October 14, 2016


News and Views


http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pipeline-dakota-idUSKCN12D1Z7

COMMODITIES | Thu Oct 13, 2016 | 1:49pm EDT
Sanders among five senators asking Obama to order Dakota pipeline review
By Valerie Volcovici | WASHINGTON

Photograph -- Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) waves while leaving the stage after addressing the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. July 25, 2016. REUTERS/Scott Audette - RTSJMU9


Former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and four other U.S. senators on Thursday called on President Barack Obama to order a comprehensive environmental review of a pipeline project that has stirred widespread opposition from Native Americans and environmental activists.

After a federal appeals court on Sunday night denied a request to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, the senators asked Obama to direct the Army Corps of Engineers to complete a full environmental impact statement, including stronger tribal consultation, for a contested part of the route.

"The project’s current permits should be suspended and all construction stopped until a complete environmental and cultural review has been completed for the entire project," said the letter by Sanders and Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein, Ed Markey, Patrick Leahy and Benjamin Cardin.

Also on Thursday, the governments of 19 cities, including St. Louis and Minneapolis, passed ordinances to support the Standing Rock tribe in opposition of the pipeline.

In recent weeks, protests against the Dakota Access pipeline led by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota have drawn international attention, prompting the U.S. government to temporarily block construction on federal land.

Tribal leaders say the pipeline will desecrate land and pollute water, especially around the planned crossing through Lake Oahe, a sacred site. Opposition to the pipeline has drawn support from 200 Native American tribes.

On Tuesday, anti-pipeline activists in four states, in solidarity with the Dakota pipeline protesters, closed pipeline valves to halt the flow of crude through arteries transporting 15 percent of U.S. oil consumption.

A day earlier, actress Shailene Woodley was arrested in North Dakota while protesting the pipeline, an incident that was live streamed on Facebook.

On Thursday, Amy Goodman, a journalist from the independent TV and radio program Democracy Now!, said she would turn herself over to authorities in North Dakota on Monday morning, in response to a criminal complaint was filed against her on Sept. 8 for trespassing.

Goodman had filmed the crackdown on protesters by authorities last month.

"I was doing my job as a journalist, covering a violent attack on Native American protesters," she said.

When fully connected, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km) pipeline would be the first to carry crude directly to the U.S. Gulf from the Bakken shale, a vast oil formation in North Dakota, Montana and parts of Canada.

U.S. oil hub pipeline's extended outage hits crude price spread
The $3.7 billion project is being built by the Dakota Access subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP, which has vowed to complete construction.

"There must be a serious consideration of the full potential climate impacts of this pipeline prior to the Army Corps of Engineers approving any permits or easements for the Dakota Access pipeline," the senators said.

Experts say that the full environmental review requested by the senators could take several months.

(Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; additional reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by David Gregorio)



TRUMP’S SOUL MATE?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-russian-trump-idUSKCN12C28Q

WORLD NEWS | Wed Oct 12, 2016 | 6:35pm EDT
Putin ally tells Americans: vote Trump or face nuclear war
By Andrew Osborn | MOSCOW

Play video -- From Russia with Love: Zhirinovski makes case for Trump (01:45)
Photograph -- Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Moscow, Russia, October 11, 2016. Picture taken October 11, 2016. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
VIDEO -- Putin says U.S. hacking scandal not in Russia's interests
CLINTON "CRAVES POWER"


Americans should vote for Donald Trump as president next month or risk being dragged into a nuclear war, according to a Russian ultra-nationalist ally of President Vladimir Putin who likes to compare himself to the U.S. Republican candidate.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant veteran lawmaker known for his fiery rhetoric, told Reuters in an interview that Trump was the only person able to de-escalate dangerous tensions between Moscow and Washington.

By contrast, Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton could spark World War Three, said Zhirinovsky, who received a top state award from Putin after his pro-Kremlin Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) came third in Russia's parliamentary election last month.

Many Russians regard Zhirinovsky as a clownish figure who makes outspoken statements to grab attention but he is also widely viewed as a faithful servant of Kremlin policy, sometimes used to float radical opinions to test public reaction.

"Relations between Russia and the United States can't get any worse. The only way they can get worse is if a war starts," said Zhirinovsky, speaking in his huge office on the 10th floor of Russia's State Duma, or lower house of parliament.

