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"The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation."

-- William McKinley

News and Opinion

State Dept Excuses Syria Rebel Group Over Terror Attacks

In early July, an Amnesty International report named Nour al-Din al-Zinki, as one of several US-backed group involved in torture and summary executions. Just two weeks later, the group’s social media accounts showed fighters beheading a young Palestinian boy described as “an Assad soldier.” Now, Russia is suggesting this same group was responsible for a chemical weapons attack this week in Aleppo.

That’s a lot of bad publicity for a matter of a few weeks, and is starting to come up in State Department briefings, though spokesman Mark Toner downplayed the incidents, or the possibility that the US would stop arming Nour al-Din al-Zinki just because they beheaded a child and used chemical weapons.

“First of all, there’s a lot of vetting of the Syrian moderate opposition that has already taken place, and it’s not just by the US,” Toner insisted, adding that “one incident here and there would not necessarily make you a terrorist group.”

Iraq expert: ‘We are facing a conflict that has become cyclical’

Obama ‘Pleased’ With ISIS War Progress, Warns Group Adapting

Speaking at a news conference at the Pentagon today, President Obama declared himself “pleased” with the progress in the ongoing ISIS war, insisting the US had been making “significant gains” both in Iraq and Syria “and now Libya,” which the US started attacking on Monday.

Obama’s official claims of progress didn’t appear to be in line with the specifics he talked about in his statement, following the statement about progress on the ground by admitting that “we’re far from freeing Mosul and Raqqa,” and that ISIS is adapting quickly to US attacks.

Details on Libya Strikes Remain Unclear

US Africa Command has released a new video showing some of the airstrikes being carried out against targets inside Libya, and offered a few details on some nine attacks carried out against the city of Sirte since beginning the offensive on Monday.

As AFRICOM tries to get a few details out there on the newest US war, it underscores just how little we know about the operation, in particular how the Pentagon is selecting targets and who exactly gets to authorize them. In that regard, officials offered little insight. ...

President Obama was said to have signed off on Monday’s strikes, and Cook said Gen. Waldhauer, the head of AFRICOM, has to approve every strike run that takes place. Pentagon officials, however, have denied that the US special forces active in
Libya are at all involved in this new war, though what exactly they’re doing is uncertain.

A rare moment of candor at a State Department briefing:

Transparency? Ha! US State Dept spox bursts into laughter at press briefing

Erdogan says must restructure state during emergency rule after failed coup

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday the government is compelled to overhaul state institutions after an abortive military coup attempted to topple him.

Speaking to a group of businessmen, Erdogan also said urgent steps were required to restructure the armed forces during a state of emergency imposed after the failed overthrow attempt.

Turkey Issues Formal Arrest Warrant for Fethullah Gulen

A court in Turkey issued a formal warrant on Thursday for the arrest of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government accuses of being behind the failed July 15 coup that left more than 270 people dead.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said an Istanbul-based court issued the warrant for "ordering the July 15 coup attempt." ...

Ankara has not yet made a formal extradition request, but the arrest warrant could be the prelude. Washington has asked for evidence of the cleric's involvement, and has said the extradition process must be allowed to take its course. ...

Separately, the deputy chairman of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party, Mehdi Eker, said countries around the world need to take action against schools or other establishments linked to Gulen.

Eker said the cleric's movement had hundreds of schools, charities or other establishments in more than 100 countries and warned they too could face "security risks" from the group in the future.

Germany warns Erdogan that bringing back death penalty will end Turkey's EU hopes

The German foreign minister warned Turkey on Thursday that reinstating the death penalty would end its EU membership hopes, amid deepening divisions with Ankara after Austria called for accession talks to be scrapped.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier cautioned the Turkish government against the move, which it has eyed amid sweeping purges in response to July's coup attempt.

Earlier, Christian Kern, the Austrian chancellor, described the talks on eventual Turkish accession as a “diplomatic fiction” in the wake of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on democratic freedoms since the failed military takeover.

Mr Kern said he would seek to have the talks formally closed at a meeting of EU leaders next month.

