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A Butterfly in the Dunes
Photos by: joanneleon. November 5, 2013.
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Update: Adding stories to the news section -- joanneleon
This is a must read article from Matthieu Aikins of Rolling Stone. It's a long form article that talks about the incidents that preceded Karzai's demand that US/ISAF special forces be evicted from the Wardak province in Afghanistan. This article also does a good job of delineating the differences between the types of troops and Afghan forces that we have deployed and trained in Afghanistan as the withdrawal continues. One of the big problems is that the Green Berets that this story is primarily about are part of the "white" special operations (as opposed to JSOC "black" operations) and they're the future of the occupation of Afghanistan after the large occupying forces are withdrawn.
The whole area sounds like it has been one big war crime for the past 30 years. The author doesn't go easy on anyone involved and doesn't try to create any victims or heroes among those who plot and fight. He does make it clear that the residents of this area of Afghanistan are in a horrific no win situation though. Those of us who have been trying to follow and understand what's going on in the various regions of Afghanistan will not be unfamiliar with the different actors here. The Afghan Local Police, ALP, really the warlords turned into some of official force, the JSOC special forces that Scahill wrote a lot about, and these "white" special ops forces, which we knew less about, moving in to replace the conventional troops and trying to hold ground for the Afghan government.
Anyway if you make time to read anything this week, this article should be at the top of your list. It's not something that can effectively excerpted.
The A-Team Killings
Last spring, the remains of 10 missing Afghan villagers were dug up outside a U.S. Special Forces base – was it a war crime or just another episode in a very dirty war
In the fall of 2012, a team of American Special Forces arrived in Nerkh, a district of Wardak province, Afghanistan, which lies just west of Kabul and straddles a vital highway. The members installed themselves in the spacious quarters of Combat Outpost Nerkh, which overlooked the farming valley and had been vacated by more than 100 soldiers belonging to the regular infantry. They were U.S. Army Green Berets, trained to wage unconventional warfare, and their arrival was typical of what was happening all over Afghanistan; the big Army units, installed during the surge, were leaving, and in their place came small groups of quiet, bearded Americans, the elite operators who would stay behind to hunt the enemy and stiffen the resolve of government forces long after America’s 13-year war in Afghanistan officially comes to an end.
But six months after its arrival, the team would be forced out of Nerkh by the Afghan government, amid allegations of torture and murder against the local populace. If true, these accusations would amount to some of the gravest war crimes perpetrated by American forces since 2001. By February 2013, the locals claimed 10 civilians had been taken by U.S. Special Forces and had subsequently disappeared, while another eight had been killed by the team during their operations.
A post by a Google engineer on Google+.
Mike Hearn
The packet capture shown in these new NSA slides shows internal database replication traffic for the anti-hacking system I worked on for over two years. Specifically, it shows a database recording a user login as part of this system:
http://googleblog.blogspot.ch/...
Recently +Brandon Downey , a colleague of mine on the Google security team, said (after the usual disclaimers about being personal opinions and not speaking for the firm which I repeat here) - "fuck these guys":
https://plus.google.com/...
I now join him in issuing a giant Fuck You to the people who made these slides. I am not American, I am a Brit, but it's no different - GCHQ turns out to be even worse than the NSA.
We designed this system to keep criminals out . There's no ambiguity here. The warrant system with skeptical judges, paths for appeal, and rules of evidence was built from centuries of hard won experience. When it works, it represents as good a balance as we've got between the need to restrain the state and the need to keep crime in check. Bypassing that system is illegal for a good reason .
Unfortunately we live in a world where all too often, laws are for the little people. Nobody at GCHQ or the NSA will ever stand before a judge and answer for this industrial-scale subversion of the judicial process. In the absence of working law enforcement, we therefore do what internet engineers have always done - build more secure software. The traffic shown in the slides below is now all encrypted and the work the NSA/GCHQ staff did on understanding it, ruined.
Thank you Edward Snowden. For me personally, this is the most interesting revelation all summer.
John Cassidy in the
New Yorker.
BROOKLYN CALLING: FROM THE BEASTIE BOYS TO BILL DE BLASIO
Last night, as I left Bill de Blasio’s victory party at the Park Slope Armory, the sound of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” was streaming through the loudspeakers, which seemed fitting. When I first moved to New York, almost thirty years ago, the white-boy rappers were setting out to put their home borough on the rock-music map. (At The World, in Alphabet City, I was lucky enough to see some of their early gigs.) And now, another Brooklynite, not a native but not exactly a blow-in, either, has won the biggest landslide by a non-incumbent since the five boroughs were united in 1898.