"Americans voting for a president on Nov. 8 must realize that they are voting for peace on Planet Earth if they vote for Trump. But if they vote for Hillary it's war. It will be a short movie. There will be Hiroshimas and Nagasakis everywhere."

Zhirinovsky's comments coincide with deep disagreements between Washington and Moscow over Syria and Ukraine and after the White House last week accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations.

Even as WikiLeaks released another trove of internal documents from Clinton’s campaign on Wednesday, Putin insisted his country was not involved in an effort to influence the U.S. presidential election.

THE RUSSIAN TRUMP?

Zhirinovsky likes to shock liberal public opinion and he has frequently heaped scorn on the West, which he and other Russian nationalists regard as decadent, hypocritical and corrupted by political correctness.

His combative style, reminiscent of Trump's, ensures him plenty of television air time and millions of votes in Russian elections, often from the kind of blue-collar workers who are the bedrock of the U.S. Republican candidate's support.

Zhirinovsky once proposed blocking off mostly Muslim southern Russia with a barbed wire fence, echoing Trump's call for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

Zhirinovsky, who said he met Trump in New York in 2002, revels in his similarities with the American businessman - they are the same age, favor coarse, sometimes misogynistic language and boast about putting their own country first. Zhirinovsky has even said he wants a DNA test to see if he is related to Trump.

But unlike Trump, a billionaire real estate developer who casts himself as the anti-establishment candidate in the U.S. presidential race with no past political experience, Zhirinovsky is a consummate political insider who has sat in the Duma for more than two decades.

Putin has also praised Trump as "very talented", while the Republican candidate has said the Kremlin boss is a better leader than U.S. President Barack Obama. Clinton has accused Trump of being too cozy with Putin and questioned his business interests in Russia.

In other comments that have delighted Moscow, Trump has questioned the value of NATO for Washington, has spoken ambiguously about Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and suggested that the United States under his leadership would adopt a more isolationist foreign policy.

"He (Trump) won't care about Syria, Libya and Iraq and why an [sic] earth should America interfere in these countries? And Ukraine. Who needs Ukraine?," said Zhirinovsky, who once counted himself a friend of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and whose deaths he still laments.


"Trump will have a brilliant chance to make relations more peaceful ... He's the only one who can do this," he said, adding that Trump could even win a Nobel peace prize.

In contrast, Zhirinovsky described Clinton as "an evil mother-in law" and said her record as secretary of state under Obama in 2009-2013 showed she was unfit to lead her country.

"She craves power. Her view is that Hillary is the most important person on the planet, that America is an exceptional country, as Barack Obama said," said Zhirinovsky. "That's dangerous. She could start a nuclear war."

In typically chauvinistic remarks, Zhirinovsky said Clinton's gender should also bar her from the presidency.

"Most Americans should choose Trump because men have been leading for millions of year. You can't take the risk of having one of the richest, most powerful countries led by a woman president," he said.

Asked about lewd comments Trump made about women in 2005 that have harmed his campaign, Zhirinovsky defended the Republican: "Men all round the world sometimes say such things that are just for their comrades. We must only consider his business (and political) qualities."

Though Putin and Trump have never met, Zhirinovsky said he believed they could establish a close working relationship, adding: "Victory for Trump would be a gift to humanity. But if Hillary Clinton wins it will be the last U.S. president ever."




http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-nsa-congress-idUSKBN12E1LI

TECHNOLOGY NEWS | Fri Oct 14, 2016 | 10:12am EDT
Dozens of U.S. lawmakers request briefing on Yahoo email scanning
By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON

Photograph -- Yahoo Mail logo is displayed on a smartphone's screen in front of a code in this illustration taken in October 6, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic


A bipartisan group of 48 lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday asked the Obama administration to brief Congress "as soon as possible" about a 2015 Yahoo (YHOO.O) program to scan all of its users' incoming email at the behest of the government.

The request comes amid scrutiny by privacy advocates and civil liberties groups about the legal authority and technical nature of the surveillance program, first revealed by Reuters last week. Custom software was installed to search messages to hundreds of millions of accounts under an order issued by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"As legislators, it is our responsibility to have accurate information about the intelligence activities conducted by the federal government," according to the letter, organized by Republican Representative Justin Amash of Michigan and Democratic Representative Ted Lieu of California.

