This evening's music features r&b musician Sly Stone.

Here are some stories from tonight's posting:

House Rejects Effort to Force Vote on ISIS War Authorization

10 months into the US war on ISIS, the chances of getting an actual Congressional vote on the conflict looks less likely than ever, with Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D – CA) amendment getting voted down today in the House 231-196, in a vote strongly along party lines.

The amendment wouldn’t have offered any guidance on the war itself, but would simply have required that the House have a vote on the authorization of the war at some point before March 31 of next year. Having failed, they appear set not to have a vote on the war at all.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 forbids the US from entering any armed conflict longer than 60 days without an explicit vote authorizing it from Congress. This timeline would’ve put the vote ahead of the mid-term elections, however, so Congressional leaders decided to punt the controversial issue down the road.

Pentagon Presents Latest Iraq Escalation as ‘Model’ for More Deployments

The escalation of the US ground war in Iraq looks to be on the precipice of a dramatic acceleration tonight, as Pentagon officials openly talk about their new plan, in which 450 new ground troops will be establishing a new US base on the outskirts of ISIS-held Ramadi, as a “model” to be repeated across Iraq.

These bases are being called “lily pad sites,” and the Pentagon says it is actively looking to establish another 3-4 such sites, with around 1,000 additional ground troops set to deploy for that, as the “next step.” The program will go on from there.

While the troops are nominally being sent to “advise” and “train” Iraqi forces, putting them within obvious shooting distance of major ISIS holdings is just the latest in a series of Pentagon efforts to get US forces enough in harm’s way to justify ground combat as “defensive” in nature.

Ironically, the training mission never seems to happen at any rate, with the previous round of US deployments in Anbar, to the Ayn al-Asad Air Base, seeing those troops get intermittently shelled by ISIS, but no Iraqi troops bothering to show up for their much vaunted training.

Nuke Russia? Prankster/journalist gets support for fake petition

This is an excellent article, well worth a full read. Here's a taste:

America: Addicted to War, Afraid of Peace

Earlier this year, West Point’s Defense and Strategic Studies Program invited me to participate in a panel discussion on the future of warfare. ... The guidance for the panelists underlined two questions: “What will be the dominant trend in warfare from 2015–2035?” and “How should the U.S. military and government prepare for this trend?” Perhaps shying away from such an imposing query, I found myself dissecting the question itself. The prompt contained a host of assumptions and deeper questions. Would there be, for instance, only one dominant trend over the next twenty years? Could one find in the United States’ last thirteen and a half years of war a certain trajectory of technological or political developments hinting at the future of warfare?

Most importantly, the question seemed to assume, almost reflexively, that the United States would be at war over the next twenty years. (Peace, apparently, was not likely to be a dominant trend.) Such assumptions should give us pause. Yet preparing for war—even engaging in war—without asking why war is necessary has arguably become part of our national psyche. In a large sense, the United States has been at war for so long that, collectively, its citizens and leaders have become uncomfortable with, if not frightened by, the very idea of peace. After decades of being at war, we have come to the point where we can’t live without it.

This willing acceptance of perpetual war offers a congenial (and lucrative) market for national-security visionaries who glance into the future and offer advice on defense-related topics ranging from cyberwarfare to the use of drones. Pundits offer advice on the “militarization of cyberspace” and the likely arms race that will ensue given the United States’ reliance on drone technology in counterterrorism operations. ... Perhaps unsurprisingly, explanations of the necessity of war have tended to downplay the economic aspects of global engagement. Americans traditionally have been uncomfortable with the word “empire,” even if its current form suggests securing economic access abroad rather than promoting traditional colonialism. Andrew J. Bacevich’s diagnosis that the purpose of American grand strategy, since at least the early 1990s, has been to create “an open and integrated international order based on the principles of democratic capitalism, with the United States as the ultimate guarantor of order and enforcer of norms” can seem jarring. ...

As the distance between soldiers and civilians has grown, Americans have become less troubled with the idea of permanent war. As early as 1995, the historian Michael Sherry documented the militarization of American life, a decades-long trajectory originating before World War II in which “war defined much of the American imagination” and “the fear of war penetrated” American society. Though Sherry ended on a guardedly hopeful note—that Americans might “drift away from their militarized past”—more recent critics, like Bacevich, have denounced our society’s increasingly comfortable relationship with war. Extending Sherry’s analysis beyond the events of September 11, Bacevich persuasively maintains that the seduction of war overpowers rational thinking on the possibilities and, more importantly, limitations of military power abroad. Instead, we instinctively equate American superiority with military superiority.

As al-Qaeda Grows in Syria, So Do US Calls to Court Them as Allies

Before ISIS had formally split from al-Qaeda, there was often talk about “good al-Qaeda versus bad al-Qaeda” in Syria, centering around ISIS as the more extreme group, and Jabhat al-Nusra as the slightly less extreme group. ... Now, with al-Qaeda taking much of the Idlib Province and setting up a little statelet of their own, there is a new push in the US to endorse them as new allies against ISIS. [see next item below. - js]

It’s the Hitler vs. Stalin thing all over again, and hawks desperate for a successful ally on the ground in Syria are desperately trying to rebrand al-Qaeda of all people as the “lesser of two evils,” and hoping to repair the terrorist group’s image domestically, which is still considerably tarnished after 9/11.