“We know the democratic standards in Turkey are nowhere near good enough to justify a candidacy for EU membership,” Mr Kern told Austrian television. “I see Turkish accession as an impossibility for years, if not for decades.”

Turkey scolds Austria in EU membership dispute

Turkey has angrily rejected Austrian suggestions that its membership talks with the EU should be ended.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said the negotiations were "no more than fiction" and "Europe needs a new path".

Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik said his comments were "disturbing" and "similar to far-right rhetoric". ...

Austrian Defence Minister Hans Peter Doskozil has criticised "signs of a dictatorship" in Turkey, and called for an end to its EU accession talks.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker agreed that "Turkey cannot become a European Union member in its current state".

But he rejected the Austrian position. "I don't think it would be helpful if we were to tell Turkey unilaterally that the negotiations are over," he told German ARD news.

Turkey threatens to tear up EU migrant deal unless it gets visa-free Schengen travel within months

Turkey has threatened to tear up a controversial migrant deal and send hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers to Europe if its citizens are not granted visa-free travel to the EU’s Schengen Area within months.

Mevlut Cavusoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, demanded the EU drop visa requirements for Turkish citizens by October.

But the European Commission refused to back down in the dispute, insisting it will only agree to visa-free travel when Turkey reforms its anti-terror laws.

And Germany warned that Europe “must not be blackmailed” over the issue.

The ultimatum is the first time Turkey has set a deadline over its demands. It will be seen as evidence the migrant deal is in jeopardy from the new hardline stance of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime, following last month’s failed coup.

U.S. and Russia brawl over race for U.N. chief

The U.S. and Russia have turned the race for United Nations secretary-general into the latest front in their escalating war for geopolitical influence.

Washington, which is believed to want a woman in the U.N. role, has been backing Argentina's foreign minister in the secretive selection process, U.N. sources say. Meanwhile, U.N. sources say Russia is angling for a female Bulgarian diplomat with family ties to the Soviet Union, a nod to its desire to see an Eastern European in the job.

Early indications are that the fight could get as ugly as diplomacy allows.

“I’m not sure either the U.S. or the Russians is in the mood to compromise,” a former top U.N. official told POLITICO. “Both have told me that [they] feel the other does not have the best interests of the U.N. in mind in this selection and want to bend the U.N. to their own agenda.” ...

A straw poll held last month seemed to indicate that Russia and the U.S. had each maneuvered to nix the other's favored candidate, with Moscow’s apparent choice, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, faring better than Argentina's Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra. At least 10 other candidates are in the mix, with former Portuguese Prime Minister António Guterres winning the July straw poll.

There's another giant sucking sound. It's Bibi Netanyahu's money vacuum and it is coming for $37 billion of your tax payments. That is, if Bibi can't threaten Obama with not accepting so pitifully little (!!!) of an offering and get more of your hard-earned dollars.

Officials: US Close to Finalizing Record Military Aid Deal With Israel

An unnamed senior US official familiar with the situation has told Reuters that significant progress has been made in three days of closed door meetings between Israel’s acting National Security Council head and US national security adviser Susan Rice.

The talks centered around the still unsettled question of a new 10-year military aid deal to Israel, which US officials have vowed will be the largest military aid package to anyone, ever, but which the Obama Administration has struggled to get Israel to accept. Certain subjects of dispute appear to have been settled.

The current pact, a 10-year, $30 billion pact, will expire in 2018, and President Obama wants to get another one in place before his term ends in January. The $37 billion offer, however, has been so far spurned by Israel, which has objected to Obama’s limits, designed to ensure that the overwhelming majority of the money is given to US military contractors, and not Israeli companies.

Gosh, I wonder how those documents about Israel's nukes could have disappeared.

Israel nuclear weapons: UK government loses file on its involvement with country's arsenal

More than 400 documents, including government files relating to the UK’s involvement in Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal, have gone missing over the last four years, it has been revealed.

The response to a Freedom of Information request showed the UK’s National Archive at Kew contains more than 11 million documents in total, including many government documents that become publicly available after 30 years.