"Accordingly, we request information and a briefing as soon as possible for all members of Congress to resolve the issues raised by these reports."

Investigators searched for messages that contained a single piece of digital content linked to a foreign state sponsor of terrorism, sources have told Reuters, though the nature of the content remains unclear.

Intelligence officials said Yahoo modified existing systems used to stop child pornography and filter spam messages on its email service.

But three former Yahoo employees told Reuters the court-ordered search was done by a module buried deep near the core of the company’s email server operation system, far below where mail sorting was handled.

The Senate and House intelligence committees were given a copy of the order when it was issued last year, sources said, but other members of Congress have express concern at the scope of the email scanning.

Some legal experts have questioned the breadth of the court order and whether it runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

Half of registered U.S. voters believe the Yahoo program violated the privacy of customers, according to a poll of 1,989 people conducted last week by Morning Consult, a polling and media company.

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Twenty-five percent were supportive of the program because of its potential to stop criminal acts, the survey found, while another quarter did not know or had no opinion.

The congressional letter is addressed to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball and Joseph Menn; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)



EXCERPTS – But three former Yahoo employees told Reuters the court-ordered search was done by a module buried deep near the core of the company’s email server operation system, far below where mail sorting was handled. . . . . The Senate and House intelligence committees were given a copy of the order when it was issued last year, sources said, but other members of Congress have express concern at the scope of the email scanning. Some legal experts have questioned the breadth of the court order and whether it runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.”


It seems to me that if all Yahoo has to search for is a short code, especially if the code is found only in emails sent out by the enemy source – ISIS or some similar group, presumably -- this shouldn’t really affect the other USA recipients of personal and harmless emails. If we can home in on emails being sent from dangerous – presumably foreign – websites which contact the “lone wolf” bombers here in the US, it is a good thing. IT SHOULD NOT BECOME A “BIG BROTHER” SYSTEM, HOWEVER.

It is good that Congress is checking on this, and I hope we will hear more about the results of the Congressional probe when the report comes out.

How might this search system work? The photograph provided at the top of this website of the “code” looks like Braille writing to me. I wonder if the Braille Alphabet was used as a model to construct this Email code. See Braille and Night Writing in Wikipedia for some interesting information. Night writing, the forerunner of Braille, was developed for Napoleon, to be used by soldiers in the dark of night without their needing a light. Lights would have given their positions away to the enemy.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_module -- “

“A computer module is a selection of independent electronic circuits packaged onto a circuit board to provide a basic function within a computer. An example might be an inverter or flip-flop, which would require two or more transistors and a small number of additional supporting devices. Modules would be inserted into a chassis and then wired together to produce a larger logic unit, like an adder.

History[edit]

Modules were the basic building block of most early computer designs, until they started being replaced by integrated circuits in the 1960s, which were essentially an entire module packaged onto a single computer chip. Modules with discrete components continued to be used in specialist roles into the 1970s, notably high-speed designs like the CDC 8600, but advances in chip design led to the disappearance of the discrete-component module in the 1970s.”



http://grammarist.com/eggcorns/home-in-hone-in/

Home in vs. hone in

Home in means to direct on a target. The phrasal verb derives from the 19th-century use of homing pigeons, but it resurged in the 20th century to refer to missiles that home in on their targets. It’s also commonly used metaphorically, where to home in on something is to focus on and make progress toward it.

Hone in began as an alteration of home in, and many people regard it as an error. It is a very common, though, especially in the U.S. and Canada—so common that many dictionaries now list it—and there are arguments in its favor. Hone means to sharpen or to perfect, and we can think of homing in as a sharpening of focus or a perfecting of one’s trajectory toward a target. So while it might not make strict logical sense, extending hone this way is not a huge leap.

Outside North America, home in prevails by a huge margin. It also prevails in North America, but only by a ratio of about two to one. Hone in is common even in technical, scientific, and military contexts, where one might expect home in to prevail. A few American and Canadian publishers clearly favor home in as a matter of policy, but most apparently have no strictly enforced policy one way or the other.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/montana-man-admits-to-raping-12-year-old-daughter-gets-60-days-in-jail/

By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS NEWS Montana man admits to raping 12-year-old daughter; gets 60 days in jail
October 14, 2016, 1:14 PM


GLASGOW, Mont. -- An eastern Montana man has been given a 30-year suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to raping his 12-year-old daughter last year.