Much can be said, and has been said, about de Blasio’s remarkable rise to City Hall. But the Brooklyn angle still bears inspection. In many ways, de Blasio embodies the transformation of a borough that was long considered a poor relation to Manhattan, a place many Brooklynites still refer to as “the City.” For a while now, it’s been clear that much of New York’s cultural and artistic energy has moved across the East River, vacating Manhattan—or the lower two-thirds of it—to its fate as an urban theme park and empty nesters’ retreat. Meanwhile, the home of Rhea Perlman, Vic Damone, and Mike Tyson has become an international brand name, a signifier of all things cool and urban. (“Trés Brooklyn,” the French say.) It has Jay Z, the Nets, and enough artisanal restaurants to feed an army of hipsters with Civil War beards. And now, Brooklynites are setting the city’s political agenda.
* End of Update.
Pulling back the curtain.
Ray Kelly in the running for JPMorgan job
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly, unwanted by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, is in the running for a top security job at JPMorgan Chase, sources at the financial giant told The Post.
The position would include overseeing the firm’s cyber-security, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
When asked for comment about Kelly’s potential career move, his personal attorney said in a statement, “The Police Commissioner has not accepted any post governmental offers. … Because of city [Conflict of Interest Board] rules, he has not even had discussions with, much less accepted any offer from anyone who does business with the city and will not do so until he leaves office.”
Kelly was widely expected to vacate the post he held for 10 years with the election of Bill de Blasio, a sharp critic of his stop-and-frisk policy.
Al Gore states the obvious. For FSM's sake, a major political figure has finally stated the obvious about how 1) this is unconstitutional and 2) if you're looking for a needle in a haystack, piling more hay on the haystack isn't going to help you find it. Every time someone uses that needle in a haystack analogy, I'm mortified that the spokepeopel for the supposedly most brilliant minds in my country are saying such incredibly stupid things, not to mention turning into the biggest creeps on the planet. I'm glad that Al Gore said something that makes sense. While he seems to go along with the neoliberal ideas that most other Big Dems think are good, he's a lot more level headed on other things.
Al Gore: Snowden 'revealed evidence' of crimes against US constitution
Speaking at McGill University in Montreal, Gore said the NSA's efforts to monitor communications had gone to 'absurd' lengths
Asked about Snowden, the NSA whistleblower whose revelations have been reported extensively by the Guardian, Gore said the leaks had revealed uncovered unconstitutional practices.
"He has revealed evidence of what appears to be crimes against the Constitution of the United States," Gore said.
[...]
"When you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it's not always wise to pile more hay on the haystack," he said.
Ex-CIA Analyst on Snowden and Calling Journalists Terrorists
JAY: David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald's partner, the British government is now accusing of essentially being a terrorist. They actually use those words. You could then extend that to Glenn Greenwald himself. What they're doing now is not only fingering the person who does the leaks, but they're fingering journalists. They'e essentially criminalizing journalism.
MCGOVERN: Why did they call Miranda a terrorist? Shock value, pure and simple. Now, in the Third Reich, they could have just blown up all those books. No, they chose to burn them. Okay? They could have just ignored the MacBook Pros because they didn't have anything on it. No, they chose to sledgehammer them. Okay? This is all a very draconian sort of on-steroids effort by the British government to go one better from the United States. They don't have a First Amendment. They can do what they want.
...
JAY: I mentioned at the beginning Glenn Greenwald's partner had been called a terrorist in the U.K. And Glenn makes a very important point in one of his articles--and I think Glenn's been very brave not only in how he's reported on all this, but also in terms of how he's followed up and analyzed the situation--but how much of--. A recent--a poll that came out a couple of months ago shows now that a majority of Americans think that the government's going too far in terms of invading people's privacy. About the same number think that Snowden's a whistleblower and deserves protection as think he's a traitor. But Greenwald has pointed out that people that identify as moderate or conservative Democrats actually support the NSA more than many Republicans and certain libertarians and liberal Democrats. But it's the core base of Obama supporters who are--been the most vigorous in supporting the NSA and President Obama on all this intelligence gathering. And what do you make of this kind of specific role that Obama and that section of the Democratic Party has played in helping get kind of liberal opinion that in theory would have been against all this on board?
