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Last weekend Hillary Clinton joined the Republican candidates in coming down hard against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. Speaking to her financial sponsor Haim Saban as well as a D.C. audience, she described the campaign as anti-semitic and wrong, and meantime offered vague opposition to Israeli settlements. Well there’s a good reason Clinton doesn’t want the issue politicized. If the matter were actually debated openly between Republicans and Democrats, her own base would be against her. A new poll of American attitudes on the conflict from Shibley Telhami at the Brookings Institution says that Democrats favor sanctions to counter Israeli settlement construction. Telhami reports: It is notable that among Democrats, more people (49%) recommend either imposing economic sanctions or taking more serious action [re settlements], than those recommending doing nothing or limiting U.S. opposition towards (46%)

The poll also shows broad support for a one-state outcome among Americans. The poll at Telhami’s academic site defines one state as “a single democratic state in which both Jews and Arabs are full and equal citizens, covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories.” Those who advocate a one-state solution, 31%, are now comparable to those who advocate a two-state solution, 35%. The most notable change is that Republicans this year equally support a two-state solution vs. one-state solution (29% each). This shows that Democrats support a two-state-solution over one state by 45 to 33. Still: a third of Dem voters are for a single democratic state with equal citizenship. Dems don’t like the Israel lobby either. The poll shows that by more than a three-to-one ratio, Democrats feel that Israel has too much influence in American politics. And Americans generally also are turned off:

Overall, twice as many Americans say the Israeli government has too much influence (37%) than say too little influence (18%), while a plurality (44 %) say it’s the right level. The story once again is more pronounced in the partisan views: Among Democrats, about half (49%) say Israel has too much influence, compared with 14% who say Israel has too little influence, and 36 % who say it’s the right level. Netanyahu’s popularity has crashed among Dems, though he’s a heroic figure to Republicans. Notice that Democratic attitudes on blame for the recent “escalation in violence” actually track attitudes on our site. Democrats understand the Palestinian violence as a response to lack of freedom: A plurality of Democrats, 37%, blame continued Israeli occupation and settlement expansion, followed by 35% who blame the absence of serious peace diplomacy, while 15% blame Palestinian extremists. In contrast, 40% of Republicans blame Palestinian extremists first…

“We have received additional information confirming that the oil controlled by Islamic State militants (ISIS) enters Turkish territory on an industrial scale. We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure the security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers.” –Russian President Vladimir Putin, Paris, 11-30-15

In candid remarks to the Russian media, Putin implicated the US in the downing of the Su-24 stating that the US military was briefed on the warplane’s flight path and then immediately passed along that information to Turkey. Here’s what he said: “We told our US partners in advance where, when at what altitudes our pilots were going to operate. The US-led coalition, which includes Turkey, was aware of the time and place where our planes would operate. And this is exactly where and when we were attacked. Why did we share this information with the Americans? Either they don’t control their allies, or they just pass this information left and right without realizing what the consequences of such actions might be. We will have to have a serious talk with our US partners.” Putin’s damning remarks have not appeared in any of the western media. The censorship of this information is similar to the blackout of comments Putin made just two weeks earlier at the G-20 summit where he announced that “40 countries” are financing ISIS including members of the G-20.

Here’s an except of Putin’s bombshell announcement: “I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them,” Putin told the journalists. “I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products. The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.” (Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members, RT)

Tony Blair went to war in Iraq despite a report by South African experts with unique knowledge of the country that showed it did not possess weapons of mass destruction, according to a book published on Sunday.

God, Spies and Lies, by South African journalist John Matisonn, describes how then president Thabo Mbeki tried in vain to convince both Blair and President George W Bush that toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003 would be a terrible mistake. Mbeki’s predecessor, Nelson Mandela, also tried to convince the American leader, but was left fuming that “President Bush doesn’t know how to think”. The claim was this week supported by Mbeki’s office, which confirmed that he pleaded with both leaders to heed the WMD experts and even offered to become their intermediary with Saddam in a bid to maintain peace. South Africa had a special insight into Iraq’s potential for WMD because the apartheid government’s own biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programme in the 1980s led the countries to collaborate. The programme was abandoned after the end of white minority rule in 1994 but the expert team, known as Project Coast, was put back together by Mbeki to investigate the US and UK assertion that Saddam had WMD – the central premise for mounting an invasion.

