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"There is no military solution in Syria."

-- Barack Obama

News and Opinion

U.S. says prepared for military solution against Islamic State in Syria

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Saturday that the United States and Turkey were prepared for a military solution against Islamic State in Syria should the Syrian government and rebels fail to reach a political settlement.

"We do know it would better if we can reach a political solution but we are prepared ..., if that's not possible, to have a military solution to this operation in taking out Daesh," Biden said at a news conference after a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Daesh is the pejorative Arabic acronym for Islamic State insurgents who hold parts of Syria.

'Military Solution': If peace process in Syria fails US 'ready' for intervention

U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels

When President Obama secretly authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to begin arming Syria’s embattled rebels in 2013, the spy agency knew it would have a willing partner to help pay for the covert operation. It was the same partner the C.I.A. has relied on for decades for money and discretion in far-off conflicts: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Since then, the C.I.A. and its Saudi counterpart have maintained an unusual arrangement for the rebel-training mission, which the Americans have code-named Timber Sycamore. Under the deal, current and former administration officials said, the Saudis contribute both weapons and large sums of money, and the C.I.A takes the lead in training the rebels on AK-47 assault rifles and tank-destroying missiles. ...

American officials have not disclosed the amount of the Saudi contribution, which is by far the largest from another nation to the program to arm the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad’s military. But estimates have put the total cost of the arming and training effort at several billion dollars.

The White House has embraced the covert financing from Saudi Arabia — and from Qatar, Jordan and Turkey — at a time when Mr. Obama has pushed gulf nations to take a greater security role in the region. ...

While the Saudis have financed previous C.I.A. missions with no strings attached, the money for Syria comes with expectations, current and former officials said. “They want a seat at the table, and a say in what the agenda of the table is going to be,” said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. analyst and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Syrian civil war: Why the endless conflict is at a decisive point

The Syrian peace talks between government and opposition will begin in the next few days in Geneva in an atmosphere of almost undiluted gloom about the prospects for success. The two sides hate each other and have spent five years trying to kill each other, making it unlikely that they will agree to share power in any way except geographically, with each side keeping the territory it currently holds and defending it with its own armed forces. ...

The problem about ending the war in Syria and Iraq is that there is a multitude of players who are too strong to lose but too weak to win. Countries and movements such as Iran and Hezbollah see themselves as fighting for their very existence in a war they cannot afford to lose. Others, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey have invested too much credibility in the struggle for Syria to admit they are not going to achieve their aim of ousting President Bashar al-Assad.

Wars sometimes end by exhaustion rather than agreement, and that may be the best that can be expected for Syria. Local ceasefires and armed truces would be put in place, like the 600 or more that periodically interrupted the 15-year civil war in Lebanon. The difficulty here is that cult-like movements such as Isis and al-Nusra exist to fight for and live up to their Islamic faith by fighting what they see as demonic enemies. ...

It is dangerous to describe any single phase of a long-running civil war as being decisive, but the coming months could be just that. The US and its allies in Syria, primarily the 25,000 fighters of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) with some Sunni Arab allies, are eager to cut Isis off from its last link, through Turkey, to the outside world. They are not far from achieving this. ... Isis is now almost sealed off within its self-declared caliphate.

Kerry: US Supports Saudi War in Yemen

Speaking today in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State John Kerry endorsed the Saudi government’s decision to attack Yemen in March of last year, starting a war which has raged ever since and killed thousands of civilians.

Kerry claimed the decision for war was made in part to target “al-Qaeda operatives,” even though in reality the Saudis left the local al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), totally untouched for nine months, and allowed them to occupy the major city of Mukallah early in the war, where they’ve remained ever since.

"Institutional Amnesia": Pentagon Agency Skewered for Waste and Fraud

Nuclear missile 'mishap' costs Air Force $1.8M

Three U.S. Air Force airmen were stripped of their nuclear certifications after a "mishap" caused approximately $1.8 million in damage to an intercontinental ballistic missile in 2014, officials said Friday.

The incident occurred when the Minuteman III nuclear missile, assigned to the 90th Missile Wing at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, became "non-operational" during a diagnostic test, according to a statement released by the Air Force.

While troubleshooting the issue, the maintenance team chief "mistakenly performed an action not directed by the technical guidance," the statement said.

