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This Girl Just Delivered One of the Most Powerful Messages on Police Shootings You Will Ever Hear

Mother Jones

On Monday night, nine-year-old Zianna Oliphant took the stand at a city council meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina following the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, to talk about growing up in the city. Her testimony says everything.

Please watch it.

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This Girl Just Delivered One of the Most Powerful Messages on Police Shootings You Will Ever Hear

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

By on 3 Feb 2015commentsShare

Extracting tar-sands oil from Canada would lead to “a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” says the U.S. EPA.

Since the Keystone XL pipeline would facilitate tar-sands extraction, and President Obama said he would only approve the proposed pipeline if it “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” the EPA is in effect saying to the president, “Reject it!”

Right now the pipeline project is being reviewed by the State Department, which will make a recommendation to Obama on whether to give it an OK or a KO. State asked eight other federal agencies, including EPA, to offer their views on the project by yesterday. EPA did so, arguing as it has before that the pipeline would have major environmental and climate impacts. The EPA’s use of the word “significant” is, well, significant, as that’s the same word Obama used in laying out his criteria for making a decision.

Says climate activist (and Grist board member) Bill McKibben, “In a city where bureaucrats rarely say things right out loud, the EPA has come pretty close. Its knife-sharp comments make clear that despite the State Department’s relentless spin, Keystone is a climate disaster by any realistic assessment.”

The EPA has been unenthusiastic about Keystone for years, but it’s even more skeptical now that oil prices are so low. Fuel Fix explains:

In a letter to the State Department released Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency said plummeting crude prices could make the proposed pipeline vital to Canadian oil sands developers who face higher costs to ship their crude by rail.

An earlier State Department analysis of the project found that Alberta, Canada’s oil sands likely would be developed with or without Keystone XL. But the EPA noted that “this conclusion was based in large part on projections of the global price of oil.”

With domestic West Texas Intermediate crude hovering around $50, it’s important to revisit that analysis, said EPA Assistant Administrator for Enforcement Cynthia Giles.

Says the Natural Resources Defense Council, “There should be no more doubt that President Obama must reject the proposed pipeline once and for all.”

Now we just have to wait to see if Obama agrees.

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EPA to Obama: You gotta reject Keystone

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Colonel Manners Answers Your Questions on CIA Practices, Proper Cyberwar Behavior, and Invasion Etiquette

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Editor’s note: Our old friend Colonel Manners (ret.) made his first appearance at TomDispatch last October. Today, he’s back for the third time. We have yet to run into anyone more knowledgeable in the mores, manners, and linguistic habits of the national security state. His CV (unfortunately redacted) would blow you away. At a time of heightened tension among the US Intelligence Community, the White House, Congress, and the American people, who better to explain the workings and thought patterns of the inner world of official Washington than the Colonel? Once again, he answers the questions of ordinary citizens about how their secret government actually works. Among advice columnists, he’s a nonpareil. Here’s just a sampling of his answers to recent correspondence.

Dear Col. Manners,

When Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, he insisted that we “look forward,” not backward. While he rejected the widespread use of torture and abuse by the CIA in the Bush years, his Department of Justice refused to prosecute a single torture case, even when death was the result. (The only CIA agent to go to jail during the Obama presidency was the guy who blew the whistle on the CIA torture program!)

Jump ahead five years, and instead of looking forward, it seems that we’re again looking backward big time. The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, usually the staunchest backer of US intelligence, seems to have sworn a vendetta against the CIA on the Senate floor for spying on her oversight committee as it prepared its still-unreleased report on the Agency’s torture program. The CIA denies it all and claims committee staffers spied on them. Once again, the Justice Department faces the issue of charges over the Agency’s torture program! It seems like little short of a constitutional catfight.

What gives, Colonel? Shouldn’t President Obama have prosecuted CIA torturers in the first place and isn’t it time that he and his Justice Department finally take all this to court?

Tortured in Tacoma

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Colonel Manners Answers Your Questions on CIA Practices, Proper Cyberwar Behavior, and Invasion Etiquette

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