Notable missing files include 1970s documents on nuclear collaboration with Israel, as well as a letter from Winston Churchill.

A 1979 document titled “Military and nuclear collaboration with Israel: Israeli nuclear armament”, is among the missing pieces.

The file, contained among government files on arms control and disarmament in the 1970s, apparently relates to a United Nations resolution from 1978 which concerned “increasing evidence” Israel was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons.

FBI Had Undercover Agent at Scene of “Draw Muhammad” Shooting in Texas

When two men opened fire at the “Draw Muhammad” contest in a Dallas suburb in 2015, the FBI had an undercover agent on the scene, newly filed court documents reveal.

On May 3, 2015, two men from Arizona armed with assault rifles — Elton Simpson and his roommate, Nadir Soofi — attacked a convention center in Garland, Texas, where Pamela Geller had organized the “First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest.” The two attackers shot a guard outside the convention center and were then killed in the parking lot by Texas police.

Hours earlier, the FBI had sent a bulletin to local police with Simpson’s photo, warning that he was “interested in the event.” FBI Director James Comey said in a press conference following the shooting that the FBI did not have reason to believe Simpson was planning to attack the event, even though the bureau had spent years trying to build a case against him.

The new information came to light in an indictment filed Wednesday against Erick Jamal Hendricks, 35, of Charlotte, North Carolina, who allegedly recruited people online to join the Islamic State. An affidavit in the case reveals that an FBI undercover agent was at the “Draw Muhammad” event and was communicating with Hendricks about security there. The affidavit raises questions about whether the FBI knew, or should have known, that the event was a likely target of attack.

Sheriff Raids House to Find Anonymous Blogger Who Called Him Corrupt

After a watchdog blog repeatedly linked him and other local officials to corruption and fraud, the Sheriff of Terrebone Parish in Louisiana on Tuesday sent six deputies to raid a police officer’s home to seize computers and other electronic devices.

Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s deputies submitted affidavits alleging criminal defamation against the anonymous author of the ExposeDAT blog, and obtained search warrants to seize evidence in the officer’s house and from Facebook.

The officer, Wayne Anderson, works for the police department of Houma, the county seat of Terrebone Parish — and according to New Orleans’ WWL-TV, formerly worked as a Terrebone Sheriff’s deputy.

Anderson was placed on paid leave about an hour and a half after the raid on his house, Jerri Smitko, one of his attorneys, told The Intercept. She said that he has not yet been officially notified about why.

Smitko said Anderson denies that he is the author of ExposeDat.

Korryn Gaines: police killing highlights Baltimore's lead poisoning crisis

Days after Baltimore officials announced that nearly 2,000 homes previously deemed safe from lead paint may in fact be contaminated, Korryn Gaines, who was suffering from severe lead poisoning, was shot and killed by police after a long standoff. At the time of her death, Gaines was involved in a lawsuit against former landlords for lead poisoning and in one Instagram post showing weapons she wrote: “They can try to come get it they gon leave with more Lead than they poisoned me wit.” ...

In a lawsuit, Gaines claimed she grew up in “a sea of lead” and had a lifetime lead level of 12 mg/dL. The suit alleges that Gaines “suffered permanent brain damage resulting in developmental and behavioral injuries”. ...

Freddie Gray, whose death in police custody last year set off weeks of unrest, also suffered from the effects of lead poisoning.

“Lead interrupts the stress reaction and so it distorts the way people view threats and so I think that’s absolutely germane to both Freddie Gray and Korryn Gaines,” said Lawrence Brown, a professor of public health at Morgan State University. “If [lead poisoning] is in fact disturbing and exaggerating the threat then you can understand why Freddie Gray is running and why Korryn Gaines has a shotgun when the police are knocking on her door.” ...

For Brown, the tragedy of Gaines’ death is the result of racist public policy that has resulted in hyper-segregation, over-policing and public health hazards like lead poisoning, which are largely isolated to black communities in Baltimore, which, Brown says, is still segregated by practice if not by law.