Air Force officials did not specifically address whether radioactive material was released when the missile was damaged, but said the incident did not result in any injuries or threaten public safety.

Survivor of US Drone Attack: Obama Belongs on List of World's Tyrants

"It’s not about me. It’s about every civilian who has been killed in Waziristan."

Those are the words of Faheem Qureshi who was just a young boy in 2009 when a U.S. drone, on the orders of a newly-elected President Barack Obama, fired a missile that slammed into his uncle's home in the Waziristan region of Pakistan where family and friends were gathered. Though others in the house were not, Qureshi was lucky to survive. ...

Now approximately 21-years-old (he doesn't know his exact age), Qureshi has given his first interview with a western journalist in order to let the world know the damage the U.S. drone program has done to his life and those of others in the remote areas of Pakistan that have experienced the most aggressive attacks under the Obama presidency.

"If there is a list of tyrants in the world, to me," Qureshi told [the Guardian's] Ackerman through a translator, "Obama will be put on that list by his drone program."

Former spy seeks to show UK knew of Guantanamo torture: Sunday Times

A former senior British intelligence officer wants to give evidence that the country's security services knew about the torture of inmates at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, a newspaper reported.

The former officer is seeking permission to present evidence to a forthcoming parliamentary inquiry that British officials saw detainees being tortured in December 2002, the Sunday Times said quoting senior security sources.

Details of torture were disclosed during meetings held at the London headquarters of Britain's MI5 in 2002 and the evidence is believed to include claims that British officials witnessed inmates being chained, hooded, waterboarded and subjected to mental abuse by CIA officials, the report said.

Egypt: 5 years after the Revolution ousting Mubarak, Egyptians find little to celebrate

Five Years After Tahrir Square, Egypt's Police State Worse Than Ever

Five years after mass popular uprisings ousted longtime dictator Hosni Mubarek, Egyptians are again under siege. In an attempt to thwart demonstrations honoring the 2011 Arab Spring, the government of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has deployed troops, raided homes and cultural centers, and reportedly disappeared hundreds of activists in the lead-up to the anniversary on Monday, intensifying a widespread crackdown on dissent.

Over the past two weeks, security forces interrogated residents and searched more than 5,000 homes in central Cairo as a "precautionary measure" against demonstrations, which officials claim "are aimed at polarizing society and mobilizing the masses against the government."

Meanwhile, activists estimate that between August and November more than 340 people "disappeared" into government custody. Sherif Mohie Eddin of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights said the total number recently imprisoned is "not less than 1,000," adding to the tens of thousands of journalists, religious and protest leaders, and other political detainees already held in Egyptian prisons. 

Despite the climate of fear, some protesters braved the streets on Monday to honor the legacy of January 25 and call attention to the ongoing violence and suppression.

Greece threatened with Schengen area expulsion as EU tackles migration crisis

Greece has come under concerted pressure from European governments to do much more to halt the influx of refugees and migrants from Turkey, as the EU scrambled again to put together a coherent answer to the biggest challenge the union has ever faced.

EU interior ministers meeting in Amsterdam are unlikely to overcome deep-seated differences over how to respond to the migration crisis amid a sense of deepening gloom and confusion.

In the past week national leaders and top EU officials have sounded increasingly alarmist, warning that Europe’s passport-free travel zone could crumble within weeks, risking the dissolution of the union.

The countries bearing the brunt of the one million-plus arrivals in the past year rounded on Athens, with Austria warning that it could be kicked out, at least temporarily, of the free travel Schengen area embracing 26 countries.

Germany and Sweden echoed the criticism. Between them, the three countries have taken in about 90% of the asylum-seekers over the past year, but are clamping down on their liberal admissions policies.

New privacy bills to hinder data collection could affect 100M Americans

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union unveiled a new campaign to introduce a slew of pro-privacy bills in 16 states across America and the District of Columbia.

In what it has dubbed "#TakeCTRL," the ACLU has partnered with various lawmakers in states ranging from Hawaii to New Hampshire to propose new laws that, among other restrictions, would require a warrant for the use of cell-site simulators, impose "rapid deletion" of data collected by an automatic license plate reader, and limit educational institutions’ ability to access data about what students do on school-loaned computers.

"A bipartisan consensus on privacy rights is emerging, and now the states are taking collective action where Congress has been largely asleep at the switch," Anthony Romero, the head of the ACLU, said in a statement. "This movement is about seizing control over our lives. Everyone should be empowered to decide who has access to their personal information."

