Good morning 99percenters!
Morning news dump and music by Johnny Sansone

US Invasion of Syria Begins

As previously warned about in June of 2015, the United States has announced that it will officially begin ground operations in Syria through the use of special forces. The Washington Post in its article, "Obama seeks to intensify operations in Syria with Special Ops troops,"would report that:

President Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations troops to northern Syria, marking the first full-time deployment of U.S. forces to the chaotic country. 

The mission marks a major shift for Obama, whose determination to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been balanced by an abiding worry that U.S. troops not be pulled too deeply into the in­trac­table Syrian conflict. 

The latest deployment will involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers, who will work with resistance forces battling the Islamic State in northern Syria but will not engage in direct combat, Obama administration officials said.

As Merkel Crumbles Berlin Turns To Moscow
North Stream 2 Agreement and visit of German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel to Moscow signals a coming Russian German rapprochement

Back on 26th November 2014, following a Reuters despatch discussing a meeting Merkel had with Putin at the G20 summit in Brisbane, we wrote the following:

“Merkel has brought this on herself by taking on the Russians in Ukraine where, as we at RI have repeatedly said, the Russians hold all the cards. Accustomed to getting her way with other EU leaders, in dealing with the Russians she looks out of her depth. The first rule in politics is when in a hole; stop digging. If Merkel cannot stop digging, Germany may soon have a new Chancellor.”

We were the first to say at a time when no-one else even contemplated the possibility that because of her disastrous mishandling of the Ukrainian crisis Merkel’s job was on the line.

Since then Merkel has compounded her problems by her disastrous mishandling of the Greek crisis and the refugee crisis.

US Tax Dollars up in Smoke Over Afghanistan
Citizens Earn it, Government Burns it, Creating a Haze

Want to meet a government official who tells the truth — in spades? Then you will definitely want to set aside time to hear of the stunning findings of the top US investigator for spending in Afghanistan.

The biggest problem is not theft, but waste, he says. For example, the $500 million spent on airplanes that no one could fly, and that ultimately had to be scrapped, a process that cost yet more thousands of dollars. Or the gift of soybeans, which the Afghans will not eat and will not grow. Or how about the creation of a navy for Afghanistan — a country that is landlocked?

The biggest source of the problem is the lack of accountability, he says. But that is changing.

“God bless whistleblowers,” says Sopko. “If we didn’t have them, things would be a hundred times worse.” And some of his sources of information would surprise you.

How Much Would You Pay for Air? It Sounds Absurd At First— But They Already Got You to Pay for Water
Is the bottled water industry a harbinger of crazier industries to come?

How much would you pay for air? It’s an absurd question. After all, air is free. There’s no reason to pay for it. Air seems a poor choice for a commercial product. But what if you were in a place with limited air—the top of a mountain, underwater, or in a sealed room? In those places, you’d pay a lot for air, maybe even everything you have.

If not air, then how about water? For a moment water seems absurd too. It’s available nearly everywhere, and it’s so cheap it’s often given away for free. But if you’re thirsty and you’re out of options, you’ll pay plenty for water. Both air and water are so important that after a short time—minutes in the case of air, a few days in the case of water—humans can’t live without them. We derive an immense benefit from those plentiful commodities and yet we generally pay very little for them.

The difference between how much you would pay for something if you had to and how much you actually pay in the current market is called economic surplus. The story of business, from the very first barter trade right through to the latest financial transaction a millisecond ago, is a story of economic surplus. People and businesses buy or sell goods and services because what they get—whether it’s air or a car or a dollar—is worth more to them than what they give in exchange. The difference between what something is worth to you and what you actually give in exchange for it can be very personal. Surplus varies from person to person, from time to time, and from situation to situation.

From "Sustainable" to "Regenerative" - the Future of Food

This week, the paywalled site PoliticoPro reported that the US Secretary of Agriculture wants "farmers and agricultural interests to come up with a single definition of sustainability in order to avoid confusing the public with various meanings of the term in food and production methods."

We agree with Secretary Tom Vilsack that the word "sustainability" is meaningless to consumers and the public. It's overused, misused and it has been shamelessly co-opted by corporations for the purpose of greenwashing.

But rather than come up with one definition for the word "sustainable" as it refers to food and food production methods, we suggest doing away with the word entirely. In its place, as a way of helping food consumers make conscious, informed decisions, we suggest dividing global food and farming into two categories: regenerative and degenerative.

6 Spooky Ways Local Law Enforcement Is Watching You
A day in the life of the surveillance state

Often, the discussion on government surveillance in the US is all about the NSA or the FBI. But the feds aren’t the only ones spying on you. Local law enforcement has been getting in on the action, and it’s not good.

If you’re planning on dressing up and enjoying yourself this weekend, you might think that a layer of paint and a wig is enough to make you unrecognizable. Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Government spending on surveillance technologies for domestic law enforcement—like IMSI catchers, biometrics, and cameras of all kinds—has increased exponentially in recent years, despite the fact that in the last 20 years, crime rates in the United States have steadily and significantly declined (PDF).