Mbeki, who enjoyed positive relations with both Blair and Saddam, asked for the team to be granted access. “Saddam agreed, and gave the South African team the freedom to roam unfettered throughout Iraq,” writes Matisonn, who says he drew on sources in Whitehall and the South African cabinet. “They had access to UN intelligence on possible WMD sites. The US, UK and UN were kept informed of the mission and its progress.” The experts put their prior knowledge of the facilities to good use, Matisonn writes. “They already knew the terrain, because they had travelled there as welcome guests of Saddam when both countries were building WMD.” On their return, they reported that there were no WMDs in Iraq. “They knew where the sites in Iraq had been, and what they needed to look like. But there were now none in Iraq.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia's long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad's future be determined by his own people, as Washington and Moscow edged toward putting aside years of disagreement over how to end Syria's civil war. "The United States and our partners are not seeking so-called regime change," Kerry told reporters in the Russian capital after meeting President Vladimir Putin. A major international conference on Syria would take place later this week in New York, Kerry announced. Kerry reiterated the U.S. position that Assad, accused by the West of massive human rights violations and chemical weapons attacks, won't be able to steer Syria out of more than four years of conflict. But after a day of discussions with Assad's key international backer, Kerry said the focus now is "not on our differences about what can or cannot be done immediately about Assad." Rather, it is on facilitating a peace process in which "Syrians will be making decisions for the future of Syria." Kerry's declarations crystallized the evolution in U.S. policy on Assad over the last several months, as the Islamic State group's growing influence in the Middle East has taken priority.

President Barack Obama first called on Assad to leave power in the summer of 2011, with "Assad must go" being a consistent rallying cry. Later, American officials allowed that he wouldn't have to resign on "Day One" of a transition. Now, no one can say when Assad might step down. Russia, by contrast, has remained consistent in its view that no foreign government could demand Assad's departure and that Syrians would have to negotiate matters of leadership among themselves. Since late September, it has been bombing terrorist and rebel targets in Syria as part of what the West says is an effort to prop up Assad's government. "No one should be forced to choose between a dictator and being plagued by terrorists," Kerry said. However, he described the Syrian opposition's demand that Assad must leave as soon as peace talks begin as a "nonstarting position, obviously."

Earlier Tuesday in the Kremlin, Putin noted several "outstanding issues" between Russia and its former Cold War foe. Beyond Assad, these include which rebel groups in Syria should be allowed to participate in the transition process and which should be deemed terrorists, and like the Islamic State group and al-Qaida, combatted by all. Jordan is working on finalizing the list of terrorist vs. legitimate opposition forces. Representatives of Syria's opposition themselves hope this week to finalize their negotiating team for talks with Assad's government. The U.S., Russia and others hope those talks will begin early next year. Appearing beside Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hailed what he described as a "big negotiating day," saying the sides advanced efforts to define what a Syrian transition process might look like.

Perhaps you’ve noticed. Some people and institutions are working feverishly to convince us that real social change is not possible. Their target is Bernie Sanders and the growing army of his supporters who are fed up with politics as usual and the grip of Wall Street and corporate America on our political, economic and social system. The theme is to desperately convince us that Sanders can’t win. They repeat it over and over, even though Sanders polls as well or better than Hillary Clinton does against every leading Republican candidate. Behind this effort is an alarmed corporate old guard that still runs the Democratic Party establishment and their allies in the corporate think tanks and the media, with a special nod to NBC/MSNBC, which is owned and operated by General Electric and Comcast.

In this scenario to blunt the Sanders’ surge, and what it represents for the millions of people who want to reverse income inequality, guarantee health care to everyone, break up the banks, carry out meaningful environmental justice and criminal justice reform, and all the other far reaching planks of Sanders’ campaign and the coalition supporting it. A thrust of their effort is to persuade Sanders supporters that he cannot win, in large part by using all the well-funded mechanisms in their control to retard wider exposure to the message of Sanders and his allies. The power elite form of turning down the gaslights. Here’s a small part of how the manipulation works. 

The Democratic National Committee slashes the number of debates and schedules debates on Saturday nights when far fewer people are watching, and pressures its elected officials and convention super delegates for an early endorsement in an effort to lock down a coronation of their preferred candidate. Meanwhile the media, in particular NBC/MSNBC which has the biggest network audience of presumed Democratic Party voters, limits coverage of Sanders while it’s parent company, GE, also directs its Hollywood subsidiaries, including Universal Studios (co-owned by Comcast) and its NBC shows, to line up its contracted celebrities to endorse the politics as usual campaign. Other national media, which also has a stake in the status quo, contributes as well. While Sanders has now drawn more than 400,000 people to his rallies – far more than any other candidate – he routinely receives less coverage than most of the other leading candidates. A report, circulated by Media Matters, found that on one network alone Donald Trump has been given 81 minutes of coverage compared to less than one minute for Sanders, even though, as The Nation’s John Nichols notes, Sanders has broader support among Democratic voters than Trump does among Republicans in the first voting state, Iowa.