District Judge John McKeon sentenced the man to 60 days in jail for incest, giving him credit for 17 already served, the Glasgow Courier reported. The man also was ordered to complete community-based sex-offender treatment and register as a sex offender.

The Associated Press is not naming the man to avoid identifying the victim of a sexual assault.

Deputy Valley County Attorney Dylan Jensen recommended a 100-year prison sentence with 75 years suspended - as called for in state law - as part of a plea agreement that recommended the dismissal of two other incest charges.

“A father repeatedly raped his 12-year-old daughter,” Jensen said during the Oct. 4 sentencing hearing.

A licensed clinical social worker testified that the man was a low-risk to re-offend and that it would be important for him to have social support while he received treatment. The social worker, Michael Sullivan of Billings, said the man did suffer a “collapse of social support” when he lost his family and job.

Court records said the girl’s mother walked in on one of the sexual assaults.

Public defender Casey Moore argued there was more than one way to hold a person accountable, the Courier reported.

“I’m not asking that he be given a slap on the wrist,” Moore said. “He did spend 17 days in jail and he did lose his job,” and will be on supervision for the rest of his life.

McKeon said he diverted from the recommended sentence because the man had support from his family, friends, church and his employer. The Courier reports the girl’s mother and grandmother were among those supporting a community-based punishment. Someone wrote that “he was a good father for 12 years,” and another said he was not a monster, but a man who had made a mistake.

Jensen told the Courier that he was shocked and disappointed with the sentence, but respected the judge’s decision.

McKeon is retiring next month after 22 years as a state judge.



http://kfor.com/2016/10/13/judge-sentences-man-to-probation-after-he-admits-to-raping-12-year-old-girl

Judge sentences man to probation after he admits to raping 12-year-old girl
POSTED 3:23 PM, OCTOBER 13, 2016,
BY KFOR-TV & K. QUERRY

News Video -- KRTV.com | Great Falls, Montana
Photograph – Martin Joseph Blake

BILLINGS, Mont. – A Montana man who admitted to raping a 12-year-old girl will not be sent to prison.

According to KRTV, 40-year-old Martin Joseph Blake reached a plea agreement with the prosecutor in the case.

The plea agreement was 100 years in state prison with 75 of those years suspended.

The Courier reports that Blake pleaded guilty to one count of incest, and several other counts were dismissed.

However, Judge John McKeon ordered Blake to 30 years suspended. He will spend 60 days in jail, with credit for 17 days already served and sex offender treatment.

The Courier reports that McKeon described the conditions of the sentence as “quite restrictive” and “quite rigorous.”

He also said that he decided to suspend the sentence because of the support that Blake had from family members, including a letter written by the victim’s mother, who is a close family member.



EXCERPT – “McKeon said he diverted from the recommended sentence because the man had support from his family, friends, church and his employer. The Courier reports the girl’s mother and grandmother were among those supporting a community-based punishment. Someone wrote that “he was a good father for 12 years,” and another said he was not a monster, but a man who had made a mistake.”


This does look very much like one of those “White Privilege” judgments. I tried to find the family’s net worth, and found nothing. I did sign a petition to impeach the judge who gave this unfair sentence. The concept of “community-based punishment,” was mentioned here, but I think that is only fair in the case of teens who shoplift some small item, not the rape by a 40 year old man of his own 12 year old daughter multiple times. Are people in this society going nuts???

There was mention of a church in a couple of the articles, and if it is one of those radical groups which are more or less cults, that might make sense, though why the judge would condone it, I don’t see. I will add something as another possibility. If this man is very “slow” mentally, I can see some justice for this, though I still think he should be in an institution rather than at home. I hope to see some follow-up stories also.



https://www.change.org/p/impeach-judge-john-mckeon/sponsors/new

Petitioning Montana State House and 1 other
Impeach Judge John McKeon
by Madeline Forman


PLEASE PARDON THE REPETITIONS WHEN THIS WAS FIRST PUBLISHED. THE PRESENT VERSION IS CORRECT.
LMW, OCTOBER 17, 2016.