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"The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all."

-- John F. Kennedy

News and Opinion

NSA Document Says Saudi Prince Directly Ordered Coordinated Attack By Syrian Rebels On Damascus

A loosely knit collection of Syrian rebel fighters set up positions on March 18, 2013, and fired several barrages of rockets at targets in the heart of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad’s capital. The attack was a brazen show of force by rebels under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, targeting the presidential palace, Damascus International Airport, and a government security compound. It sent a chilling message to the regime about its increasingly shaky hold on the country, two years after an uprising against its rule began.

Behind the attacks, the influence of a foreign power loomed. According to a top-secret National Security Agency document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the March 2013 rocket attacks were directly ordered by a member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Salman bin Sultan, to help mark the second anniversary of the Syrian revolution. Salman had provided 120 tons of explosives and other weaponry to opposition forces, giving them instructions to “light up Damascus” and “flatten” the airport, the document, produced by U.S. government surveillance on Syrian opposition factions, shows. ...

The NSA document provides a glimpse into how the war had evolved from its early stages of popular uprisings and repression. By the time of the March 2013 attack, arguably the most salient dynamic in the conflict was the foreign powers on both sides fueling what appeared to be a bloody, entrenched stalemate. The document points to how deeply these foreign powers would become involved in parts of the armed uprising, even choosing specific operations for their local allies to carry out. “A revolution, a proxy war, and a civil war are not necessarily mutually exclusive of each other,” said Aron Lund, an expert on Syria at The Century Foundation, a New York-based think tank. “All these things can exist simultaneously in the same country, as seems to have been the case in Syria.” ...

The Syrian conflict is notable for the extent to which the rebel opposition was able to arm itself and continue challenging the regime over years of grinding warfare, experts on the internal dynamics of civil wars say. The 2013 assault on Damascus described in the NSA document, along with an unknown number of other attacks, were only possible thanks to the support of a powerful patron like Saudi Arabia. (The Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington and the Syrian mission at the U.N. in New York did not offer comment for this story.) ...

Instead of foreshadowing a campaign to take Damascus, the 2013 mortar attacks wound up being just another episode in a long, grueling effort to unseat Assad by force. The direct foreign involvement in the attack paints a more sharply outlined picture of a war that had already begun to spin out of local control — with foreign powers manipulating Syrians on both sides. While outsiders have written checks, shipped arms, and fired missiles into Syria, it has been the Syrians who have been killed, driven into exile, and seen their country carved into pieces, in a conflict that, despite being more or less decided, continues to rage to this today.

Iraq's PM just told Rex Tillerson to GTFO

Iraq will not be bullied by the U.S. State Department. That was the message for Rex Tillerson Monday after the secretary of state suggested Iranian-backed militias should leave Iraq.

Iraqi President Haider al-Abadi issued a terse statement after meeting with America’s top diplomat, reminding him that “no side has the right to intervene in Iraq’s affairs or decide what Iraqis should do.”

Tillerson said Sunday foreign militias fighting as part of the Iraqi state-sponsored Popular Mobilization Force should leave the country now that the battle with ISIS is over.

Iran’s foreign minister dismissed Tillerson’s comments, saying the militias are “already at home.” The Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, part of the Popular Mobilization Force, even suggested it was U.S. forces that should leave Iraq.

Expansion of Imperialist U.S. “War on Terror” in Africa Preceded Deadly Attacks in Niger & Somalia

Israel maintains robust arms trade with rogue regimes

Human rights activists are stepping up efforts to expose Israel's long and covert history of supplying weapons and military training to regimes while they actively commit massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The issue of Israel's trade with rogue regimes has been thrust into the spotlight again after revelations that it is sending weapons to Myanmar, in defiance of a US and European arms embargo.

Formerly known as Burma, Myanmar was condemned last month by the United Nations for conducting what it called a "textbook ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are reported to have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in recent weeks, after evidence of the torching of entire villages, massacres and systematic rapes.

Israel has not divulged details of its ties to Myanmar's military government, but public records show that it has sold the military there armed patrol boats, guns and surveillance equipment. Myanmar's special forces have also been trained by Israelis. ...