MCGOVERN: It's unconscionable and it's real. Okay? I've learned a lot over the last decade, and that is politics overcomes all other considerations. When John Conyers refused to impeach President Bush, that to me was the key point, because once they decide to go along with that out of the provincial aim to win big in the next election, which they did, you know, once you make compromises like that, once you defy the Constitution of the United States, which provided that he should be impeached--and I told John Conyers, I said, person-to-person, you know, you're responsible. Why don't you do it? And he says, because we won't win as big in November. That's what he said. So once people don't take their constitutional duty seriously, as some of us are, then it's a slippery slope.
Let Me Stress How Shocking These NSA Revelations Are
There are probably three major alternative explanations to Obama’s actions with respect to the NSA. I list them in ascending order of plausibility:
1. As you say, Obama’s behavior could “suggest that he doesn’t grasp [the gravity of the situation] as clearly as he should. Or recognize the lasting stain it threatens to leave on his record.” This despite his having taught constitutional law, having campaigned against such NSA abuses, and despite his own recent statements regarding the need for the war on terrorism to end.
2. The Intelligence-Industrial Complex has grown so powerful and pervasive that it constitutes a state within a state. This would be consistent with Obama’s supposedly not having been briefed for nearly five years about intelligence operations against allied leaders. The implications of this alternative are substantial, to say the least.
3. Consistent with unitary executive theory as well as the formal chain of command, Obama really is in charge and knows exactly what he is doing. Accordingly, his not having been briefed on potentially embarrassing details of ongoing operations is consistent with the need for “plausible deniability,” a policy which has been more-or-less observed by presidents since the Eisenhower administration. His statements on civil liberties are conscious political signals to keep his base on board, and are common with sitting presidents.
At some point it is wise to ascribe adult levels of understanding to the principal actors in this drama, no matter how impenetrable their deeper motives.
Big Brother’s Loyal Sister: How Dianne Feinstein Is Betraying Civil Liberties
Ever since the first big revelations about the National Security Agency five months ago, Dianne Feinstein has been in overdrive to defend the surveillance state. As chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she generates an abundance of fog, weasel words, anti-whistleblower slander and bogus notions of reform – while methodically stabbing civil liberties in the back.
Feinstein’s powerful service to Big Brother, reaching new heights in recent months, is just getting started. She’s hard at work to muddy all the waters of public discourse she can – striving to protect the NSA from real legislative remedies while serving as a key political enabler for President Obama’s shameless abuse of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. ...
Days ago, taking it from the top of the NSA’s main talking points, Feinstein led off a San Francisco Chronicleop-ed piece with 9/11 fear-mongering. "The Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States was highly organized and sophisticated and designed to strike at the heart of the American economy and government," she wrote, and quickly added: "We know that terrorists remain determined to kill Americans and our allies."
From there, Senator Feinstein praised the NSA’s "call-records program" and then insisted: "This is not a surveillance program." (Paging Mr. Orwell.)
Feinstein’s essay – touting her new bill, the "FISA Improvements Act," which she just pushed through the Senate Intelligence Committee – claimed that the legislation will "bridge the gap between preventing terrorism and protecting civil liberties." But as Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Trevor Timm writes, the bill actually "codifies some of the NSA’s worst practices, would be a huge setback for everyone’s privacy, and it would permanently entrench the NSA’s collection of every phone record held by U.S. telecoms."
With Wins for de Blasio, Minimum Wage and Tea Party Losses, Voters Signal Rejection of Austerity
Bill de Blasio wins by a landslide to become New York City mayor
New York voters elected their first Democratic mayor for 20 years on Tuesday, picking Bill de Blasio to lead the city out of the unprecedented three-term reign of billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg. ...
Delivering his victory speech in the Park Slope neighbourhood of Brooklyn where he lives, De Blasio sought to temper expectations that were sky-high after his repeated campaign pledges to unite New York's "two cities" – those of the haves and the have-nots.
"Let me be clear, our work, all of our work, is really just beginning," he said. "We have no illusions about the task that lies ahead. Tackling inequality isn't easy. It never has been and it never will be. The challenges we face have been decades in the making, and the problems we sought to address will not be solved overnight. But make no mistake, the city has chosen a progressive path and tonight we set forward together on it, together as one city." ...