Paul Craig Roberts The Federal Reserve raised the interbank borrowing rate today by one quarter of one percent or 25 basis points. Readers are asking, “what does that mean?” It means that the Fed has had time to figure out that the effect of the small “rate hike” would essentially be zero. In other words, the small increase in the target rate from a range of 0 to 0.25% to 0.25 to 0.50% is insufficient to set off problems in the interest-rate derivatives market or to send stock and bond prices into decline.

However, the fact of the matter is that the available liquidity exceeded demand in the old rate range. The purpose of raising interest rates is to choke off credit demand, but there was no need to choke off credit demand when the demand for credit was only sufficient to keep the average rate in the midpoint of the old range. This “rate hike” is a fraud. It is only for the idiots in the financial media who have been going on about a rate hike forever and the need for the Fed to protect its credibility by raising interest rates.

Thus, the rate hike has the effect of making smaller banks pay higher interest expense to the mega-banks favored by the Federal Reserve. A different way of putting it is that the “rate hike” favors banks sitting on excess reserves over banks who are lending to businesses and consumers in their community. In other words, the rate hike just facilitates more looting by the One Percent.

Pending before federal magistrate judge James Orenstein is the government’s request for an order obligating Apple, Inc. to unlock an iPhone and thereby assist prosecutors in decrypting data the government has seized and is authorized to search pursuant to a warrant. In an order questioning the government’s purported legal basis for this request, the All Writs Act of 1789 (AWA), Judge Orenstein asked Apple for a brief informing the court whether the request would be technically feasible and/or burdensome. After Apple filed, the court asked it to file a brief discussing whether the government had legal grounds under the AWA to compel Apple’s assistance. Apple filed that brief and the government filed a reply brief last week in the lead-up to a hearing this morning.

We’ve long been concerned about whether end users own software under the law. Software owners have rights of adaptation and first sale enshrined in copyright law. But software publishers have claimed that end users are merely licensees, and our rights under copyright law can be waived by mass-market end user license agreements, or EULAs. Over the years, Granick has argued that users should retain their rights even if mass-market licenses purport to take them away. The government’s brief takes advantage of Apple’s EULA for iOS to argue that Apple, the software publisher, is responsible for iPhones around the world. Apple’s EULA states that when you buy an iPhone, you’re not buying the iOS software it runs, you’re just licensing it from Apple. The government argues that having designed a passcode feature into a copy of software which it owns and licenses rather than sells, Apple can be compelled under the All Writs Act to bypass the passcode on a defendant’s iPhone pursuant to a search warrant and thereby access the software owned by Apple. Apple’s supplemental brief argues that in defining its users’ contractual rights vis-à-vis Apple with regard to Apple’s intellectual property, Apple in no way waived its own due process rights vis-à-vis the government with regard to users’ devices. Apple’s brief compares this argument to forcing a car manufacturer to “provide law enforcement with access to the vehicle or to alter its functionality at the government’s request” merely because the car contains licensed software. 

This is an interesting twist on the decades-long EULA versus users’ rights fight. As far as we know, this is the first time that the government has piggybacked on EULAs to try to compel software companies to provide assistance to law enforcement. Under the government’s interpretation of the All Writs Act, anyone who makes software could be dragooned into assisting the government in investigating users of the software. If the court adopts this view, it would give investigators immense power. The quotidian aspects of our lives increasingly involve software (from our cars to our TVs to our health to our home appliances), and most of that software is arguably licensed, not bought. Conscripting software makers to collect information on us would afford the government access to the most intimate information about us, on the strength of some words in some license agreements that people never read. (And no wonder: The iPhone’s EULA came to over 300 pages when the government filed it as an exhibit to its brief.)

Using the criterion cui bono (who benefits?) to the Paris outrage, one notes an apparent shortage of “bono” to ISIL, unless the thinking of the leadership runs to: “It would be an excellent idea to focus the fury of the West upon us here in Iraq instead of laying low and letting the West go along with the GCC/Turkish plan of quagmiring Russia in Syria.” Doesn’t make too much sense.  Which is why, in my opinion, is why you see a lot of metaphysical hand waving that the real motive for the attacks was to erase the Muslim “grey zone,” provoke a fatal over-reaction from the West, contribute to the agonies of the Syrian refugees in Europe, rend the time-space continuum and thereby bring the Crusaders to their knees, etc.

Media and analyst coverage appears determined to overlay a profitable traffic-building and mission-enhancing narrative of “Western civilization under attack by ISIL,” and ignore the factors that point to the attack as a murderous local initiative, not by ISIL or the mythical immigrant threat, but by alienated Muslim citizens of the EU.  The rhetoric of righteous, united fury against a monstrosity committed by the external “other,” perhaps, is easier to digest than the awkward theme of national minorities committing extreme acts of violence against societies they believe oppress and marginalize them. So we get lots about the horrors of ISIL and relatively little about the, to me, rather eye-opening statistic that while 8% of the population of France is Muslim, it is estimated that 70% of the prison population is.  I suppose it would be churlish to explore the issue of blowback from French penal and social policies at this juncture.  But there is some interesting data that places the alleged and now apparently deceased mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, in context concerning the degree of his allegiance to ISIL.

Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, in other words, was formed as a rather bloody piece of outreach by Libyan Islamists to share Libya experience in insurrection and revolution with Syria.  After IS arose and became a dominant military and financial force, the “KBL” threw in their lot with ISIS, and members of the brigade subsequently returned to Libya to establish an IS beachhead. A July 2015 study by Small Arms Survey confirms the autonomous character of Katibat al-Battar al-Libi. While the uncertain relationship between JAN and IS was being clarified, Libyans stayed ‘outside’ the fray, remaining in their own units and not integrating into other IS hierarchies or command structures. In Latakia for instance, Libyans kept their own separate battalion (The Daily Star, 2013). As the split between JAN and IS deepened, Libyans chose IS but remained apart, forming the Katibat al-Battar al-Libiya (KBL) (The Libyan al-Battar Brigade), under the auspices of IS. Since its formation, the KBL has been active in eastern Syria, notably in Al Hasakah and Deir az-Zor. The battalion maintained links with Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, an early and prominent supporter of IS. Ansar al-Sharia proved to be an excellent recruiting tool and played a role in the arrival of many Libyans in Syria prior to 2014. And who is Ansar al-Sharia in Libya?  Via The Telegraph:

Once again, whatever hangs in the future for Syria on both the political and military fronts depends on the new Battle of Aleppo. The city and its outskirts, with the influx of internal refugees, may be harboring up to three million people by now. It’s always about Aleppo.Here’s what’s going on, essentially, on the ground. West Aleppo is controlled by Damascus, via the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).Some of the northern parts are controlled by the Kurds from the PYD – which are way more engaged in fighting ISIS/ISIL/Daesh than Damascus. The PYD also happens to be considered an objective ally by the Obama administration and the Pentagon, much to the disgust of Turkey’s ‘Sultan’ Erdogan.

East Aleppo is the key. It is controlled by the so-called Army of Conquest, which includes Jabhat al-Nusra, a.k.a. Al-Qaeda in Syria, and the Salafi outfit Ahrar al-Sham. Other eastern parts are controlled by the “remnants” (copyright Donald Rumsfeld) of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who refused to collaborate with the Army of Conquest.Across the Beltway, all of the above are somewhat considered “moderate rebels.”

Additionally, several hundred Iraqi Shi’ite fighters, under the supervision of superstar Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, have been transferred from Latakia to Aleppo. And a roughly 3,000-strong, battle-hardened, armored Hezbollah brigade is also coming.What is shaping up is a kind of southern offensive. These forces will all be converging not only towards Aleppo but, in a second stage, will have to clear the terrain all the way to the Turkish-Syrian border, which is now a de facto Russian-controlled no-fly zone.The supreme target is to cut off the supply lines for every Salafi or Salafi-jihadi player – from “moderate rebels” to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh. That’s the meaning of Moscow’s insistence on the fight against all brands of terror, with no distinction. It does not matter that ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is not the main player in and around Aleppo.For all practical purposes the whole Syria campaign is now under Russian operational, tactical and strategic management – of course with key Iranian strategic input.

In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks. The technology was used in Afghanistan before being loosed on U.S. streets. Each X-ray van costs an estimated $729,000 to $825,000.The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used.

Here are some specific questions that New York City refuses to answer:How is the NYPD ensuring that innocent New Yorkers are not subject to harmful X-ray radiation? How long is the NYPD keeping the images that it takes and who can look at them? Is the NYPD obtaining judicial authorization prior to taking images, and if so, what type of authorization? Is the technology funded by taxpayer money, and has the use of the vans justified the price tag? Those specifics are taken from a New York Civil Liberties Union court filing. The legal organization is seeking to assist a lawsuit filed by Pro Publica journalist Michael Grabell, who has been fighting New York City for answers about X-ray vans for 3 years.“ProPublica filed the request as part of its investigation into the proliferation of security equipment, including airport body scanners, that expose people to ionizing radiation, which can mutate DNA and increase the risk of cancer,” he explained. (For fear of a terrorist “dirty bomb,” America’s security apparatus is exposing its population to radiation as a matter of course.)

A state court has already ruled that the NYPD has to turn over policies, procedures, and training manuals that shape uses of X-rays; reports on past deployments; information on the costs of the X-ray devices and the number of vans purchased; and information on the health and safety effects of the technology. But New York City is fighting on appeal to suppress that information and more, as if it is some kind of spy agency rather than a municipal police department operating on domestic soil, ostensibly at the pleasure of city residents.Its insistence on extreme secrecy is part of an alarming trend. The people of New York City are effectively being denied the ability to decide how they want to be policed.