Israeli firms have also broken with the United States and Europe by supplying weapons and surveillance equipment to militias in South Sudan, where a civil war has raged since late 2013. Some 300,000 Sudanese are believed to have been killed in the fighting.

Extreme Isolation for U.S. Prisoners Shields “Torture” From Public View and Accountability

A prisoner prohibited from speaking to his family for four months after uttering the words “As-Salaam-Alaikum.” Books that have to be destroyed after one prisoner reads them, lest he somehow use the pages to pass along secret notes. Letters to family members that have to be copied and analyzed by intelligence officers before they are sent out, meaning they may take months and months to arrive.

These are the types of restrictions faced by a small number of prisoners locked up in the United States, including some people who have never been convicted of a crime The rules, called Special Administrative Measures, or SAMs, are the subject of a recently released report by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Yale Law School’s Allard K. Lowenstein’s International Human Rights Clinic. The study, an unusual undertaking, makes the case that SAMs violate both U.S. and international law, threaten basic constitutional protections, and may even constitute torture.

Just about 50 prisoners nationwide were subject to SAMs as of June this year, most of them Muslim. ... Many of those on SAMs have developed mental health issues as a result of the isolation, which may prevent them from contributing to their own defense. Moreover, people under SAMs are prohibited from contacting the media, and their attorneys and family members could be prosecuted for revealing anything the prisoner has said — meaning the highly restrictive world of SAMs is highly secretive, too. ...

“SAMs are the darkest corner of the U.S. federal prison system, combining the brutality and isolation of maximum-security units with additional restrictions that deny individuals almost any connection to the human world,” the report says. “Those restrictions include gag orders on prisoners, their family members, and their attorneys, effectively shielding this extreme use of government power from public view.”

'No public service broadcasting, no democracy', Catalan reporters protest

Catalonia warns of civil disobedience as Madrid readies direct rule

Catalonia said on Monday it was confident all officials including police would defy attempts by Madrid to enforce direct rule on the region in a dispute that is raising fears of unrest among Spain’s European allies. ...

“It’s not that we will refuse (orders). It is not a personal decision. It is a seven million-person decision,” Catalonia’s foreign affairs chief Raul Romeva told BBC radio.

Romeva was asked whether he believed all institutions, including the police, would follow orders from Catalan institutions rather than obey the Spanish government.

“And from that perspective, I have no doubt that all civil servants in Catalonia will keep following the instructions provided by the elected and legitimate institutions that we have right now in place (in Catalonia),” he said. ...

Spain has said it would fire top Catalan officials if they did not comply with orders but it has remained vague on how it plans to implement direct rule if lower ranking civil servants decide not to follow instructions.

Catalan Parliament to discuss response to self-rule suspension on Thursday

The Catalan Parliament will hold a plenary session on Thursday to discuss the response to the Spanish government’s intent to suspend Catalonia’s government announced this past weekend. Catalan separatists could thus bring their defiance of the executive in Madrid a step further with a formal declaration of independence a day before the Spanish Senate votes on the suspension on Friday. ...

Puigdemont announced his government’s plans to bring the issue to be discussed at the Catalan Parliament, but has not made clear his plans to declare independence. In a recent exchange of letters with Rajoy, Puigdemont wrote that "If the Spanish government insists on blocking dialogue and continuing repression, the Catalan parliament may proceed to vote on the formal declaration of independence.”

French Catalans offer to host 'government in exile'

French backers of Catalonia's possible secession from Spain plan to "offer hospitality to president Carles Puidgemont to lead a government-in-exile in Perpignan," a southern French city with deep Catalan roots, a statement said Monday.

Catalan separatists have threatened "mass civil disobedience" if Madrid carries out threats to depose their leaders, including Puidgemont, as tensions rise over a bid to sever the region from Spain.

"We feel that Europe has not been playing its role," said Jaume Roure, the head of Unitat Catalana which seeks self determination for French Catalans. ... The region was for centuries a part of Catalonia and only became French in the latter half of the 17th century.

IMF's Concern with Equality Not Reflected in Its Policy Recommendations

Government Study Confirms $7.25 Minimum Wage Is Poverty Trap for Millions of Americans

Bolstering arguments that the minimum wage in the United States is a "starvation wage" that must be lifted, a new study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that millions of families with a worker earning the federal minimum or just above it are living in poverty.