Saul Kerpelman, a lawyer who has worked on lead issues for 30 years, agrees, saying the lead crisis would have been solved if it had affected white children. Kerpelman says roughly 99% of children poisoned by lead are African American. “In the background of it all is the racism endemic in America,” he said. “If you’re a poor person, the only place you can afford to live is a place that’s full of poison that is going to cause your children to have brain damage. Societally, that is sick, pathological.”

Maria Nikolakaki: Imperialism and Migration

US to Give Argentina Files on American Role in 'Horror' of Military Dictatorship

In Buenos Aires on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he would hand over declassified documents relating to America's role in the 1976-83 military coup and dictatorship in Argentina—often referred to as the "Dirty War"—during which tens of thousands of leftist activists and dissidents were murdered and imprisoned.

"I want to note that the relationship between the United States and Argentina is an exciting, forward-looking one. But we're also conscious of the lessons from the past," Kerry said during a press conference.

The move comes amid warming relations between the U.S. and Argentina, which elected neoliberal businessman Mauricio Macri as president in November, signaling a rightward shift for the country. President Barack Obama announced in March that the U.S. would release the files.

As Human Rights Watch explained at the time:

Argentine authorities believe the new batch of documents might reveal details on the training of Argentine soldiers at what was then called the School of the Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), at Fort Benning, Georgia, as well as on Plan Condor, a coordinated effort among the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay to repress dissent through torture and assassinations. Argentinian authorities also hope the U.S. documents will help in the search for the children of those who were disappeared during the dictatorship and in the continuing prosecution of human rights cases.

Obama also traveled to Argentina on the anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup that ousted President Isabel Peron and ushered in an era of "persecution, death, torture, and disappearances." The timing of the trip garnered widespread outcry, with Argentine Nobel Prize-winning peace activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel writing an open letter to Obama urging him to acknowledge America's role in the war and submit the nation to the International Criminal Court.

Brazil is very close to impeaching Dilma Rousseff

The impeachment process against Brazil's suspended president, Dilma Rousseff, has been moved into the home stretch by a vote of a special senate committee in favor of taking the trial to the full chamber.

The committee's 14-5 vote has also put Brazil's deep political crisis back center stage a day before the opening of the Rio Olympic Games.

It comes nearly three months after Rousseff was suspended pending the trial over allegations that she deliberately manipulated national accounts to hide deficits after her reelection in 2014. ...

The floor of the senate is now due to vote next Tuesday on whether to start the trial, with only a simple majority needed for this to happen. The supreme court's chief justice said last week that the verdict vote itself would take place on August 29, although others have suggested that it could be a few days earlier. ...

In a video posted on her Facebook account on Wednesday, Rousseff called on her supporters to step up their protests in anticipation of the trial by the full senate.

South Africa local elections: ANC loses ground in worst electoral show in decades

Voters deliver stinging rebuke to ANC in South African election

Frustrated at a stagnant economy, a 25% unemployment rate and corruption allegations that have dogged Jacob Zuma, the president, voters in local elections turned away from the ruling party in their millions and it conceded defeat in one of the three cities where it faced the strongest challenge.

The ANC is likely to claim a slim overall majority when final results are announced but it has already accepted it has lost Port Elizabeth, an industrial city on the south coast, ahead of final results for the other hotly-contested cities of Johannesburg, the economic hub, and Pretoria, the capital.

According to Reuters, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) holds a narrow lead in the capital, Pretoria, while it is level with the ANC in Johannesburg. Final results are expected later on Friday. ...

The three cities together are home to more than 8 million people, with annual budgets of about $10bn (£7.5bn). The loss of control, amid plummeting overall support for the ANC, will be a major psychological blow to a party so convinced of its right to rule that the general secretary recently declared it had a mandate from God. ...

For decades the ANC has claimed an unshakeable dominance of South African politics, entering elections with an expectation of victory that critics say has contributed to stagnation and corruption. This election will be the first time the party of the anti-apartheid hero, Nelson Mandela, has won less than 60% of the vote since country’s first multiracial poll in 1994.