Link to crashsafari.com crashes iPhones and Macs

Following the fun users had with the “effective power” iPhone text message bug, people have been sending a link to users of Apple’s Safari browser that will crash their iPhones or Macs.

The link, which is simply crashsafari.com, overloads the default browser with a self-generating text string which populates the address bar. After about 20 seconds or so it will force an iPhone to reboot, while significantly heating up as the smartphone tries to handle the code of the site.

A similar thing happens on iPads, which also has Safari, while even Android devices running Chrome heat up and become sluggish. Rebooting the iPhone or quitting Chrome on an Android device clears the problem. ...

For the immediate future, iPhone users should be very careful about which shortened or obfuscated links they click on, should they be forced into rebooting their smartphone. One of the short links has already been clicked over 100,000 times.

N.Y. Governor Hands Top Wall Street Regulatory Job to a Defender of Wall Street

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday handed a critically important bank regulatory position to a long-time donor and corporate lawyer who defended financial institutions in private practice.

Cuomo nominated Maria Vullo to run the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS).

Benjamin Lawsky, Vullo’s predecessor in the office, gained a reputation as the toughest cop on Wall Street, imposing heavy fines for money laundering, accounting fraud, tax evasion, and fraudulent mortgage servicing. Lawsky used the ability to ban financial firms from business in the world financial center in New York to extract real accountability for wrongdoing.

And Lawsky’s aggressiveness shamed other regulators, prompting them to increase their activity.

Vullo, a former deputy to Cuomo in the state attorney general’s office, currently serves as Of Counsel for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a white-shoe law firm in New York. She was a partner at Paul, Weiss for 20 years, and in her time there represented Wells Fargo and other “businesses in investigations and civil lawsuits stemming from the financial crisis,” according to the firm’s website.

Bernie Sanders Gets Group Endorsements When Members Decide; Hillary Clinton When Leaders Decide

In the war for endorsements in the Democratic presidential primary, there is a clear trend.

Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.

Meanwhile, all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process.

It’s perhaps the clearest example yet of Clinton’s powerful appeal to the Democratic Party’s elite, even as support for Sanders explodes among the rank and file.

Unions Are Split Over Hillary

PERIES: So given that experience and a lot more you have in dealing with some of the unions and locals and individual workers, broadly speaking, how would you assess Hillary's record on labor?

MCALEVEY: I think it's close to an F, frankly. And let me just put in context an example of how Hillary dealt with the workers in the union in Nevada, and then I'm going to cut to sort of what her very long track record has been, starting with Arkansas and when she was the first lady of Arkansas, and then traveling all the way through secretary of state and candidate Clinton today, and I think I can do that really quickly. And there's a trend line which is all the way through, all the way through Hillary Clinton's many different public roles. She's frankly been closer to corporations than to workers.

And the experience I had with her firsthand, I just have one little anecdote from the moment she actually sat in front of the executive board of the union that I led in Nevada, which is mostly healthcare workers and government sector workers. You know, healthcare workers, nurses, et cetera. Very, very incredibly [gracious], important workers. And when Hillary came before our executive board, shortly after I introduced her--and this was, she was courting our executive board for an endorsement, a statewide unions endorsement. And she literally, her opening lines, I'll never forget them. They're seared in my brain. Her opening line to our executive board was as follows: “I don't need you, and I don't need to be here, but I'm here anyway.”

That was Hillary Clinton towards America's workers. I don't need you, I don't need to be here talking to you, but I'm here anyway. It was as if she was doing workers in the state a favor by having a conversation with them. Now, mind you, in 2008 she had Mark [pitt], who is a famous union buster, who was a key operative in her campaign. So we have a [inaud.] this very long track record of sort of who Hillary Clinton has been versus the method who Clinton is each time she runs for office.

Hillary Clinton’s Lobbyist Fundraisers Want Baby Steps: America Needs a Political Revolution

Hillary Clinton was stumping in Iowa last week, promising supporters that if she is elected President she will fight to get rid of the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Citizens United, which allows unlimited corporate money to influence elections. At one campaign stop, Hillary said the decision is having “pernicious effects on our electoral system.”

Hillary elaborated further on her views in an opinion piece for CNN last week, writing:

“It’s time to reclaim our democracy, reform our distorted campaign finance system and restore access to the ballot box in all 50 states.

