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Morning news dump, December site stats and music by The Pretenders.

Outrage Follows Saudi Arabia's Execution of Nearly 50 Prisoners

Saudi Arabia—recently chosen to to head a key United Nations human rights panel—on Saturday executed 47 people convicted of "terrorism," including at least four convicted of offenses related to political protest.

According to Reuters, the executions took place in 12 cities in Saudi Arabia, with four prisons using firing squads and the others beheading.

Among those killed was prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, whom the Guardian reports "had called for pro-democracy demonstrations and whose arrest in 2012 sparked protests in which three people died."

"Nimr," the Guardian added, "had long been regarded as the most vocal Shia leader in the eastern Saudi province of Qatif, willing to publicly criticise the ruling al-Saud family and call for elections. He was, however, careful to avoid calling for violence, analysts say."

Top Investigator Says British Soldiers May Face Prosecution for Iraq Crimes
Head of unit tasked with investigating allegations of torture and unlawful killing says soldiers could face charges for crimes including murder

The head of an independent UK unit tasked with investigating allegations of torture and unlawful killing in Iraq has said that British soldiers could face prosecution for crimes including murder, according to an interview published Saturday in The Independent.

"There are serious allegations that we are investigating across the whole range of ... investigations, which incorporates homicide, where I feel there is significant evidence to be obtained to put a strong case before the Service Prosecuting Authority [SPA] to prosecute and charge," Mark Warwick, a former police detective who is in charge of the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), told the paper.

Asked whether some cases could constitute war crimes, he responded: "There are lots of significant cases that we are investigating and at the appropriate time it will be a matter for us to discuss with the SPA whether they meet the war-crimes threshold, but there are certainly serious allegations currently being investigated."

The middle class is just this screwed: Janet Yellen declares victory while workers drown
We're working longer, earning less, and closer to poverty. The recovery has only lifted the few

Earlier this month when Fed chair Janet Yellen offered her rationale for raising interest rates, it was sadly reminiscent of President George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech, given on the USS Abraham Lincoln when he declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over in 2003.

Yellen spoke from her well-feathered perch about the “considerable progress that has been made restoring jobs, raising incomes, and easing the economic hardship of millions of Americans.” A few days later Congress passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill and $700 billion in tax breaks before they went on their holiday. The president signed off on it all and headed off for his spectacular vacation to Hawaii.

Just what country are these happy holiday revelers living in? Even the Hallmark Channel in 2015 has more social realism than the happy talk generated from the Beltway.

Down here at the pedestrian level, between 2010 and 2014 poverty increased in one third of America’s 3,000 counties, when compared to the 2005 to 2009 period, according to the U.S. Census’s American Community Survey. In fact, the “recovery,” that pastel-colored unicorn, was only seen in the 4 percent of the nation’s counties where poverty actually declined. The rest remained stagnant.

Spying on Congress and Israel: NSA Cheerleaders Discover Value of Privacy Only When Their Own Is Violated

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the NSA under President Obama targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top aides for surveillance. In the process, the agency ended up eavesdropping on “the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups” about how to sabotage the Iran Deal. All sorts of people who spent many years cheering for and defending the NSA and its programs of mass surveillance are suddenly indignant now that they know the eavesdropping included them and their American and Israeli friends rather than just ordinary people.

The long-time GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and unyielding NSA defender Pete Hoekstra last night was truly indignant to learn of this surveillance:

WSJ report that NSA spied on Congress and Israel communications very disturbing. Actually outrageous. Maybe unprecedented abuse of power.

— Pete Hoekstra (@petehoekstra) December 30, 2015

NSA and Obama officials need to be investigated and prosecuted if any truth to WSJ reports. NSA loses all credibility. Scary.

— Pete Hoekstra (@petehoekstra) December 30, 2015

Prior to San Bernardino Attack, Many Were Trained to Spot Terrorists; None Did

IN MID-NOVEMBER, just weeks before the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, the Joint Regional Intelligence Center and the sheriffs’ departments of San Bernardino and Riverside counties held the First Annual Inland Terrorism Liaison Officer Conference in Fontana, California. The two-day event — for law enforcement, public officials, and select members of the private sector — included sessions like “Policing Violent Extremism” and “Preventing Lone Wolf Attacks.”