The United States special forces currently stationed in Iraq are engaged in fighting against the Islamic State group, several Kurdish Iraqi fighters have told the British newspaper The Guardian, contradicting President Barack Obama’s assertion that no U.S. personnel were in direct combat with the extremist group. According to The Guardian, none of the fighters with Kurdish Iraqi army, known as Peshmerga, were willing to publish their photos or video footage for fear of dismissal, but they allowed the newspaper's crew to watch the video and see the images on their cellphones.

A 29-year-old peshmerga fighter named Peshawa showed a video through his cellphone filmed just after dawn on Sept. 11, showing four Western-looking men in a battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq. “These are the Americans,” Peshawa said referring to U.S. soldiers. He added that such footage and other asserts that Washington has been involved directly in the fight against the Islamic State group.

President Obama announced in June last year the deployment of 3,500 U.S. special forces to Iraq in order to “advise and train” Kurdish fighters in their fight against the extremist group, according to the Pentagon, but denied that this was part of a boots-on-the-ground operation. “The joke going around here is there are no boots on the ground because they’re all wearing sneakers,” an unnamed western volunteer with the peshmerga, told the Guardian. Major Loqman Mohammed with the peshmerga force showed another video, dated 11 June,  where a U.S. soldier was  seen wearing the uniform and badge of a Kurdish counter-terrorism unit and walking with two dozen peshmerga fighters after several hours of fighting with Islamic State group militants in the village of Wastana and Saddam settlement.

There’s a lot that’s remarkable about last Tuesday’s Third Circuit decision in Hassan v. City of New York, which Faiza Patel cogently summarized in her post last week. In a nutshell, Hassan involves a challenge to secret intelligence operations carried out by the New York Police Department (NYPD) over the years since September 11 that allegedly targets Muslim communities “based on the false and stigmatizing premise that Muslim religious identity ‘is a permissible proxy for criminality, and that Muslim individuals, businesses, and institutions can therefore be subject to pervasive surveillance not visited upon individuals, businesses, and institutions of any other religious faith or the public at large.'” The district court had tersely granted the City’s motion to dismiss both because it concluded the plaintiffs lacked standing and because, in the alternative, it held that the plaintiffs had failed to overcome the pleading burden articulated by the Supreme Court in Iqbal. But the Third Circuit reversed on both fronts, holding that the plaintiffs’ allegations, if true, were more than enough to establish both that they had suffered an injury in fact sufficient to satisfy Article III standing, and that their equal protection and First Amendment claims were sufficiently plausible to satisfy Iqbal. To be sure, the Third Circuit’s decision is interlocutory — coming at a very preliminary stage in the litigation. But what I want to suggest in the post that follows is that, as much as any other post-September 11 judicial decision, Hassan represents the full-throated repudiation of the Supreme Court’s infamous World War II-era ruling in Korematsu v. United States that has been so long in coming — and so thoroughly overdue.

As I’ve written about before, Korematsu reflects two separate — but equally important — constitutional failures. The first failure was the internment policy itself, which we now know (and which the US government knew at the time) to have been a completely unnecessary — if not hysterical — overreaction to hyperbolic and (after Midway, at least) categorically overstated fears of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. By itself, the camps were a dark stain on the history of civil liberties in the United States — albeit one of many, alas. But the second failure was, historically, the far more significant and unique one — the Supreme Court’s conscious constitutional rationalization of the internment policy, based upon a combination of naïveté on the Justices’ part and the affirmatively misleading (if not downright disingenuous) briefing by the federal government. As Justice Robert H. Jackson understood — and forcefully articulated — in his Korematsu dissent, the real violence to the “rule of law” resulting from the camps was thus not the underlying policy, but rather its validation by the Supreme Court. In his words, “a military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality, and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution.”

But we’ve struggled somewhat with the second constitutional failure. The courts have repudiated Korematsu’s conviction; the Office of the Solicitor General has confessed error for its role in perpetuating the government’s misleading case before the Supreme Court; and scholars have suggested that Korematsu itself has become part of the “anti-canon” — the class of Supreme Court decisions so reviled that they are cited, if at all, in support of the wrongness of their holdings. But Korematsu itself remains on the books, as do broader concerns that courts are still vulnerable to Korematsu — style reasoning, i.e., that the need to protect national security might provide legal justification for government conduct that would otherwise be unjustifiable. Indeed, one need look no further than the ongoing debate over the SSCI’s torture report for evidence of the Korematsu mentality being alive and well.