Specifically, the GAO report discovered that "about 20 percent of families with a worker earning up to the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 per hour), 13 percent of families with a worker earning above federal minimum wage to $12.00 per hour, and 5 percent of families with a worker earning $12.01 to $16 per hour were in poverty" between 1995 and 2016.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who commissioned the study, argued that the GAO's findings amount to overwhelming evidence that $7.25 "is not enough to keep working families out poverty," and that "Congress must raise the minimum wage to a living wage." Sanders has introduced legislation that would move in that direction. The Raise the Wage Act of 2017, which now boasts 30 Senate co-sponsors, would hike the federal minimum to $15 an hour by 2024 and index it to inflation thereafter.

Treasury Department Launches Attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Ahead of Vote

With the window to gut a critical consumer protection regulation rapidly closing, the Treasury Department on Monday launched an unusual attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s arbitration rule, relying heavily on a discredited industry theory that claims that trial lawyers routinely bully corporations into class-action settlements.

The Treasury released a 17-page report arguing that the rule, which would prohibit companies from sticking language into financial contracts that prevent consumers from pursuing class-action lawsuits, will “impose extraordinary costs” on businesses without providing benefits from an increase in industry compliance. Furthermore, the agency asserts that trial lawyers will enjoy a “large wealth transfer” if the rule is adopted.

A showdown could come to the Senate as early as Tuesday. Don Stewart, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that a vote was possible this week, but had yet to be scheduled. Republicans need at least 50 votes for the resolution, but Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Lindsey Graham, John Kennedy, and Rob Portman have yet to commit; McConnell would need three of those five. He may also be able to pull in a Democratic vote in support.

Heh, you gotta be careful what you write on Faceboob:

Facebook translates 'good morning' into 'attack them', leading to arrest

Facebook has apologised after an error in its machine-translation service saw Israeli police arrest a Palestinian man for posting “good morning” on his social media profile.

The man, a construction worker in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, near Jerusalem, posted a picture of himself leaning against a bulldozer with the caption “يصبحهم”, or “yusbihuhum”, which translates as “good morning”.

But Facebook’s artificial intelligence-powered translation service, which it built after parting ways with Microsoft’s Bing translation in 2016, instead translated the word into “hurt them” in English or “attack them” in Hebrew.

Police officers arrested the man later that day, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, after they were notified of the post. They questioned him for several hours, suspicious he was planning to use the pictured bulldozer in a vehicle attack, before realising their mistake. At no point before his arrest did any Arabic-speaking officer read the actual post.

Facebook said it is looking into the issue, and in a statement to Gizmodo, added: “Unfortunately, our translation systems made an error last week that misinterpreted what this individual posted.

Worth a read. Looks like a new model for billionaires to purchase political influence and leverage tax dollars to enact their pet theories, is born.

Mark Zuckerberg has bigger plans than the White House

Mark Zuckerberg’s listening tour of the United States, he insists, is not a political campaign. But while “Zuck 2020” may not be happening, the 33-year-old Facebook co-founder is planning to influence American politics for generations to come. And that campaign has already begun.

The world’s fifth-richest man has publicly committed $45 million — most of it in the first 10 months of 2017 — into groups aligned with two political causes: ending the era of mass incarceration and fixing the affordable housing crisis in American cities. The sum, reported here for the first time, represents the first series of investments by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (with wife Priscilla Chan), or CZI, which is setting goals to extend far beyond the next election cycle.

With a $60 billion-plus funding commitment, CZI would be the biggest foundation in the world, almost 30 percent larger than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at $43 billion. ... But CZI isn’t a foundation; rather, it is structured as a limited liability company, meaning it has more flexibility in political advocacy and far fewer legal obligations to disclose how it does so.

[Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, the head of CZI’s political work] is one of several political veterans Zuckerberg has brought together over the past year, signaling to Washington and beyond that when CZI takes on a political issue, it plans to win. “We are in the first half of the first inning,” said Ken Mehlman, the former RNC chairman and campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection, who is leading CZI’s public policy advisory board on a volunteer basis. “[Zuckerberg and Chan] are thinking in terms of achieving social change over decades, not in terms of politics or years or election cycles.”