De Blasio based his campaign on a portrayal of New York's "two cities". He has promised to expand pre-kindergarten and after-school programs by raising taxes on high earners. It remains to be seen if De Blasio will be able to raise taxes, however, which requires approval from New York State in Albany.
Why National Democrats Rolled Over for Chris Christie
If Gov. Chris Christie wins reelection Tuesday by even a fraction of the margin predicted by New Jersey pollsters, he’ll owe his easy victory to one group in particular—national Democrats, who all but ignored his race against Democratic state Sen. Barbara Buono.
From President Obama, who twice toured New Jersey with Christie after Hurricane Sandy and then failed to endorse Christie’s challenger, to the Democratic National Committee, which sent just one staffer to the state to fortify local efforts, to major donors and high-profile party leaders such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, powerful Democrats have stayed on the sidelines in the blue state contest that top brass deemed a loser from the start.
National Democrats stand by the decision not to play seriously in New Jersey, according to several who spoke with The Daily Beast. The calculation was two-fold, they said. First, the money required just to land a punch on Christie in the pricey New York and Philadelphia media markets could fund an entire campaign somewhere or sometime else when a Democrat had a chance of winning.
“When you have someone this powerful and this popular, you shrug it off and wait for the next one,” a top Democratic donor said of Christie. “It’s not worth the financial investment to try to take him down or out.”
Christie's 31%
31 percent.
That's the number of the night, people.
That's the percentage of self-identified "liberals" that voted for Chris Christie, essentially endorsing the idea that he should run for president of the United States, since that was the real purpose of the New Jersey gubernatorial election yesterday. ... No, as soon as it was determined by the strategic geniuses in the Democratic party that Barbara Buono would be fed to the woodchipper -- and good on her for calling the duplicitous bastards on it last night -- the only issue in the election became whether or not you think Chris Christie should run for president. And 31 percent of the liberals who voted assented to that proposition. ...
There is no reason on god's earth why a self-identified liberal would vote for Chris Christie. He's a tool of the ascendant oligarchy, awful on women's rights, terrible on infrastructure, very high on union-busting, and a short-tempered, thin-skinned bully into the bargain. ... Because of that number, and because he also got 32 percent of the overall Democratic vote, the Christie '16 narrative is now set in stone. He's the Obamist candidate who can bring folks together.
Buono delivers blistering concession speech, attacking Garden State Democrats
In a concession speech delivered less than an hour after polls closed, State Sen. Barbara Buono went after a state Democratic party that offered her little help in her campaign.
She thanked supporters who “withstood the onslaught of betrayal from our own political party,” and she chafed at New Jersey’s “good old boy machine politics.” ...
Buono endured repeated slights during her campaign from Democrats around the state. More than 50 elected Democrats publicly endorsed Christie and few others offered much support to Buono, a longtime legislator from Middlesex County.
She also received little help from the state’s Democratic political bosses, whom she railed against in her speech.
“The Democratic political bosses, some elected and some not, made a deal with this governor,” she said. “They didn’t do it for the state. They did it out of a desire to help themselves.”
Russell Brand: we deserve more from our democratic system
I've had an incredible week since I spoke from the heart, some would say via my arse, on Paxman. ... The people who liked the interview said it was because I'd articulated what they were thinking. I recognise this. God knows I'd love to think the attention was about me but I said nothing new or original, it was the expression of the knowledge that democracy is irrelevant that resonated. As long as the priorities of those in government remain the interests of big business, rather than the people they were elected to serve, the impact of voting is negligible and it is our responsibility to be more active if we want real change. ...
The only reason to vote is if the vote represents power or change. I don't think it does. I fervently believe that we deserve more from our democratic system than the few derisory tit-bits tossed from the carousel of the mighty, when they hop a few inches left or right. The lazily duplicitous servants of The City expect us to gratefully participate in what amounts to little more than a political hokey cokey where every four years we get to choose what colour tie the liar who leads us wears.
Obviously there has been some criticism of my outburst ... Some people say I'm a hypocrite because I've got money now. When I was poor and I complained about inequality people said I was bitter, now I'm rich and I complain about inequality they say I'm a hypocrite. I'm beginning to think they just don't want inequality on the agenda because it is a real problem that needs to be addressed. ... Most of the people who criticized me have a vested interest in the maintenance of the system. They say the system works. What they mean is "the system works for me".
