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UN Council Approves French Resolution for 'All Necessary Measures' Against ISIS
Member states should "intensify their efforts to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq and Syria and to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism."

The United Nations security council has unanimously approved France's resolution to take "all necessary measures" against the Islamic State (ISIS) and urged all able member states to join in the fight.

The 15-member panel adopted the resolution Friday after the French government called for "merciless" military action against the militant group following the attacks in Paris which killed 130 people.

According to media outlets who saw the text of the resolution, it calls for "member states that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures—in compliance with international law, on the territory under the control of [ISIS]—to redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts."

Member states should "intensify their efforts to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq and Syria and to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism," the resolution says.

‘For Paris’: On Russian Missiles Hitting Syria as Islamic State Oil Facilities Are Targeted

The Syrian Observatory said that the Russian strikes on the eastern province of Deir al-Zor killed 36 on Friday.  Meanwhile, Russia also bombed positions in Idlib and other provinces, including with a cruise missile, which, according to the Russian foreign minister, killed 600 fighters of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) and al-Qaeda (Nusra Front).

Despite these body counts, bombing alone will not win the war with Daesh.  There has to be some force on the ground that can take advantage of air strikes on Daesh. 

Moscow bombing raids are hurting the finances of Daesh.  Russia says it has hit 500 gasoline trucks in recent days.  Likewise, they have destroyed 15 petroleum storage facilities.  Russia estimates that this war on Daesh oil is costing the organization $1.5 million daily, i.e. that is the amount it is not making because of Russian strikes.

New Docs Reveal NSA Never Ended Bulk Email Collection, Just Hid It Better
Agency shut down email surveillance in 2011, only to relaunch it under different intelligence laws

The National Security Agency (NSA) secretly replaced its program monitoring Americans' emails and moved it overseas before the operation was exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013, according to new reporting.

NSA officials responded to Snowden's leaks by stating that the email records program had shut down in 2011—and in a way, it had. But newly released documents show the agency had simply created a "functional equivalent" that analyzed Americans' emails without collecting bulk data from U.S. telecommunications companies, the New York Times reported on Friday.

The Times obtained a copy of the NSA inspector general's watchdog report through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The report appeared to confirm that by moving its program outside of U.S. borders, the NSA was able to take advantage of several intelligence laws to conduct its surveillance operations with even less oversight and accountability than it had previously.

Tragic Farce of Anti-Refugee Threats: U.S. Was No Sanctuary for Syrians in the First Place

I’M CONCERNED for the education of Reese Kasich. The 15-year-old daughter of the Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate, John Kasich, has reportedly received some troubling lessons from her father. In a foreign policy address Tuesday, the governor said he’s been explaining to his child why the U.S. should not accept Syrian refugees. “Reesy, you know, we understand these people are in trouble,” Kasich recounted saying. “But think about us putting somebody in our street, in our town, in our country who mean us harm. We can’t do that, can we, Reesy?”

For a teenager living in Westerville, Ohio (population: 36,120), I could imagine that 10,000 might sound like a lot of people. But I am keen to reassure Reese Kasich that she need not fear the U.S. government’s plan to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the course of the next fiscal year. This is a very limited number of extensively vetted individuals who go through the slow, staggered, and bureaucratically arduous process of refugee resettlement in the United States. No one is putting harmful people on your street, Reesy. Daddy’s trying to scare you.

Following the attacks in Paris last Friday, for which there is no solid proof of Syrian refugee involvement, more than half of U.S. governors — all Republican but one — and a number of conservative lawmakers stated that they would block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday called for a “pause” in the program accepting refugees from Syria. Then, on Thursday, the House passed a bill that would see the program suspended until a stricter vetting system is established; the legislation now heads to the Senate.

The Brutal Paris Terror Attack

A strong tendency in the wake of major terrorist attacks is to associate the impact the event has on our own fears and thoughts (which generally are correlated with the number of Westerners who died in the incident) with the level of skill and sophistication of the attackers. The skill and sophistication in turn tend to be thought of as associated with the size and strength of some foreign organization that sponsored the attackers.

These presumed associations are false. The plain (and after such incidents, disturbing) fact is that the inherent vulnerabilities in our free and open Western societies are such that it does not require any noteworthy skill or sophistication to kill a lot of people. What it takes are extreme inclinations and a willingness to die in pursuit of malevolent ideas.