After bringing on Plouffe and Mehlman, Zuckerberg explained to the New York Times that he thought political work was instrumental to accomplishing the organization’s ultimate philanthropic goals. “At the end of the day, the government has far more resources than any individual organization does,” he said.

Google wants to run cities without being elected

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, does not suffer from a lack of ambition. Its subsidiaries are tackling topics ranging from autonomous vehicles to smart homes, artificial intelligence to biotech life extension. So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that Alphabet has decided it will plan, build, and run a city, too – well, part of a city. It’s a bit more surprising that a major city is happily handing Alphabet a neighborhood of prime real estate to call their own. The project announced last week is a partnership between Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary focused on urban technology, and Toronto. Sidewalk Labs will be in charge of redeveloping a waterfront district called Quayside.

According to reports, this initiative will “include at least 3.3m square feet of residential, office and commercial space, including a new headquarters for Google Canada, in a district that would be a test bed for the combination of technology and urbanism”. With this district, Alphabet will have its own “urban living laboratory” where it can experiment with new smart systems and planning techniques. It can study how these systems and techniques work in the real world and how people are affected.

Urban labs like this are on trend right now. There are examples around the world of cities, often in partnership with companies, developing or deeming a district a test-bed for technologies like self-driving cars. Indeed, this is not even Sidewalk Lab’s first project. It is also involved in the redevelopment of Hudson Yards in New York City. But if the Toronto development goes as planned, it will be one of the largest examples of a smart city project in North America. That is: a place built around data-driven, (semi-)automated, networked technologies.

Mayors and tech executives exalt urban labs as sites of disruptive innovation and economic growth. However, this model of creating our urban future is also an insidious way of handing more control – over people, places, policies – to profit-driven, power-hungry corporations. As the Globe and Mail reports, Eric Schmidt said at the announcement: “The genesis of the thinking for Sidewalk Labs came from Google’s founders getting excited thinking of ‘all the things you could do if someone would just give us a city and put us in charge’.” Ambition alone is not a sin, yet desires like these should evoke suspicion, not celebration. ... These partnerships cannot be a way for city governments to abdicate responsibility and accountability to citizens by handing over (parts of) the city to corporations. Nobody elected Alphabet or Uber or any other company with its sights set on privatizing city governance.

Puerto Rican Climate Activist: Aid Being Unfairly Distributed & Superfund Sites Continue to Overflow

Civil Rights Groups Sue Ben Carson for Delaying Anti-Segregation Housing Reform

A coalition of civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit Monday against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and its secretary, Ben Carson. The suit is aimed at stopping a move by Carson the civil rights groups say will only further racial and economic segregation. A policy known as the Small Area Fair Market Rent rule was set to go into effect on January 1, 2018, after years of advocacy, research, and public debate. In August, however, HUD abruptly announced it would be delaying the rule’s implementation for two years, claiming that further study was needed. ...

More than 5 million people in 2.2 million households use federal housing choice vouchers — colloquially referred to as Section 8, referencing the statute that created the subsidies — to help afford rent on the private market. The subsidies, however, are based on metropolitan-wide rent formulas, meaning that many low-income families are often relegated into communities with few job opportunities, poor-quality schools, and high crime rates. The rule change would have required — or will require — public housing authorities to calculate so-called fair market rents based on ZIP codes instead.

While tweaking a rent subsidy formula sounds minor and technical, the policy could impact millions of low-income people, especially African-Americans, who represent a disproportionate number of voucher holders.

The Outrage du Jour:

enior Republican feuds with Trump, saying he's 'debasing our nation'

Donald Trump is an “utterly untruthful” president, a senior Republican senator said on Tuesday as his feud with Trump raged across the TV and Twitter. Senator Bob Corker and the president lashed out at one another as Trump prepared to visit Capitol Hill for a lunch with GOP senators to discuss their plans for tax reform, among other things.

A protester shouted “Trump is treason” at the president as he arrived for the lunch, and threw small Russian flags at him.