To U.S. Allies, Al Qaeda Affiliate in Syria Becomes the Lesser Evil

In the three-way war ravaging Syria, should the local al Qaeda branch be seen as the lesser evil to be wooed rather than bombed?

This is increasingly the view of some of America’s regional allies and even some Western officials. ... The three main forces left on the ground today are the Assad regime, Islamic State and an Islamist rebel alliance in which the Nusra Front—an al Qaeda affiliate designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and the United Nations—plays a major role.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the more secular, Western-backed rebels have found themselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with Nusra in key battlefields. ... “It does say something when suddenly Nusra become a lot more tempting. It speaks volumes as to the severity of the situation,” said Saudi Prince Faisal bin Saud bin Abdulmohsen, a scholar at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh. “At this point we must really differentiate between fanaticism and outright monstrosity.”

[Emphasis mine, I found the highlighted to be an interesting rationalization. - js]

At first, it was mostly Turkey and Qatar that aided Syrian Islamist rebels cooperating with Nusra. ... In recent months, however, Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman has moved to work much more closely with Doha and Ankara in supporting the Islamist-dominated rebel alliance that includes Nusra, diplomats and officials in the region say. These countries see the suffering inflicted on Syria by the Assad regime as the main reason for Islamic State’s emergence in the first place, and they prefer to see Nusra and its allies, rather than Islamic State, move into territory surrendered by Damascus.

Israel exonerates itself over Gaza beach killings of four children last year

Israeli investigation says missile attack that killed boys aged between nine and 11 was ‘tragic accident’ in findings contradictory to journalists’ reports from scene

The Israeli military has cleared itself of culpability in one of the most controversial incidents in last summer’s Gaza war: a missile attack that killed four children on Gaza beach and injured a number of others.

Israel’s advocate general’s office said the attack, which led to the death of four boys aged between nine and 11 was a “tragic accident”.

An account of the investigation, posted late on Thursday by military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner, said the strike had targeted a “compound” which had been known as belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos)”.

But journalists who attended the scene in the immediate aftermath of the attack – including a reporter from the Guardian – saw a small and dilapidated fisherman’s hut containing a few tools where the children had been playing hide-and-seek. ...

The conclusion of the Israeli military investigation comes while the Israel is under a preliminary investigation by the International Criminal Court to establish whether war crimes were committed during the Gaza war – both by Israel and Hamas. The finding will inevitably raise questions over the way in which Israel investigates incidents in which civilians were killed.

Fast Track Derailed? House Deals Blow to Corporate-Friendly Trade Agenda

But groups warn citizens to 'remain vigilant to ensure that future efforts to pass Fast Track and climate-destroying trade agreements are defeated'

The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday dealt a serious blow to President Barack Obama's corporate-backed trade agenda, while erecting a major stumbling block for proponents of Fast Track, or trade promotion authority. ...

A bill on Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which would provide aid to workers displaced because of so-called "free trade" agreements, had been packaged with Fast Track authority, and a vote against either doomed the total package. Legislators opposed to Fast Track had hoped to derail the entire package by voting against TAA.

And derail it they did, voting 126-302 against TAA.

Moments later, the chamber did pass a stand-alone version of Fast Track. But, as the New York Times explains, because the Senate version linked TAA and Fast Track, the House vote "would force the Senate to take up a trade bill all over again. And without trade adjustment assistance alongside it, passing trade promotion authority in the Senate would be highly doubtful."

Instead, the House will reportedly take up TAA again next week.

Still, progressives viewed Friday's deferral of a final decision as a victory even as they cautioned against becoming complacent.

Russian Oligarch Admired American Puppetry

One of my core political beliefs is that there would still be a Soviet Union if they’d been smart enough to have two communist parties that agreed on everything except abortion.

Obviously that’s a joke about the U.S., where we have two capitalist parties that largely agree on everything. The exceptions are issues that matter a lot to the regular people who make up the two parties’ bases, but are largely irrelevant to party elites who fund and run both of them. ...

But here’s what’s really funny: according to the Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen, oligarch Boris Berezovsky did consciously want to set up post-Soviet politics in Russia to work like this. ...

Here are Berezovsky’s exact words, in an interview with Gessen from 2008:

When Putin became president, I was for a long time in a state of profound naiveté. Well, I went to him … I told him: “Listen, Volodya, what happened: we destroyed the entire political space. Devoured, not destroyed, but devoured it. We absolutely dominated … Look, I’ll suggest that we can not have effective political system, if there’s a tough competition. So I suggest we create an artificial two-party system. So, let’s say, the left and right. A Socially Oriented party and neo-conservatives liberal party. Choose any. And I’ll make another party. At the same time, my own heart is closer to neoconservatives, and I think so, you [Putin] are socially oriented. ” I earnestly believed then that he understood it. But I think that even then he looked at me like I was crazy.

... It’s certainly worth pondering that at least one of the people at the top of the world has genuinely conceived of electoral politics as a meaningless puppet show, with himself and his friends as puppet masters.

Also of interest:

Technology supports movements. But only risk-takers make political change

Sunni Alliances Trump Obama Administration Terrorism Concerns in Syria