In fact, this part of California’s Inland Empire has become home to a cottage industry of counterterrorism training in recent years aimed at teaching people how to spot would-be terrorists before they attack. By all accounts, those trainings failed to help anyone spot Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the married couple who shot and killed 14 people and injured 22 others at a meeting of San Bernardino County Health Department employees on December 2.

Many of the trainings, which focus on helping attendees identify “behavioral indicators” of potential terrorists, were held at the Ben Clark Training Center in Riverside, California, less than 25 miles from where the attacks took place.

America’s Vampire Aristocracy

On January 2nd, America’s NBC News bannered “Arab Spring Cleric Nimr al-Nimr Among 47 Executed by Saudi Arabia,” and, one-third of the way into their report, showed this tweet:

“Saudi execution of Nimr al-Nimr along w/ al Qaeda members is straight from Assad’s playbook – lumping nonviolent activists with terrorists.

— DavidKenner (@DavidKenner) January 2, 2016”

Even when Sunni-Islamic extremists, the Sauds, perpetrate mass-murder, in Saudi Arabia and not only in Yemen and in Syria, the U.S. ‘news’ media find some way to smear their audience’s minds with the demon, “Bashar al-Assad,” as if Assad actually had anything to do with it, and the King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman, had nothing to do with it. Salman, who owns Saudi Arabia and everyone in it (and who even allows outright slavery there), wasn’t so much as mentioned by the NBC ‘News’ ‘reporter’ or propagandist. (Assad was mentioned in that ‘news’ report only because Assad allies with the U.S. aristocracy’s super-demon, Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, who refuses to do the U.S. aristocracy’s bidding, such as his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, much praised by the U.S. aristocracy, had done.)

America’s main ally, and the largest customer for American-made weapons, the royal family that owns and runs Saudi Arabia, had just started out a new year of mass-executions, after their near-record year of 2015: the AP headlined only the day before, on New Year’s Day, “Saudi Beheadings Soar in 2015,” and reported that, “Saudi Arabia carried out at least 157 executions in 2015, with beheadings reaching their highest level in the kingdom in two decades, according to several advocacy groups that monitor the death penalty worldwide.” (King Salman wasn’t mentioned in that one, either.)

Surreal: West Mourns Death of Al Qaeda Collaborator in Syrian Airstrike
Jaysh al-Islam is a stalwart ally of US State Department-listed terrorist organization al-Nusra, though one would never suspect as much reading weepy Western eulogies over the terrorist organization leader's death.

The commander of terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate Jaysh al-Islam (the Army of Islam), "Sheikh" Zahran Alloush, was killed in a Syrian airstrike this week in the suburbs of Damascus.

In a surreal, coordinated propaganda campaign, the Western media sidestepped Alloush's praise of and coordination with US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra, previously known as Al Qaeda in Iraq - and indeed, the very terrorist organization that the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh) itself sprung up from.

The West itself has for years now, reported on Jaysh al-Islam's collaboration with Al Qaeda. A March 2013 Institute for the Study of War report authored by now disgraced "expert" Elizabeth O'Bagy - a paid lobbyist who in fact attempted to lie about the presence of "moderate Syrian opposition," titled, "The Free Syrian Army" (.pdf) would note regarding the terrorist organization that:

Liwa al-Islam [now known as Jaysh al-Islam] is a driving force behind actions in Damascus, and is part of the current multilateral effort, codenamed “Operation Epic in the Capital of the Omayyads,” to gain ground and prepare for later sustained efforts against regime forces in the city. Liwa al-Islam is known to cooperate with Jabhat Nusra and conduct joint operations.

John Brown’s Anti-Slavery Legacy

Only the skies were gloomy as Emancipation Day 1863 dawned and the First Kansas Colored Volunteers — a mix of African-Americans, Native Americans and Black Indians — assembled at Fort Scott to celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s long-delayed Emancipation Proclamation.

The men had been fighting the Confederacy since war broke out in 1861. The white officers even longer — as radical abolitionists whom John Brown commanded in his Kansas battles to free slaves in the 1850s (before his failed raid against the armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, which led to his trial for treason and his death by hanging in 1959).