An anonymous hacker claims to have breached CIA Director John Brennan's personal email account and has posted documents online, including a list of email addresses purportedly from Brennan's contact file. The CIA said it referred the matter to the proper authorities, but would not comment further. The hacker spoke to the New York Post, which described him in an article published Sunday as "a stoner high school student," motivated by his opposition to U.S. foreign policy and support for Palestinians. His Twitter account, @phphax, includes links to files that he says are Brennan's contact list, a log of phone calls by then-CIA deputy director Avril Haines, and other documents.

The hacker also claimed to have breached a Comcast account belonging to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and released what appeared to be personal information. One document purporting to come from Brennan's AOL email account contains a spreadsheet of people, including senior intelligence officials, along with their Social Security numbers, although the hacker redacted the numbers in the version he posted on Twitter. It's unclear why Brennan would have stored such a document in his private email account. Based on the titles, the document appears to date from 2009 or before. When people visit the White House and other secure facilities, they are required to supply their Social Security numbers. Brennan could have been forwarding a list of invitees to the White House when he was President Barack Obama's counter terrorism adviser, the job he held before he became CIA director in 2013.

The hacker told the Post he had obtained a 47-page version of Brennan's application for a security clearance, known as an SF86. That document — millions of which were stolen from the federal personnel office last year by hackers linked to China — contains detailed information about past jobs, foreign contacts, finances and other sensitive personal details. No such document appears to be posted on the hacker's Twitter account, but it's not clear whether the hacker posted it elsewhere.

The Russian-led military coalition is badly beating Washington’s proxies in Syria which is why John Kerry is calling for a “Time Out”. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for an emergency summit later in the week so that leaders from Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan could discuss ways to avoid the “total destruction” of Syria. According to Kerry, “Everybody, including the Russians and the Iranians, have said there is no military solution, so we need to make an effort to find a political solution. This is a human catastrophe that now threatens the integrity of a whole group of countries around the region,” Kerry added. Of course, it was never a “catastrophe” when the terrorists were destroying cities and villages across the country, uprooting half the population and transforming the once-unified and secure nation into an anarchic failed state. It only became a catastrophe when Vladimir Putin synchronized the Russian bombing campaign with allied forces on the ground who started wiping out hundreds of US-backed militants and recapturing critical cities across Western corridor. Now that the Russian airforce is pounding the living daylights out of jihadi ammo dumps, weapons depots and rebel strongholds, and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is tightening their grip on Aleppo, and Hezbollah is inflicting heavy casualties on Jabhat al Nusra militants and other Al Qaida-linked vermin; Kerry’s decided it’s a catastrophe. Now that the momentum of the war has shifted in favor of Syrian president Bashar al Assad, Kerry wants a “Time out”.

Keep in mind, that Putin worked tirelessly throughout the summer months to try to bring the warring parties together (including Assad’s political opposition) to see if deal could be worked out to stabilize Syria and fight ISIS. But Washington wanted no part of any Russian-led coalition. Having exhausted all the possibilities for resolving the conflict through a broader consensus, Putin decided to get directly involved by committing the Russian airforce to lead the fight against the Sunni extremists and other anti-government forces that have been tearing the country apart and paving the way for Al Qaida-linked forces to take control of the Capital. Putin’s intervention stopped the emergence of a terrorist Caliphate in Damascus. He turned the tide in the four year-long war, and delivered a body-blow to Washington’s malign strategy Now he’s going to finish the job. Putin is not gullible enough to fall for Kerry’s stalling tactic. He’s going to kill or capture as many of the terrorists as possible and he’s not going to let Uncle Sam get in the way. These terrorists–over 2,000 of who are from Chechnya–pose an existential threat to Russia, as does the US plan to use Islamic extremists to advance their foreign policy objectives. Putin takes the threat seriously. He knows that if Washington’s strategy succeeds in Syria, it will be used in Iran and then again in Russia. That’s why he’s decided to dump tons of money and resources into the project. That’s why his Generals have worked out all the details and come up with a rock-solid strategy for annihilating this clatter of juvenile delinquents and for restoring Syria’s sovereign borders. And that’s why he’s not going to be waved-away by the likes of mealy-mouth John Kerry. Putin is going to see this thing through to the bitter end. He’s not going to stop for anyone or anything. Winning in Syria is a matter of national security, Russia’s national security.

“Syrian President Bashar Assad “does not have to leave tomorrow or the next day,” the US State Department (spokesman Mark Toner) has stated. Washington allows that Assad may take part in transitional process, but can’t be part of Syria’s next government… “… this isn’t the US dictating this. This is the feeling of many governments around the world, and frankly, the majority of the Syrian people,” Toner said.