Beyond Clinton vs. Trump, Green Party Convention Kicks Off

The Green Party kicked off its national convention in Houston, Texas on Thursday, where presumptive nominee Jill Stein will present a third-party challenge to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

The convention will run from August 4-7. The proceedings are expected to include keynote speeches from scholar and activist Dr. Cornel West, who endorsed Stein over Clinton after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race, and Philadelphia-based activist YahNé Ndgo. Local Green Party candidates for office will also appear.

Stein is expected to accept her party's nomination on August 6.

On Wednesday, CNN announced it would host a Green Party town hall on August 17—offering the party a rare chance to access the large media platform usually reserved for establishment candidates.

'The only other option': Bernie Sanders backers turn to Green party's Jill Stein

Last September, at short notice, Vanessa Tijerina drove three hours to San Antonio, Texas, from her home near the border with Mexico so she could join other Sanders supporters in a protest against a Democratic congressman who had criticised the Vermont senator. In January she marched through Manhattan for Sanders, inspired by his idealistic and unorthodox message.

And then the 74-year-old lost the Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton, and backed her for the White House last month at the national convention. That was where Tijerina and Sanders diverged.

“A lot of us waited with bated breath, wondering: what’s he going to do?” she said. “Because depending on what he did, that’s where the movement was either going to go or not go. He decided to stay there, and the movement can’t stay there. It cannot stay in a centrist environment. The movement is antagonising that environment so we can’t stay there.”

Tijerina and others were calling for a new phase of a Sanders-style political revolution on Thursday, as the Green party kicked off its presidential nominating convention in the improbable location of Houston, Texas – Big Oil’s back yard. (The convention’s slogan is: “Houston, We Have a Solution”.)

Stein is set to be confirmed as the Green party’s nominee on Saturday and is openly courting the seemingly large number of Sanders supporters who are reluctant or refusing to heed his call to support Clinton.

Jill Stein: Trump 'says despicable things,' but Clinton has 'terrifying track record'

For Jill Stein, accepting Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils against Donald Trump is not acceptable, the Green Party candidate said in a new ad released by her campaign.

"Donald Trump says despicable things, but Hillary Clinton has a terrifying track record," Stein said in the 30-second ad, adding, "The answer to Donald Trump is a revolutionary agenda."

"It’s time to reject the lesser evil and fight for the greater good like our lives depend on it," Stein said. "Because they do."

Democrats' claim that 'America is already great' just borrows Republicans' rhetoric

For the Democrats who could hardly wait to make a rightward pivot for the general election, Donald Trump created the perfect opportunity. His wink-wink, nod-nod racist slogan, “Make America great again,” together with his apocalyptic dirge of a convention, left exposed and unguarded a flank that is usually the Republicans’ specialty.

So at the Democrats’ convention, from Michelle Obama the first night to the nominee herself on the last, Democrats saw their opening and hit back hard: America is extremely great already – the greatest, really – and anyone who says otherwise should be run out of town.

In between patriot politicians, soldiers and law-enforcement officers provided a chorus of the my-country-right-or-wrong tune that their professions instill in them. Complaints from delegates shouting “No more war!” were easily drowned out with “U-S-A!” Many conservative pundits who’ve been in the Republican party longer than their nominee – admittedly, not a high bar – started wishing they could be With Her.

The trouble is, the Democratic strategists’ brilliant stratagem comes at the cost of a contradiction. What Bernie Sanders called the party’s “most progressive platform in history”, holds as its highest ambitions – accessible healthcare, affordable higher education, basic gun restrictions – a collection of reasonable policy proposals that most other wealthy nations accomplished decades ago. If we have such a hard time making even modest progress on such things, what makes this country so great?

Oh my, now people disclosing relevant and true information about candidates in an effort to educate the public is "meddling" in an election. Great, black hat hackerz for truth, justice and the American way protecting the liars from unplanned revelations of the truth.