Celebrating Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – issued on Jan. 1, 1863 – about 500 people gathered at Fort Scott in eastern Kansas. As flags, sewn by women of color, floated above the fort, people sang the “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then they shared a barbecue and strong liquor. Next, soldiers and officers burst into their song. They honored their “immortal hero” with “the John Brown song.” The soldiers added this line: “John Brown sowed, and the harvesters are we.”

What the Upcoming Iranian Elections Could Mean for Us All

In February, Iran will hold elections that could determine the country’s future — as well as that of the rest of the world, especially that of the US.

These elections are of interest because of a growing battle between reformers and hardliners, involving a tremendous number of candidates, some of whom are quite reasonable, while others are volatile.

If the reformers win, Iran could experience a period of openness not seen since the Ayatollah Khomeini took control of the country. It could mean that Iran will hold up its end of the nuclear deal, which in turn would have implications on the race for the White House. But if the hardliners win, those who predicted that the deal is going to fail will get a boost.

And because Iran will play a major role in the future of Syria, the outcome of the election could also have sweeping implications for that country, the refugee crisis, the stability of the EU and the fight against ISIS.

The Big Lie in the War Against Drugs
Since the beginning, the War on Drugs has been about controlling political power--by breaking up Black communities and the dissident left.

If you've shopped at a gardening supply store in the last year, and if you happen to live with someone who drinks tea, guess what?

Your local sheriff could just send a SWAT team into your house.

It's not a far-fetched scenario, in fact it actually happened, here in the US, just three short years ago.

Back in 2012, a Kansas SWAT team raided the home of Robert and Addie Harte and tore their house apart looking for evidence of a major marijuana growing operation.

America 2016: What Happens When a Nation Gives Too Much Political Power to the Super Rich

As the high-powered shenanigans of Las Vegas casino mogul and GOP bankroller Sheldon Adelson show, “Oligarchy, rule by the few, also tends to become rule by the monstrously self-centered,” Paul Krugman writes in The New York Times.

Krugman continues in a column published Friday:

[...] it’s obvious [...] that extreme wealth can do extreme spiritual damage. Take someone whose personality might have been merely disagreeable under normal circumstances, and give him the kind of wealth that lets him surround himself with sycophants and usually get whatever he wants. It’s not hard to see how he could become almost pathologically self-regarding and unconcerned with others. [...]

Modern America is a society in which a growing share of income and wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, and these people have huge political influence — in the early stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, around half the contributions came from fewer than 200 wealthy families. The usual concern about this march toward oligarchy is that the interests and policy preferences of the very rich are quite different from those of the population at large, and that is surely the biggest problem. […]

Even Tumbling Fossil Fuel Prices Can't Deter Clean Energy Revolution

2015 saw 'a global surge for wind and solar energy, which occurred despite oil, coal and natural gas selling at bargain rates.'

One of the biggest stories of 2015 was the sharp decline of oil prices, which fell this year to levels not seen in more than a decade.

"After plunging from more than $100 a barrel to nearly $50 a barrel last year, U.S. oil prices fell 30 percent in 2015 to $37.04 a barrel," the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

"A repeat in early 2016 could well push crude oil to fresh closing lows not seen since the early 2000s," the Fiscal Times added this week.

It was good news for fuel consumers—drivers who flocked to SUVs and pickup trucks in 2015, for instance—as well as for governments that import crude oil.

Twilight of the imperial age: America and China may not have a planet left to rule
Mankind still controls its destiny. But if we want to escape catastrophe, climate talks can only be the beginning

For six centuries or more, history was, above all, the story of the great game of empires. From the time the first wooden ships mounted with cannons left Europe’s shores, they began to compete for global power and control. Three, four, even five empires, rising and falling, on an increasingly commandeered and colonized planet. The story, as usually told, is a tale of concentration and of destruction until, in the wake of the second great bloodletting of the twentieth century, there were just two imperial powers left standing: the United States and the Soviet Union. Where the other empires, European and Japanese, had been, little remained but the dead, rubble, refugees, and scenes that today would be associated only with a place like Syria.

The result was the ultimate imperial stand-off that we called the Cold War. The two great empires still in existence duked it out for supremacy on “the peripheries” of the planet and “in the shadows.” Because the conflicts being fought were distant indeed, at least from Washington, and because (despite threats) both powers refrained from using nuclear weapons, these were termed “limited wars.” They did not, however, seem limited to the Koreans or Vietnamese whose homes and lives were swept up in them, resulting as they did in more rubble, more refugees, and the deaths of millions.