The terrorist attacks in Paris illustrate the point. Some organizational aptitude was needed to put together an operation that involved simultaneous dispatch of multiple attack teams, but this did not require organizing any more people than would be needed to put together a neighborhood soccer team.

The Saudi Connection to Terror

How does ISIS pay for its operations? This is the key question as the war against the terror organization advances to a new level in the wake of the Paris atrocities. But the mainstream’s approved answer is part of the problem.

That approved answer, from many political leaders and assorted “terrorism experts,” is that ISIS (also known as ISIL, Islamic State and Daesh) funds its operations through a variety of illicit activities such as illegal antiquity sales, kidnapping for ransom, holding up banks, and peddling crude from oil fields it controls in northern Syria and Iraq.

The line, dutifully parroted by news outlets from The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, is nothing if not politically convenient. If ISIS is truly self-supporting, then it’s essentially self-contained. If so, then all the Western powers have to do once they’ve sealed it off in its self-proclaimed caliphate is to send in the F-18’s and Mirage 2000’s to rain down smart bombs and blow it to smithereens.

The ‘War on Terror’ Has Been Lost

Last week’s attacks in Paris offered a painful and tragic reminder that despite the unprecedented counterterrorism measures implemented since the attacks on New York and Washington 14 years ago, citizens in the West remain as vulnerable as ever to the threat of extremist violence. This may come as a bit of a shock to those who may have expected that the massive investment in fighting terrorism would have resulted in more safety and security by now.

With trillions of dollars spent on overseas military adventures, unprecedented “homeland security” and mass surveillance, and countless lives lost in U.S. wars, it’s not unreasonable to have thought that perhaps more measurable progress would have been made in countering the terrorist threat against the United States.

But with transportation agencies, football stadiums and tourist destinations across the U.S. now bolstering security following the attacks in Paris – and with the Islamic State, or ISIS, promising more attacks to come in New York and Washington – it is clear how vulnerable Americans remain to the threat of jihadist terrorism, despite all these sacrifices over the past decade and a half.

State of Emergency: Crimea Without Electricity After Pylons in Ukraine Are Blown Up
Power supplies have been entirely shut off after pylons in Ukraine were blown up. Just in time for the second anniversary of the start of Maidan!

More than 80% of Crimeans say they are happy that their peninsula has been reunited with Russia - which of course is irrelevant, because only NATO gets to choose who has the right to self-determination. Luckily, Ukraine has developed a brilliant strategy to win back the hearts and minds of its former subjects:

Russia’s Crimea has switched to autonomous reserve power after transmission towers in the adjacent Ukrainian Kherson region were blown up, causing a blackout. Meanwhile, the Right Sector and Crimean Tatar “activists” have been attempting to block repairs.

Crimean authorities rushed to connect hospitals and other vital infrastructure to reserve power stations and generators late on Saturday after the four main transmission lines from Ukraine were cut off in an apparent act of sabotage. The regional energy ministry has created an emergency response center to deal with the power cut.

“Crimea has been completely cut off,” the Krymenergo energy company’s director Viktor Plakida told TASS, adding that he could not immediately provide any more details.

The Crimean Emergencies Ministry has declared a state of emergency due to the complete power outage and has put rescue teams on high alert.

Toxic Dust: The Invisible Legacy the US Left in Iraq
The Story of Depleted Uranium

A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is defined as one that can cause indiscriminate death or injury on a large scale. One of the weapons the American military used in Iraq fits that definition — only it was a much more insidious substance, quiet, slow-acting, and persistent.

It’s called depleted uranium (DU) and takes the form of a brown, radioactive, super-fine dust that is everywhere — in the air, in the sand, in the water supply, inside houses and tents, on top of clothes in closets, on the sheets and pillows, on hair and toothbrushes.

Once a particle gets into the body, it irradiates its immediate surroundings forever, causing all kinds of damage — cancers including leukemia, organ damage, toxic encephalopathy, cognitive dysfunction, and birth defects.

The dust is formed when a projectile containing a core made of depleted uranium strikes an armored target. The rapid release of energy upon penetration of the target causes near instantaneous vaporization, and the release of a radioactive aerosol.