“That starts with reversing Citizens United. And that’s where my comprehensive plan to restore common sense to campaign finance begins. As president, I’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who recognize that Citizens United is bad for America. And if necessary, I’ll fight for a constitutional amendment that overturns it.”

That’s a pretty bold claim from a candidate that has opened the spigots herself to corporate money – big chunks of which are being raised for her by registered lobbyists who work for lobbying firms employed by the likes of Wall Street heavyweights JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse and every major trade association representing Wall Street. ...

If one puts this corporate money machine in the context of how Wall Street gutted six-decade old investor protection legislation under the presidency of Bill Clinton, leading to the greatest financial crash since the Great Depression in 2008, it’s clear why Hillary Clinton is calling only for baby steps in reforming Wall Street while Senator Bernie Sanders is calling for a political revolution and the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act.

Incremental change like Hillary Clinton has in mind will not upset her corporate donors but it will devastate what is left of America, accelerating the already unprecedented levels of wealth and income inequality.

New York's Billionaire Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg Might Run for President in 2016

Bloomberg, 73, has given himself an early March deadline for entering the race, the source said, after commissioning a poll in December to see how he would fare against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the Republican and Democratic frontrunners.

No third-party candidate has ever won a US presidential election. But Bloomberg, who has close Wall Street ties and liberal social views, sees an opening for his candidacy if Republicans nominate Trump or Texas Senator Ted Cruz and the Democrats nominate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the source told Reuters. ...

Clinton dismissed speculations surrounding Bloomberg's possible bid, and is confident that she'll secure the Democratic nomination, according to NBC.

"He's a good friend of mine," Clinton said. "The way I read what he said is if I didn't get the nomination, he might consider it. Well, I'm going to relieve him of that and get the nomination so he doesn't have to."

[See also: Bloomberg doesn’t poll better against Sanders than Clinton - js]

Bernie Sanders: Bring on billionaire Michael Bloomberg

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, who has rallied against the outsize political influence of billionaires from the outset of his upstart campaign, said Sunday that he would welcome the chance to run against two of them in the fall. ...

“My reaction is, if Donald Trump wins and Mr. Bloomberg gets in, you’re going to have two multibillionaires running for president of the United States against me,” Sanders told host Chuck Todd. “And I think the American people do not want to see our nation move toward an oligarchy, where billionaires control the political process. I think we’ll win that election.”

Battle over voting rights restrictions moves to North Carolina

The latest round in the nationwide battle to defend the historic gains of the civil rights movement opens in a federal courtroom in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on Monday where Republican politicians will be accused of blatantly attempting to discourage African Americans from voting.

The local chapter of the NAACP is taking the Republican state governor, Pat McCrory, to court over a new rule that requires citizens who turn up at polling stations either to produce a photo-ID card or give a “reasonable” excuse for lacking one before they can cast a ballot. The NAACP argues that the new law places a burden on voters that is unconstitutional as it overtly discriminates against black citizens who are less likely to have access to such photo identification.

“We see this as a fundamental attack on our democracy which we are fighting with everything we have,” said the Rev William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP. “Extremists in the North Carolina legislature have been working feverishly to keep African Americans, Latino families, students and seniors from the ballot box.” ...

North Carolina’s law, HB 589, is among the sharpest assaults on voting rights that have been introduced by Republican-controlled legislatures in the wake of Shelby. The supreme court ruling removed an obligation on largely southern states to seek federal government approval before they made any changes to voting procedures.

Record hot years near impossible without manmade climate change – study

New calculations shows there is just a 0.01% chance that recent run of global heat records could have happened due to natural climate variations

The world’s run of record-breaking hottest years is extremely unlikely to have happened without the global warming caused by human activities, according to new calculations.

Thirteen of the 15 hottest years in the 150-year-long record occurred between 2000-14 and the researchers found there is a just a 0.01% chance that this happened due to natural variations in the planet’s climate.

2015 was revealed to have smashed all earlier records on Wednesday, after the new study had been completed, meaning the odds that the record run of heat is a fluke are now even lower.

“Natural climate variations just can’t explain the observed recent global heat records, but manmade global warming can,” said Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and one of the research team. ...