Those two rivals, one a giant, land-based, contiguous imperial entity and the other a distinctly non-traditional empire of military bases, were so enormous and so unlike previous “great powers” — they were, after all, capable of what had once been left to the gods, quite literally destroying every habitable spot on the planet — that they were given a new moniker. They were “superpowers.”

A Double Dilemma for the Paris Climate Deal

LONDON—Within days of the conclusion of the Paris Agreement at the UN talks in mid-December, two leading US scientists have cast serious doubt on its ability to avert dangerous levels of climate change.

One, James Hansen, says that to think world leaders are doing something significant about the problem is “baloney”, and urges the use of nuclear power and every other form of energy which does not involve the release of carbon.

The other, Michael Mann, argues that the world is “closer to the dangerous 2°C warming mark than many experts acknowledge”, and that continuing global carbon dioxide emissions from human activities at present rates will commit the Earth to 2°C in less than three years from now.

Both men differ substantially on the right way to act, and key parts of their proposals appear too unpopular or too impractical to work. But they do agree that the situation is so urgent that it demands immediate action.

Climate Disruption Amplifies Atlantic Currents' Contribution to Sea Level Rise

Anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) has progressed to a point where it is, literally, changing one of the most important ocean circulatory currents in the world.

In a paper recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, NASA researchers confirmed that the circulation of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is slowing down. In 2009 and 2010 that shifting had already been linked to a sudden and extreme five-inch sea level rise on the East Coast.

While most people have likely never heard of the AMOC, it plays a critical role in both global climate patterns and sea level rise along the Eastern Seaboard of the US - and it is being changed for the worse due to our carbon dioxide emissions.

Before we can fully comprehend the ramifications of what is happening with this ocean current system, a basic understanding of the AMOC is in order.

"Conservation" Is Used to Justify the Displacement of Indigenous People

Echoing the pleas of illegally displaced tribal peoples in a number of countries, a leading human rights NGO has called the loss of home, livelihoods, culture and customary rights in the name of conservation, "one of the most urgent and horrific humanitarian crises of our time"[1]. Such concerns are often absent from the narratives of the international conservation establishment. When they are addressed, it tends to be at the fringes, the magnitude of the crisis not appreciated.

Instead, what we usually hear from international conservation organizations is that parks, game reserves and other kinds of protected areas are the most important conservation success story and should be extended, improved, and strengthened worldwide. Recent research that provided a preamble to the November 2014 World Parks Congress, for instance, argued similarly that "protected areas are core to the future of life on our planet," requiring larger coverage, representation and better management and funding[2]. Such assertions require reflection.

It is true that, in many cases, protected areas are allowing critical species and ecosystems to persist, and in this way they provide a cushion of hope in our ability to preserve some of the world's remaining natural wealth. Biodiversity is often higher inside of protected areas than outside[3]. They can provide opportunities for improving health and well-being, support human life through invaluable environmental services, and offer opportunities for new forms of economic development and financial mechanisms, including through tourism, payments for ecosystem services, offsets, and bioprospecting. Yet the strategy based on protected areas, which defines conservation success in terms of spatial control, fails to tackle the most significant challenges to preserving biodiversity.

Climate Change Warming World’s Lakes, Says Study

A new study by NASA and the National Science Foundation reveals that climate change is rapidly warming lakes around the world, according to findings in Geophysical Research Letters.

The study, published last month, used temperature data taken via satellites and ground measurements from 235 lakes around the world and analyzed temperature changes over 25 years.

"What we wanted to do was see how lakes were changing over the entire globe and look at what variations there were in the warming rates across the globe but also how much variation there was between lakes that were close together," said Sam Hook, the Science Division Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the study.

According to Hook, lakes are warming at an average of 0.61 degrees Fahrenheit (0.34 degrees Celsius) each decade. The temperature changes are caused by different factors, including less cloud covers.

Notes on the statistics graphs:

Monthly: Note we peaked in September.

Days of the Month: Note the lull during the holidays.

Days of the Week: Note that Tues. and Wed. are the peak days of the week and that probably is the case for most months.

Hours: Peak hours are late-morning and early evening.

Countries: Why so many hits from Russia and Ukraine? The easy answer is SPAMMERS.