Corker, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, said world leaders were “very aware” that much of what Trump said “is untrue”. The president, he told CNN, was “debasing our nation” and “has great difficulty with the truth on many issues”. The Tennessee Republican – who is retiring and has said “the most important public service I have to offer our country could well occur over the next 15 months” – said the Trump was “obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president”. His presidential tenure will be remembered, Corker says, for “the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, the name-calling. It’s very sad for our nation.”

After Corker went on NBC’s Today on Tuesday and said Trump’s White House should let Congress decide how to pay for his tax cuts, Trump fired back with the first of a series of tweets, writing that Corker “couldn’t get elected dog-catcher in Tennessee”. Corker responded on social media himself, tweeting: “Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff.”

Chiding Trump for Inaction, GAO Report Shows Climate to Cost US Taxpayers Trillions

Climate change impacts are already costing the federal government billions, and these costs are expected to increase, according to a new report released Tuesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

While this may not be news to scientists and environmentalists, the federal watchdog's report serves as an indictment of the Trump administration's slow and limited response to the looming threats from climate change, with the expressed goal of helping government guide efforts to improve its response and save money by limiting future damage.

"Over the last decade, extreme weather and fire events have cost the federal government over $350 billion"—excluding recent hurricanes and wildfires—and "these costs will likely rise as the climate changes," the GAO report (pdf) notes, citing data from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

"Our past work and the work of others have reported that climate change impacts and their economic effects have already cost the federal government money and pose future risks that could lead to increased federal fiscal exposure," the report continues, outlining conclusions from past publications prompted partly by the government spending billions of dollars on disaster relief.

In an apparent challenge to President Donald Trump's well documented climate change denialism and his administration's willingness to cater to demands from industries that are largely responsible for U.S. emissions, the summary of past reports is followed by a clear reprimand for current lack of planning coupled with a call to action.

Electric Cars and Surging Solar Spell Market Doom for Fossil Fuels

As an increasing number of nations make plans for banning gas and diesel vehicles within the coming decades, and drivers gain an awareness of the benefits associated with electric vehicles, researchers are prediciting notable consequences for dirty energy sources as the public shifts toward favoring renewable alternatives.

"Post-2025, that's where electric car sales take off. The further you go into the future, the more it's electric cars," Alan Gelder, a senior analyst for the research group Wood Mackenzie, told the Guardian. "If cities began banning cars with a combustion engine, that would rapidly accelerate the switch to electric vehicles."

Drivers transitioning to electric vehicles out of necessity, because of such bans—which multiple European nations plan to implement in the next 15-25 years—and efforts by governments to increase fuel efficiency regluations, is only part of what is fueling the blossoming electric vehicle market.

Auto manufacturers are also taking cues from the increased demand due to bans and enhanced regulations as well as consumer desire for more environmentally friendly vehicles, as Business Insider detailed in May.

These efforts by governments to limit emissions and by automakers to meet the rising demand for electic vehicles are expected to substanitally impact the oil and gas industry in the coming years.

Wood Mackenzie estimates global gasoline prices will peak then start to fall by 2030, though Gelder posits "the ripples of gasoline's plateau would be felt much earlier," as fossil fuel companies take fewer investment risks once demand for gas ebbs.

Also of Interest

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

How to Shop for Health Insurance on November 1 — And Why You Shouldn’t Have to

The Four Stages of the Antiwar Movement

Getting the Left to Embrace US ‘Exceptionalism’

The Brazilian Trump’s Visit to Washington Ends in Failure

Demonizing Venezuela’s Revolution

A sign on scrubland marks one of America's largest slave uprisings. Is this how to remember black heroes?

A Little Night Music

Texas Alexander - Frost Texas Tornado Blues

Texas Alexander & Lonnie Johnson - West Texas Blues

Texas Alexander & Lonnie Johnson - Blue Devil Blues

Texas Alexander & Lonnie Johnson - Bantam Rooster Blues

Texas Alexander & Lonnie Johnson - Boe Hog Blues

Texas Alexander & Lonnie Johnson - Mama's Bad Luck Child

Texas Alexander - Rolled from Side to Side Blues

Texas Alexander - Cross Roads