Invasive street level surveillance technologies are popping up in towns across the US—and around the globe. A Halloween costume is no match for these technologies when it comes to protecting your privacy. Here are a few of the disturbing surveillance technologies that local law enforcement is increasingly adding to its arsenal, and how you might encounter them on a typical day. As we walk through these technologies, try to imagine what you’d have to do to go a single day without surveillance.

Crypto is For Everyone—and American History Proves It

Over the last year, law enforcement officials around the world have been pressing hard on the notion that without a magical "backdoor" to access the content of any and all encrypted communications by ordinary people, they’ll be totally incapable of fulfilling their duties to investigate crime and protect the public. EFF and many others have pushed back—including launching a petition with our friends to SaveCrypto, which this week reached 100,000 signatures, forcing a response from President Obama.

This is in addition to multiple findings that the government’s “going dark” concern has proven completely unfounded in the past, along with former national security officers disavowing the concern all together. And given law enforcement’s continuing attacks on the public’s use of encryption, we think it’s time for a quick look at the long tradition of encryption use by some ordinary, and some not so ordinary, Americans.

Of course most folks know that cryptography is a critical military tool. In one of NSA’s own published histories [pdf] of cryptology, the government touts its significance, and many folks believe, reasonably, that cryptography played a significant role in the Allies winning WWII. But law enforcement officials have recently made clear that they believe the government—and only the government—should benefit from the routine use of the most secure encryption technologies. And they are currently endeavoring to restrict the widespread use of secure encryption technologies by the public.

Half Million Die in Decade of Disasters in Asia Pacific

The Asia Pacific region, the most disaster-prone part of the world, suffered 1,625 disasters in the decade through 2014, and needs to spend more on adapting to climate change and preparing for more extreme weather, the United Nations said this week.

The region's disasters - 40 percent of the global total - claimed half a million lives over the decade, affected 1.4 billion people and caused $523 billion in economic damage, the 2015 U.N. Asia-Pacific Disaster Report said.

The world body urged the region's governments to invest more in adapting to climate change and preparing for disasters as the risks the region faces are worsened by its rapid economic growth and mushrooming population.

This Year’s Ozone Hole is the Fourth-Largest on Record

The ozone hole, an environmental problem often associated with the 1980s, is still a clear and present issue more than 30 years later. Despite efforts to clean up the stratosphere of ozone-depleting chemicals, this year’s ozone hole minimum bottomed out at the fourth lowest on record.

The ozone hole this year grew to a size of 10.9 million square miles, which is larger than the continent of North America. It’s a 1.3 million square miles bigger than last year’s size, and is the fourth largest on record since 1991.

This year the hole formed later and lasted two weeks longer than usual, leading to almost 100 percent ozone depletion. While ozone-depleting chemicals are still playing a role, natural factors, such as stratospheric circulation, also helped drive this year’s widespread thinning.

New primate species at root of tree of extant hominoids
It lived 11.6 million years ago and precedes the divergence between hominids and hylobatids

Living hominoids are a group of primates that includes the small-bodied apes (the lesser apes, or gibbons and siamangs, which constitute the family Hylobatidae) and the larger-bodied great apes (orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees), which, along with humans, belong to the family Hominidae. All extant hominoids share several features, such as the lack of external tail, an orthograde body plan that enables an upright trunk position, and several cranial characteristics. All these features might have been present in the common ancestor of hominids and hylobatids that, according to molecular data, would have lived about 15-20 million years ago.

Researchers from the 'Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont' (ICP) have described the new genus and species of extinct hominoid, Pliobates cataloniae, based on a partial skeleton composed of 70 fossil remains found in 2011 in one of the sites within the stratigraphic series of Abocador de Can Mata (els Hostalets de Pierola, Barcelona, Catalonia, NE Iberian Peninsula). These include most of the skull and dentition as well as a considerable portion of the left arm, including several elements of the elbow and wrist joints. They belong to an ape similar in size to the smallest of living gibbons (4 to 5 kg), which lived 11.6 million years ago. Pliobates shows, for the first time in a primate fossil of this size, a set of characteristic features of extant hominoids, presumably inherited from their last common ancestor, which probably lived in Africa several million years before Pliobates.

This find radically changes the hitherto accepted morphotype of the hylobatid-hominid ancestor and provides very solid clues about the origin of extant gibbons. "The origin of gibbons is a mystery because of the lack of fossil record, but until now most scientists thought that their last common ancestor with hominids must have been large, because all of the undoubted fossil hominoids found so far were large-bodied," explains David M. Alba, the ICP researcher leading the study published in the journal Science. All the small-bodied (5 to 15 kg) fossil anthropoids found before Pliobates displayed a body plan too primitive to be closely related to extant hominoids. "This find overturns everything," according to this ICP researcher.