Hackers for Hillary: event attendance 'through the roof' after Trump remarks

When Donald Trump called on Vladimir Putin to help find Hillary Clinton’s “missing” emails late last month, he pissed off the wrong group of people.

On Wednesday night, at the Black Hat hackers conference in Las Vegas, the first gathering of Hackers for Hillary was convened.

The idea to organize cybersecurity professionals and get them to work for Hillary Clinton’s election campaign was in the works for more than a month before, says Jake Braun, CEO of Cambridge Global Advisors and co-organizer of the event. But it didn’t gain steam until the Republican presidential nominee made his infamous statement. ...

Roughly 60 security professionals attended the fundraiser, which raised around $30,000. ...

The fact that both the DNC and Hillary’s campaign suffered hacks in recent weeks was not really a factor in spurring interest, Jeff Moss, the event’s other co-conspirator said. This isn’t the first time a political campaign has been hacked. But the way the data was leaked in an attempt to embarrass Trump’s opponents definitely added fuel to the hackers’ ire.

“When the campaigns were hacked in 2004 and 2008 and 2012, the FBI had to come to the campaigns and say: ‘Look, we noticed these intrusions,’” he said. “But it never made it to the front of the newspapers. WikiLeaks and others trying to meddle with the election – that’s new.”

Donald Trump’s Tiff With Paul Ryan Symbolizes Growing Divisions in the GOP Over Corporate Power

Donald Trump refused to endorse Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan in his primary election on Tuesday, drawing attention to Paul Nehlen, Ryan’s insurgent challenger, who has adopted many of the same themes as the real estate mogul.

While stopping short of endorsing Nehlen, Trump credited him with running a “very good campaign.” The primary is on August 9. ...

In many ways, Nehlen is evidence that Trump’s messaging has found its footing in down-ticket Republican races.

“Paul Ryan is the most…pro-Wall Street, anti-worker Member of either party of Congress,” Nehlen shouted during a rally outside Ryan’s palatial home in Janesville, Wisc.,  this summer.

By contrast, a vote for Nehlen was a vote for someone who would “never sit in a board room with Goldman Sachs executives. It’s a vote for every person who never got to go out for a steak dinner with lobbyists for the Chamber of Commerce,” he said. ...

Ryan bases his political philosophy on that of Ayn Rand, the “objectivist” philosopher who preached that altruism was inherently immoral and that the greatest moral good was the free market.

Ryan has in the past worried that this ideology is being replaced by something else. Addressing hundreds of six-figure Koch network donors in late July, Ryan’s tone was grim.

“We are flirting with various forms of progressivism, and there are Republican forms of progressivism. Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican,” Ryan said. “We have to thoroughly debunk it, repudiate it.”

Republican congressman runs TV ad explicitly opposing Trump

In a new TV ad, a sitting Republican congressman is explicitly running against the man leading his party's ticket.

"I'm a Marine — for me, country comes first," said Representative Mike Coffman of Colorado in a new commercial released on Thursday. "My duty is always to you. So if Donald Trump is the president, I'll stand up to him. Plain and simple."

Yes, that's the same Mike Coffman who peddled Trump-style birtherism four years ago and got into hot water when he said, "I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America." ...

But that was then: Now, Coffman is positioning himself as an openly anti-Trump Republican. He even recorded a version of the new ad in which he speaks Spanish.

Major Amazon dam opposed by tribes fails to get environmental license

Plans to build a giant hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon rainforest have been halted by Brazil’s environmental protection agency because of mounting concerns about the fate of indigenous communities and wildlife living in the area.

The 8,000-megawatt São Luiz do Tapajós (SLT) dam would have been the sixth-largest hydroelectric dam in the world, spanning the five-mile wide Tapajós river and drowning 376 sq km (145 sq miles) of rainforest that is home to some 12,000 Munduruku Indians.

But in an unexpected announcement, the Ibama protection agency on Thursday cancelled development permits saying that an environmental impact study (EIA) submitted by a consortium of Brazilian, European and other companies seeking to build the dam had failed to present enough evidence to judge its social and ecological impacts.