Noam Chomsky: The Country Where Journalism Is Being Murdered
Imagine facing prison for doing journalism.

Journalists are the “watchdogs” of democracy, according to the European Court of Human Rights. Anyone who wants to control a country without being troubled by criticism tries to muzzle reporters, and unfortunately, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a past master at stifling the cries of freedom. As journalists from around the world converge on Antalya to cover this weekend’s Group of 20 summit, many of their Turkish colleagues are being denied accreditation.

Sidelining opposition media has become a bad habit in Turkey, which is ranked 149th out of 180 countries in the latest Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. Four days before the Nov. 1 parliamentary elections, the police stormed Ipek Media Group headquarters and shut down its two opposition dailies and two opposition TV stations. After control of management had been secured and 71 journalists fired, these outlets resumed operations with a new editorial line verging on caricature. The dailies, Bugun and Millet, ran Erdogan’s photo on the front page along with the headlines “The president among the people” and “Turkey united.”

Journalism is being murdered. The fact that the AKP, the ruling party for the past 13 years, recovered an absolute majority in parliament has not sufficed to halt the oppression. Two days after the elections, two journalists were jailed on charges of “inciting an armed revolt against the state” in a story. Since then, some 30 other journalists have been placed under investigation for “terrorist propaganda” or “insulting the president” — the two most common charges.

How Police Became Part of the Public School System and How to Get Them Out

Charges have yet to be brought against Ben Fields, the white police officer in South Carolina who slammed a 16-year-old Black student to the floor of her classroom at Spring Valley High School, injuring her face and neck and breaking her arm.

Nearly a month has passed since the video of the October 26 incident went viral, and while Fields was fired from his job on October 28, he has not been arrested or charged with assault or battery under South Carolina law.

Fields had previously been sued for use of excessive force and currently faces a federal lawsuit in which attorneys claim that he "recklessly targets African-American students." A federal investigation to determine whether or not any federal laws were violated during the incident is underway.

Hillary Clinton Woos Coal Communities

Candidates for the Democratic nomination for president are scrambling to show that they care about the coal miners and communities that are suffering due to the industry's downturn.

Frontrunner Hillary Clinton last week released a $30 billion plan to safeguard pensions, retrain workers, fund local schools, update telecommunications and lure new businesses to these communities. Just the week before, her top rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, stood in front of the Capitol with other Democratic Senators and vowed to protect workers even as he declared that it's time to start keeping coal in the ground to fight climate change.

Republicans and industry representatives blasted Clinton's proposal. "I think it's a cynical ploy to gain votes in coal producing states," said Stuart Sanderson, president of the Colorado Coal Association. "It would be a crying shame to destroy jobs in the coal industry and then soak tax payers for an expensive governmental program that is likely to be inadequate. There's just no way to replace high paying jobs in this industry."

Hillary is in too deep: Why she’ll never be able to extricate herself from Wall Street
She's been cozy with the big banks since her husband was in office. No amount of populist talk can change that

The highlight of Saturday night’s Democratic debate was when former Secretary Clinton invoked the September 11 attacks to try to defend her courting of Wall Street donors. The awkward defense of her political ties even spawned a rare New York Times editorial criticizing Clinton.

The fact is, there is no way that Hillary Clinton can pretend she doesn’t have a cozy relationship with an industry that personally enriched her family, formed the basis of political support for her career and is doing everything it can to make her president.

Dollar Dollar Bill

After leaving the White House, Bill and Hillary Clinton had a steady source of income; pensions from both the federal government and Arkansas. They also both wrote books that generated millions of dollars of income. That’s why, over the next 10 years, Bill Clinton raked in over $125 million in speaking fees, almost all of them from for-profit mega-corporations and trade associations. Shortly after presiding over a historic and catastrophic deregulation of Wall Street, Mr. Clinton’s first paid arrangement was a $125,000 speech at Morgan Stanley. His next speech was at Credit Suisse First Boston, for the same asking price. The same year Wall Street banks started to pour funds into the the joint Clinton bank account, Hillary went on to vote for a bankruptcy bill that made it much harder for people to qualify for Chapter 7 bankruptcy; the bill was backed primarily by banks and credit card issuers.