Why is the U.S. targeting Iran’s central bank? Well, multi-billionaire Hugo Salinas Price told King World News: What happened to Mr. Gaddafi, many speculate the real reason he was ousted was that he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The same thing happened to him that happened to Saddam because the US doesn’t want any solid competing currency out there vs the dollar. You know Gaddafi was talking about a gold dinar. And as I noted in August: Ellen Brown argues in the Asia Times that there were even deeper reasons for the war than gold, oil or middle eastern regime change. Brown argues that Libya – like Iraq under Hussein – challenged the supremacy of the dollar and the Western banks: Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers’ central bank in Switzerland.

The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr, writing on Examiner.com, noted that “[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept euros instead of dollars for oil, and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency, and its dominion as the petrodollar.” According to a Russian article titled “Bombing of Libya – Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar”, Gaddafi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro, and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Gaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. *** And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:

One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned … Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.

Speaking to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine in July 2015, Assange suggested that institutions within the international relations discipline have failed to understand the intersection between current geopolitical and technological developments. Specifically, Assange charged that the US journal International Studies Quarterly (ISQ), published by the prestigious International Studies Association (ISA), would not accept manuscripts based on WikiLeaks’ material. Professor of international politics Daniel W. Drezner hit back on July 30 in The Washington Post, arguing that there were other explanations for why the journal was not publishing WikiLeaks’ material. However, he did concede that it is possible that the “structural forces” opposing WikiLeaks were so powerful that a scholar would eschew WikiLeaks’ publications for “fear of being blackballed”. For the thousands of undergraduate to PhD students, fellows and academic researchers facing a precarious employment market, self-censorship for fear of freezing one’s career is not unlikely. One publicised incident from November 2010 concerning the office of career services at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), which according to The New York Times “grooms future diplomats”, provides the perfect illustration. That year the office sent an email to students warning them against commenting on or posting WikiLeaks’ documents on social media because “engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government”. The warning came to the office through a SIPA alumnus working at the State Department.

Years later, the tone of the warning continued to reverberate through the halls of one of the most reputable universities in the world. In documenting human rights abuses in June 2013 a Columbia University graduate class produced the anonymous academic paper “WikiLeaks and Iraq Body Count: the sum of parts may not add up to the whole — a comparison of two tallies of Iraqi civilian deaths”. The acknowledgements section of their report refers to the 2010 warning email and states that in light of that email it would be “unwise and perhaps unethical to acknowledge all the participating students by name”. Others participating in a peer-review process have cited additional factors curtailing their use of comprehensive and illuminating WikiLeaks publications. Former US presidential candidate for the Green Party Cynthia McKinney, for example, says that she was forced to scrub her PhD dissertation from any reference of WikiLeaks material. However Drezner, who is an ISA member and on the ISQ’s web advisory board, claims that WikiLeaks’ published diplomatic cables “are not nearly as significant as Assange believes” and that the “academic universe is indifferent to WikiLeaks”. A surprising claim, given that international human rights courts have not been indifferent to evidence derived from WikiLeaks’ published cables, including cables that show the insidious ways in which European officials attempt to conceal CIA torture in secret prisons.

To help address the gap in scholarly analysis of the more than 2 million US diplomatic cables and State Department records published by WikiLeaks since 2010, WikiLeaks has produced a new book, The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, published September 7, 2015. The book brings together journalists, researchers and experts on international law and foreign policy to examine the current cables and records. The documents are extensive. They expose US efforts —  across Bush and Obama administrations — to use bribes and threats to keep the US protected from facing war crimes allegations, conveying the fading effervescence of concepts such as “international justice” or “rule of law” in the face of a superpower that clearly believes that “might makes right”. Analysts review the efforts US diplomats take to maintain ties with dictators. They examine the meaning of human rights in the context of a global “War on Terror”. Like the cables they seek to illuminate, the 18 chapters of the book touch upon most major regions of the world. Experts on US foreign policy such as Robert Naiman, Stephen Zunes and Gareth Porter examine cables that reveal US meddling in Syria, US acceptance of Israeli violations of international law, and how the US dealt with the International Atomic Energy Agency in relation to Iranian nuclear development. The book offers a user guide written by WikiLeaks’ investigations editor Sarah Harrison on how to research WikiLeaks’ cables including meta data and content.