Human rights groups and environmentalists had earlier said the social and ecological risks had been grossly neglected, including impacts on biodiversity, aquatic ecosystems, greenhouse gas emissions, and implications for downstream communities.

Leaders of the Munduruku people, who stood to lose much of their ancestral land and would have been forced to move, welcomed the announcement. “We Munduruku people are very happy with the news. This is very important for us. Now we will continue to fight against other dams in our river,” said Arnaldo Kabá Munduruku, general chief Munduruku.

Melting Greenland Ice Cap Will Expose Military's Cold War-Era Toxic Waste

The rapidly warming climate will melt Greenland's ice cap to such an extent that thousands of tons of hazardous waste left in the 1960s by a secret U.S. military base will be unearthed by the end of the century, new research finds.

The biological, chemical, and radioactive waste will then seep into the ground and the sea, endangering humans and animals alike.

The study published Thursday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters discovered that if today's rate of global warming continues unabated, within the next 75 years more ice will be melting than will be replaced by new snowfall.

"Once the site transitions from net snowfall to net melt, it's only a matter of time before the wastes melt out; it becomes irreversible," the study's lead author, William Colgan, said in a statement from the American Geophysical Union.

The waste was abandoned by Camp Century, a 200-person camp that resembled a city built under the ice. Built a mere 800 miles from the North Pole in subzero temperatures, its construction was a remarkable feat of engineering. The base was ostensibly created for scientific research, but its top-secret reason for existing was to test the feasibility of a network of nuclear launch sites within the Greenland ice sheet, a task known as Project Iceworm. ...

After Camp Century closed, "the military removed a portable nuclear reactor that had helped power the 200-person base, but left the rest of the waste there, from gasoline to PCBs and nuclear coolant water," Mashable noted.

World Bank's New Rules Condemned for Disregarding People and Planet

Lending further support to the United Nation's characterization of the World Bank as a "human rights-free zone," the notorious lender is expected to approve new policies Thursday that have been widely condemned by rights advocates for endangering human rights and the environment.

The new so-called "Environmental and Social Framework" [pdf] shifts responsibility for enforcement of World Bank regulations on human rights and environmental protections to the borrowing nations themselves—leading observers to wonder if the bank is attempting to absolve itself of responsibility for the negative impacts of the projects it funds.

Essentially, the new rules will allow "borrowers, regardless of their track record of corruption or human rights violations, to bulldoze their way through projects without community consent, participation, or oversight," teleSUR argues. ...

"The bank has effectively dismantled thirty years of environmental and social protections for the world's most impoverished and vulnerable peoples," said Stephanie Fried of the Ulu Foundation, a U.S.-based environmental organization, to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). ...

"For the first time, the bank will be allowed to fund the destruction of natural habitats, including nationally or locally protected forests, while stripping away protections and rights for forest communities, a shocking dilution of existing protections," Fried said in the statement. ...

The World Bank has also stripped from its policies explicit language that calls for compensation and resettlement plans for communities displaced by a bank-funded project.

Also of Interest

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

Obama, Clinton and a permanent state of war: The never-ending bloodshed that no one wants to talk about

Hiroshima: the Crime That Keeps on Paying, But Beware the Reckoning

Liberals Grow Hysterical Toward Those Who Plan To Break From Democratic Party

Microsoft Pitches Technology That Can Read Facial Expressions at Political Rallies

Trump, Brexit ... Is New Zealand your escape route too?

Vincent van Gogh: myths, madness and a new way of painting

Why this economy is so rotten to the core

A Realistic Look at July’s Nonfarm Payrolls

Ordinary people can't afford a home in San Francisco. How did it come to this?

A Little Night Music

Lonnie Brooks - Born with the Blues

Lonnie Brooks - Sweet Little Angel

Lonnie Brooks - Boomerang

Lonnie Brooks - The Train

Lonnie Brooks - Can't Hold Out Much Longer

Lonnie Brooks - Let It All Hang Out

Lonnie Brooks - Two Headed Man

Lonnie Brooks - Shakin' Little Mama