The less privileged among us are already living in the apocalypse, the thousands of street sleepers in our country, the refugees and the exploited underclass across our planet daily confront what we would regard as the end of the world. No money, no home, no friends, no support, no hand of friendship reaching out, just acculturated and inculcated condemnation. ...
If we all collude and collaborate together we can design a new system that makes the current one obsolete. The reality is there are alternatives. That is the terrifying truth that the media, government and big business work so hard to conceal. ... This is a journey we can all go on together, all of us. We can include everyone and fear no one. A system that serves the planet and the people. I'd vote for that.
This transatlantic trade deal is a full-frontal assault on democracy
The purpose of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is to remove the regulatory differences between the US and European nations. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. But I left out the most important issue: the remarkable ability it would grant big business to sue the living daylights out of governments which try to defend their citizens. It would allow a secretive panel of corporate lawyers to overrule the will of parliament and destroy our legal protections. Yet the defenders of our sovereignty say nothing.
The mechanism through which this is achieved is known as investor-state dispute settlement. It's already being used in many parts of the world to kill regulations protecting people and the living planet. ...
[C]ompanies ... are using the investor-state dispute rules embedded in trade treaties signed by the countries they are suing. The rules are enforced by panels which have none of the safeguards we expect in our own courts. The hearings are held in secret. The judges are corporate lawyers, many of whom work for companies of the kind whose cases they hear. Citizens and communities affected by their decisions have no legal standing. There is no right of appeal on the merits of the case. Yet they can overthrow the sovereignty of parliaments and the rulings of supreme courts.
You don't believe it? Here's what one of the judges on these tribunals says about his work. "When I wake up at night and think about arbitration, it never ceases to amaze me that sovereign states have agreed to investment arbitration at all ... Three private individuals are entrusted with the power to review, without any restriction or appeal procedure, all actions of the government, all decisions of the courts, and all laws and regulations emanating from parliament."
In the US, Less Food for the Most Hungry
Deep cuts in food aid for poor people in the United States are poised to bring higher demands on charities and food pantries across the country that provide food to families in need – and which are already overstretched.
“How are people going to feed their families?” Earle Eldridge, a volunteer at St. Anthony Catholic Church’s food pantry in Washington, told IPS on Monday. “We’re becoming a country where the government cuts such essential things as food, and we don’t know how people are going to survive.” ...
“Ever since the beginning of the recession, people have been coming to us because they’re not making the money they were supposed to be making,” Elaine Schaller, another volunteer at the church, told IPS. “But lower incomes also mean fewer donations, and that is quite problematic as we rely on donations for most of our distributions.”
Indeed, the depressed economic situation currently affecting the country exposes the larger and indirect implications of the cuts. As people have less money, they’re also less likely to make donations to distribution centres, which means food pantries are likely to be even tighter in the months to come, Schaller says.
Bombing Food Stamps; Feeding Bombs
Beginning Nov. 1, food stamp cutbacks mean $36 per month less for a family of four.
Public ‘servants’ like Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan and Democratic former President Bill Clinton point to the failure of poverty programs to end poverty, and then slash those program budgets or abolish them altogether. Clinton’s actions did away with Aid to Families with Dependent Children in a fell swoop he dubbed “welfare reform.”
Meanwhile, the chronic test failure of anti-missile rockets never results in budget cuts, but is called reason enough for more funding. The latest miss by the “missile defense” project occurred July 5 over the Pacific, adding to a near perfect record of total flops or faked hits. The rocket business is one welfare program that is never declared fraudulent or wasteful except by scientists, honest think tanks and military watchdog groups. ...
Still, spending for BMD [ballistic missile defense] over three decades totals about $200 billion — $130 billion by 2000, according to the Center for Strategic & Budget Assessments — and about $10 billion every year since then. Last March, President Obama announced another $1 billion in funding to add 14 new “interceptor” missile pads to the 26 already deployed in Fort Greely, Alaska. ...