Energy Revolution Is Possible... And It Would Only Take 782 Rich People To Pay For It
Less than 800 of the world's wealthiest people could power half the world with 100 percent renewable energy within 15 years, says forthcoming report

The personal fortunes of just 782 of the world's wealthiest people could power half the world—Africa, Latin America, and "most of Asia"—with 100 percent renewable energy within 15 years, according to a new report to be published Monday.

Broken down by continent, it would take the wealth of just 53 rich people to power all of Africa, and a mere 32 prosperous people could plug in the vast majority of Latin America.

Though the analysis from Friends of the Earth International (FOEI), a copy of which was shared with Common Dreams ahead of its release next week, does not argue "that the wealth of these particular individuals can or should be directly used to drive the needed energy transformation," the figures do reveal "a gross injustice" when it comes to global inequality that should serve as "a shocking and stark reminder that the finance for an energy transformation is certainly available."

However, the report points out: "The political will to drive the transformation is, on the other hand, shockingly absent," as evidenced by "weak pledges of emission reductions" issued ahead of COP21 climate change negotiations scheduled to begin later this month.

How Europe's Good Environmental Intentions are Inadvertently Destroying America's Forests
Extremely vulnerable natural forests in the southeast are being felled to send biomass fuel to Europe.

In 2007, the European Union set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. It's an ambitious goal that has forced energy companies to look far and wide for renewable sources of energy.

Power plants that have traditionally burned coal to generate electricity have found a solution: burning wood. And the growing demand for biomass in Europe — where forests are often highly regulated — has been filled in large part by the American wood pellet industry.

According to a new, first-of-its-kind report (with an accompanying fact sheet) authored by the Natural Resources Defense Council in conjunction with the Conservation Biology Institute, there's a big problem with this arrangement: Due to increasing European demand, wood pellet production has put 15 million acres of unprotected forests in the southeastern United States at risk.

Humanity vs. the Climate Supervillains

The cover of a recent issue of Scientific American reads, "How We Conquered the Planet, Our Species Wielded the Ultimate Weapon: Cooperation." When I read that, I nearly choked on my kale smoothie. Humans once cooperated?

The article explained that 70,000 years ago many different human species inhabited the earth, but after that Homo sapiens eventually drove other archaic human species, like Neanderthals, into extinction, ultimately colonizing the entire planet. Homo sapiens flourished over other human species because of our unique grasp of scientific cause and effect, and a likely unique genetic propensity for "cooperation with unrelated individuals," i.e. people outside our family or sphere.

As the site of the latest terrorist tragedy, Paris is now struggling to prepare for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference. Serious cooperation among the members of our species seems almost unfathomably out of reach, especially on the climate crisis.

Conflict Makes Nations Vulnerable to Climate Impacts

Syria, Libya and Yemen are among the countries whose ability to withstand climate change shocks and stresses has deteriorated most in the past five years, suggesting conflict makes people more vulnerable to climate impacts, researchers said.

The University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index (ND-GAIN) uses 46 indicators to measure climate change risks to 180 countries and how ready they are to accept investment that could help them cope with more extreme weather and rising seas.

The main contributing factors to the falling scores of the three fragile states in the Middle East and North Africa, riven by armed conflict, are increases in political instability, violence, corruption and poor rule of law, according to the index.

"Even without climate change, you're going to see that countries that have done a poor job on their governance or economic systems are a source of refugees, (and) because of conflict, they haven't been able to serve their people, and things are deteriorating there in all different sectors," said Joyce Coffee, ND-GAIN's managing director.

Unmitigated Climate Change to Shrink Global Economy

When the world heats up, economies around the globe will cool down. That's according to a new study which predicts that rising temperatures due to climate change will wreak havoc on economic output.

"Our best estimate is that the global economy as a whole will be 23 percent smaller in 2100 than if we would avoid climate change entirely," said co-author of the study Solomon Hsiang, an associate professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley.

The study looked at the relationship between temperature and economic activity in 166 countries over a 50 year period. The findings indicate climate change will widen global inequality, perhaps dramatically, because warming is good for cold countries, which tend to be richer, and more harmful for hot countries, which tend to be poorer. In the researchers' benchmark estimate, climate change will reduce average income in the poorest 40 percent of countries by 75 percent in 2100.

"There is sort of an optimal temperature band where countries seem to do really well from an economic standpoint and on either side there are temperatures that are too cold and temperatures that are too hot," Hsiang said.