The new research by Rahmstorf and colleagues, published in the journal Scientific Reports, is based on a statistical analysis that combines real-world measurements with comprehensive computer simulations of the climate system. This allowed natural climate variability to be better separated from human-caused climate change. The results did not vary significantly when UK Met Office temperature data was used instead of Nasa data.

Gov. Snyder lied: Flint water switch was not about money, records show

The Flint water crisis that led to thousands of people being poisoned began because state officials maintained it would save the cash-strapped city money by disconnecting from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) and using a different source.

But it turns out, DWSD offered the state-controlled city a deal that would have saved Flint more money by staying with Detroit.

An e-mail obtained by Motor City Muckraker shows the deal would have saved the city $800 million over 30 years, which was 20% more inexpensive than switching to the Karegnondi Water Authority. ...

Documents show that DWSD made at least six proposals to Flint, saying “the KWA pipeline can only be attributed to a ‘political’ objective that has nothing to do with the delivery – or the price – of water.

[See also: Could the Flint water crisis have its origins in a desire to open up new areas of Michigan to fracking? - js]

Zika virus likely to spread throughout the Americas, says WHO

The mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to brain deformities in babies, is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except Canada and Chile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

The first outbreak of the disease outside of Africa, Asia and the Pacific islands occurred in May 2015, when a case was reported in Brazil.

It was previously considered to have relatively mild consequences for those infected. But in November Brazil’s health ministry said that the virus was linked to a foetal deformation known as microcephaly, in which babies are born with smaller than normal brains.

Brazil has reported almost 4,000 suspected cases of microcephaly, the WHO said last Friday, over 30 times more than had been reported in any year since 2010. ...

The WHO said the 21 countries predicted to be affected are all those in the region that have Aedes mosquitoes, which carry the virus. Zika has not yet been reported in the continental United States, though a woman who fell ill with the virus in Brazil later gave birth to a brain-damaged baby in Hawaii.

The WHO attributed the rapid spread of Zika to the fact that the population of the Americas had not previously been exposed to it and so lacks immunity.

The Zika virus foreshadows our dystopian climate future

Spread by mosquitoes whose range inexorably expands as the climate warms, Zika causes mild flu-like symptoms. But pregnant women bitten by the wrong mosquito are liable to give birth to babies with shrunken heads. Brazil last year recorded 4,000 cases of this “microcephaly”. As of today, authorities in Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, El Salvador and Venezuela were urging women to avoid getting pregnant. ...

This is one more step in the division of the world into relative safe and dangerous zones, an emerging epidemiological apartheid. The CDC has already told those Americans thinking of becoming pregnant to avoid travel to 20 Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Eventually, of course, the disease will reach these shores – at least 10 Americans have come back from overseas with the infection, and one microcephalic baby has already been born in Hawaii to a mother exposed in Brazil early in her pregnancy. But America is rich enough to avoid the worst of the mess its fossil fuel habits have helped create. ...

Obviously we need to extend every possible aid to people across the Americas – we need to make sure they have fogging machines and testing equipment and teams of doctors who can help. But even more obviously we need to face up to the fact that pushing the limits of the planet’s ecology has become dangerous in novel ways. The Paris climate accords already seem dated and timid in the face of this news. We’re in an emergency, one whose face morphs each week into some new and hideous calamity.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

PBS Newshour Lies About Single-Payer Health Care

Failed States and States of Failure

The CIA’s Syria Program and the Perils of Proxies

What Donald Rumsfeld Knew We Didn’t Know About Iraq

Could a basic income solve the biggest challenge of the digital economy?

Oil Crash Looks a Lot Like Subprime

Stock Buybacks and the Wall Street Sharktank: “A Whole Lotta Stealin’ Goin’ On”

Michigan Governor Says Race Had No Role in Flint Water Response

Rejecting Snyder's Claim, Experts Say Poisoning of Flint Blatant Racial Injustice

'It's all just poison now': Flint reels as families struggle through water crisis

Egypt Cracks Down Hard to Prevent Protests on Anniversary of 2011 Revolution

Why Do We Expose Ourselves?

A Little Night Music

Eddie Kirkland - I'm Gonna Forget You

Eddie Kirkland - Write My Baby A Letter

Eddie Kirkland - No Shoes

Eddie Kirkland - Democrat Blues

Eddie Kirkland - Man of Stone

Eddie Kirkland - Train Done Gone

Eddie Kirkland - The Grunt