by violence outside a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where protesters smashed windows and threw rocks at police. ...

Outside Trump’s rally in Albuquerque, protests against the presumptive nominee turned nasty on Tuesday night, with protesters overturning crowd control barriers and throwing rocks at police.

Massive protest outside Trump ABQ rally. Police in standoff with anti Trump protesters pic.twitter.com/RWvvRYLL4Y

— Kayla Epstein (@KaylaEpstein) May 25, 2016

There were early posts on social media reporting gunshots and tear gas, but the Albuquerque police department said those were inaccurate. Nonetheless, police horses were deployed to control the large crowd of protesters, and some reports showed pepper spray being used. The door to the convention center where Trump was speaking was also smashed.

More than an hour after Trump had finished speaking and left for California, where he will campaign for the next few days in the run-up to the state’s 7 June primary, hundreds of protesters still thronged the streets, waving Mexican flags, lighting fires and chanting.

GOP Lawmakers Capitalize on Zika Threat to Pass Bill Dubbed 'Making Pesticides Great Again' Act

The Republican-controlled U.S. House on Tuesday passed legislation—newly rebranded with the word "Zika" in it—that Democrats say is in fact not at all about the addressing the threat of the virus but making it easier for pesticides to contaminate the nation's waterways.

Previously called the "Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act," the "Zika Vector Control Act" passed the House 258-156.

According to House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md), H.R. 897 "is nothing but a Trojan horse, with practically nothing to do with Zika."

It was sponsored by Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), who, as Cleveland.com reported last week, "For years [...] has tried to get Congress to change permitting requirements for pesticides sprayed near water."

US releases millions of Chinese wasps to fight ash tree borer

Parasite fron China attacks eggs and larvae of Asian insect pest that has wiped out tens of millions of trees and is on march to Europe and Britain

Millions of tiny wasps that are natural parasites for the emerald ash borer have been released into wooded areas in 24 states of the US to try and peg back the tree-killing insect’s advances.

The US Department of Agriculture has researched and approved for release four species of parasitic wasps that naturally target the larval and egg stages of the ash borer, which has killed an estimated 38m ash trees in urban and residential areas. The estimated cost of treating, removing and replacing the lost trees is $25bn, according to a report written by USDA and US Forest Service entomologists. ...

The tiniest of the wasps looks like a pepper flake on a white surface. It lays eggs inside ash borer eggs, preventing them from hatching. Three other wasps, one the size of a gnat, lay eggs inside ash borer larvae, halting development into adult beetles.

They were identified in China in 2002 and studied for several years before scientists concluded they could be safety released in the United States to fight the ash borer.

ExxonMobil tried to censor climate scientists to Congress during Bush era

ExxonMobil moved to squash a well-established congressional lecture series on climate science just nine days after the presidential inauguration of George W Bush, a former oil executive, the Guardian has learned.

Exxon’s intervention on the briefings, revealed here for the first time, adds to evidence the oil company was acutely aware of the state of climate science and its implications for government policy and the energy industry – despite Exxon’s public protestations for decades about the uncertainties of global warming science.

Indeed, the company moved swiftly during the earliest days of the Bush administration to block public debate on global warming and delay domestic and international regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to former officials of the US Global Change Research Program, or USGCRP.

The Bush White House is now notorious for censoring climate scientists and blocking international action on climate change by pulling the US out of the Kyoto agreement.

Peru Declares State of Emergency in Its Jungles Due to Rampant Mercury Poisoning

Peru has declared a state of emergency in 11 jungle districts to tackle widespread mercury poisoning among the population caused by wildcat gold miners. ...

The ministry said the poisoning is believed to affect around 50,000 people, many of them living in remote corners of the Amazon near two world-renowned ecotourism destinations — the Tambopata Nature Reserve and Manu National Park. The indigenous Harakmbut people, many of whom still live a largely traditional lifestyle in the rainforest, are thought to be particularly affected. ...

The drastic measures have been triggered by a wave of illegal gold mining in the area that has seen as many as 100,000 miners destroy vast swathes of the Amazon, ravage river ecosystems with dredgers, and poison the water table with mercury and other mining byproducts. The miners use mercury because the gold sticks to it. Small amounts of mercury, however, can cause irreversible damage to multiple organs, including the brain.

The Madre de Dios mining boom began in 2009 when gold prices rose following the global recession that saw spooked investors seek out the precious metal, which is widely seen as a safe investment in difficult times. Peru is Latin America's largest gold producer and about 15 percent of its output is thought to come from illegal miners.

Poisoned By The Gold Rush

Canadian Company Wants to Mine for Gold on the Bottom of the Ocean

Beyond the occasional sprawling logging camps on New Ireland, there are few signs the modern world has touched this part of the Asia-Pacific nation of 600 islands and 800 languages. Largely cut off from the outside world, villagers earn a few dollars each week farming small patches in the forest for sweet potatoes and coconuts and catching the occasional fish from their flimsy, dugout canoes. There is no electricity here, no toilets, no phone services, no cars. ... Nautilus, an exploration mining company headquartered in Toronto, has come to these villages along the coast to pitch a simple but controversial message: We can make your lives better if you let us mine the seafloor.

Villagers have embraced offers of new sanitation systems, homes and bridges. But they don't fully comprehend what Nautilus wants to do starting as early as 2018 at a site 30 kilometers (18.64 miles) off the coast. Located about 1,600 meters (5,200 feet) down, the site is home to a network of hydrothermal vents and near an undersea volcano. It's a harsh environment where mineral-rich water as hot as 400 degrees Celsius (750 degrees Fahrenheit) pours through the vents, meeting icy cold water and forming the concentrations of gold, copper and other minerals that are 10 times what is found in traditional mines on land.

There is plenty at stake if the company goes ahead with its ambitions plans. A successful project has the potential to set off a modern day gold rush to the seafloor, a prospect that troubles deep-sea scientists and environmentalists who fear the mining could destroy some of the world's most diverse and poorly understood ecosystems. ...

Scientists and environmentalists warn that the technology is unproven and that widespread mining could destroy hundreds, if not thousands of miles of hydrothermal vents systems, undersea mountains, and submarine volcanoes as well as seamounts containing deep sea coral. In doing so, the world could lose scores of species before they are even investigated by scientists as well as potential resources for new classes of drugs, cosmetics, and fuels.

"If you wipe out large areas of seafloor and cause species extinction, you actually change the future of life on earth, how it evolves, if you do it on a large enough scale," said University of Hawaii's Craig Smith, a co-author on a paper in Science last year that called for implementing adequate environmental protections for deep sea mining.

Also of Interest

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

Where Did the Bernie Sanders Movement Come From? The Internet.

The Bruenig Firing: ‘Civility’ As A Tool To Control Political Dissent

Hillary Clinton has 'personal' grudge against Assange says WikiLeaks insider

Oklahoma’s Insane Rush to Execute

Desperation drives American dream in Guatemalan town of lost opportunity

My father warned Exxon about climate change in the 1970s. They didn't listen

A Little Night Music

Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston - Gonna Wait For My Chance

Ike Turner & The Kings Of Rhythm - You've Got To Lose

Ike Turner & The Kings Of Rhythm - Loosely

Ike Turner and his Kings of Rythm - I'm Lonesome Baby

Ike Turner & His Kings Of Rhythm - Matchbox

Ike Turner & His Kings Of Rhythm - Box Top

Ike Turner and The Kings Of Rhythm - Heartbroken & Worried

Ike & Tina's Kings Of Rhythm - Prancing

Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston - Much Later