The same Congressional budget cutters who call for “small” government have insured that useless military boondoggles in their districts stay big—even while providing fewer jobs per $billion spent than any other sector of expenditure. As [Baltimore Sun blogger Terry] Munson said, “If we used some of that money to feed hungry children and educate those who need it most … Congressional reps might be compelled to find support among real voters and not just corporations seeking government handouts.”
Jeremy Scahill "First Obama Authorized Drone Strike In Yemen Killed 36 Women & Children!"
Obama denies he made a promise that was videotaped two dozen times
Despite more than two-dozen video recordings showing otherwise, President Obama said that he never promised Americans they’d be able to keep their health care plans under the Affordable Care Act.
Speaking to supporters in Washington on Monday, Obama claimed that in the past, he said, “You could keep [your plan] if it hasn’t changed since the law was passed.”
However, the Daily Caller reports that there are at least 29 videos showing the president leaving out the crucial words, “if it hasn’t changed.” Instead, he unambiguously stated numerous times that “if you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan, period.”
Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that some White House officials were worried about making such a pledge, but that ultimately the administration decided to move forward with it.
“Simplification and ease of explanation were a premium, and that was true throughout the process,” Jon Favreau, formerly Obama’s senior speech writer, told the paper.
Ireland Has Been Attacked and Dominated by Outside Powers for Centuries -- Now It's the Banks
The Irish have a long history of being tyrannized, exploited, and oppressed—from the forced conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages, to slave trading of the natives in the 15th and 16th centuries, to the mid-nineteenth century “potato famine” that was really a holocaust. The British got Ireland’s food exports, while at least one million Irish died from starvation and related diseases, and another million or more emigrated.
Today, Ireland is under a different sort of tyranny, one imposed by the banks and the troika—the EU, ECB and IMF. The oppressors have demanded austerity and more austerity, forcing the public to pick up the tab for bills incurred by profligate private bankers. ...
Five years of austerity has not restored confidence in Ireland’s banks. In fact the banks themselves are packing up and leaving. On October 31st, RTE.ie reported that Danske Bank Ireland was closing its personal and business banking, only days after ACCBank announced it was handing back its banking license; and Ulster Bank’s future in Ireland remains unclear. ...
Ireland could fix its budget problems by leaving the Eurozone, repudiating its blanket bank guarantee as “odious” (obtained by fraud and under duress), and issuing its own national currency. The currency could then be used to fund infrastructure and restore social services, putting the Irish back to work.
Short of leaving the Eurozone, Ireland could reduce its interest burden and expand local credit by forming publicly-owned banks, on the model of the Bank of North Dakota. The newly-formed Public Banking Forum of Ireland is pursuing that option. In Wales, which has also been exploited for its coal, mobilizing for a public bank is being organized by the Arian Cymru ‘BERW’ (Banking and Economic Regeneration Wales).
Assad Advisor: With political will, Syrian crisis over in 2 weeks
David Suzuki's Fukushima Warning Is Dire And Scary
David Suzuki has issued a scary warning about Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, saying that if it falls in a future earthquake, it's "bye bye Japan" and the entire west coast of North America should be evacuated.
"Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami. The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there's another earthquake of a seven or above that, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose.
"I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate," he said.
Ill. attorney general suing Koch firm over mounds of refinery waste
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is suing one of the companies piling up huge mounds of refinery waste on Chicago's Southeast Side, adding new legal pressure to stop black clouds of dust from blowing into surrounding neighborhoods.
In a complaint filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, Madigan accused KCBX Terminals [a company controlled by Charles and David Koch] of repeatedly violating state law by allowing lung-damaging particulate matter to swirl off piles of petroleum coke and coal along the Calumet River.
The lawsuit follows months of complaints from residents in the East Side and South Deering neighborhoods who say the noxious clouds often are so thick they are forced to stay inside with their windows closed. ...
All of the petroleum coke from a nearby BP refinery is stored by KCBX ... BP is completing work on new equipment that will turn its Whiting refinery on Lake Michigan into the world's second-largest source of petroleum coke, also known as petcoke. BP expects to produce more than 2.2 million tons a year at Whiting, up from about 700,000 tons before the refinery was overhauled to process oil from the tar sands region of Alberta.
Other Koch companies sell high-carbon, high-sulfur petcoke for use as industrial fuel, often in countries with more lenient environmental laws. The largest independent petcoke marketer in the U.S., Oxbow Corp., is owned by William Koch, brother of Charles and David.
Action
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
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