A second federal judge has taken the rare step of allowing a group suing for records from Hillary Clinton's time as U.S. secretary of state to seek sworn testimony from officials, saying there was "evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith."The language in Judge Royce Lamberth's order undercut the Democratic presidential contender's assertion she was allowed to set up a private email server in her home for her work as the country's top diplomat and that the arrangement was not particularly unusual.He described Clinton's email arrangement as "extraordinary" in his order filed on Tuesday in federal district court in Washington.Referring to the State Department, Clinton and Clinton's aides, he said there had been "constantly shifting admissions by the Government and the former government officials."Spokesmen for Clinton did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case is a civil matter, but the order adds to the legal uncertainty that has overshadowed Clinton's campaign to be the Democratic nominee in the Nov. 8 presidential election. The FBI is also conducting a criminal inquiry into the arrangement after it emerged that classified government secrets ended up in Clinton's unsecured email account. Clinton has said she does not think she will be charged with a crime. Lamberth's order granted the request by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group suing the department under open records laws, to gather evidence, including sworn testimony. The group has filed several lawsuits, including one seeking records about the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans."Where there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly rare in FOIA (freedom-of-information) cases," Lamberth noted in his order.The government is normally given the benefit of the doubt that it properly searched and produced records.

Since the email arrangement came to public knowledge a year ago, the State Department has found itself defending Clinton in scores of lawsuits from groups, individuals and news outlets who say they were wrongly denied access to Clinton's federal records. Clinton left the department in 2013, but did not return her email records to the government until nearly two years later. Last month, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing a separate Judicial Watch lawsuit over other Clinton-related records, allowed a similar motion for discovery.

Wells Fargo & Co. is refunding hundreds of thousands of customers tens of millions of dollars for account add-on products such as legal services or insurance, Dow Jones reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Regulators are looking at whether customers were deceived, Dow Jones reported, and at their awareness of the products and ability to cancel them. Wells Fargo has spent nearly two years trying to clean up from a scandal that first erupted in 2016 over fake accounts opened in customers' names by employees trying to meet aggressive sales targets. Soon, sales practices in other areas of the bank fell under scrutiny, including in mortgages and auto lending. In April, the bank struck a $1 billion settlement with the CFPB and the OCC over its risk management failings.

Last Sunday, the largest joint military exercise between the United States and Israel began with little fanfare. The war game, dubbed “Operation Juniper Cobra,” has been a regular occurrence for years, though it has consistently grown in size and scope. Now, however, this year’s 12-day exercise brings a portent of conflict unlike those of its predecessors.

Israel has also been preparing for a conflict on the embattled Gaza strip, which – owing to the effects of Israel’s illegal blockade and the devastation wrought by past wars – is set to be entirely uninhabitable by 2020. Reports have quoted officials of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, as saying that they place the chances of a new war with Israel in 2018 “at 95 percent” and that war games, like Operation Juniper Cobra, were likely to be used to plan or even initiate such a conflict. This concern was echoed by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who stated that another Israeli invasion of Gaza, home to 1.8 million people, was “likely” to occur this year. Eizenkot ironically framed the imminent invasion as a way to “prevent a humanitarian collapse” in Gaza.

However, this year’s “Juniper Cobra” is unique for several reasons. The Post reported on Thursday that the drill, set to end on March 15, was not only the largest joint U.S.-Israeli air defense exercise to ever happen but it was also simulating a battle “on three fronts.” In other words, Israel and the U.S. are jointly simulating a war with Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine – namely, the Gaza strip – simultaneously. What makes this last part so concerning are Israel’s recent statements and other preparations for war with all three nations, making “Juniper Cobra” anything but a “routine” drill. It is instead yet another preparation for a massive regional conflict, suggesting that such a conflict could be only a matter of months away.

Lawmakers in the United States and the United Kingdom are calling on Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to explain how the names, preferences and other information from tens of millions of users ended up in the hands of the Cambridge Analytica data analysis firm.

After Facebook cited data privacy policies violations and announced that it was suspending the Cambridge Analytica data analytics firm also tied to the Trump campaign, new revelations have emerged. On Saturday, reports revealed that Cambridge Analytica, used a feature once available to Facebook app developers to collect information on some 270,000 people. In the process, the company, which was, at the time, handling U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, gained access to data on tens of millions of their Facebook “friends” and that it wasn’t clear at all if any of these people had given explicit permission for this kind of sharing. Facebook’s Deputy General Counsel Paul Grewal said in a statement, “We will take legal action if necessary to hold them responsible and accountable for any unlawful behavior.”

The social media giant also added that it was continuing to investigate the claims. According to reports, Cambridge Analytica worked for the failed presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and then for the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Federal Election Commission records reportedly show that Trump’s campaign hired Cambridge Analytica in June 2016 and paid it more than $6.2 million. On its website, the company says that it “provided the Donald J. Trump for President campaign with the expertise and insights that helped win the White House.” Cambridge Analytica also mentions that it uses “behavioral microtargeting,” or combining analysis of people’s personalities with demographics, to predict and influence mass behavior.  According to the company, it has data on 220 million Americans, two thirds of the U.S. population. Cambridge Analytica says it has worked on other campaigns in the United States and other countries, and it is funded by Robert Mercer, a prominent supporter of politically conservative groups.