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Risking World War III in Syria February 6, 2016 Exclusive: After Saudi-backed Syrian rebels balked at peace talks and the Russian-backed Syrian army cut off Turkish supply lines to jihadists and other Syrian rebels, the U.S. and its Mideast Sunni “allies” appear poised to invade Syria and force “regime change” even at the risk of fighting Russia, a gamble with nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria.By Joe LauriaDefense Secretary Ashton Carter last October said in a little noticed comment that the United States was ready to take “direct action on the ground” in Syria. Vice President Joe Biden said in Istanbul last month that if peace talks in Geneva failed, the United States was prepared for a “military solution” in that country.The peace talks collapsed on Wednesday even before they began. A day later Saudi Arabia said it is ready to invade Syria while Turkey is building up forces at its Syrian border.

The U.N. aims to restart the talks on Feb. 25 but there is little hope they can begin in earnest as the Saudi-run opposition has set numerous conditions. The most important is that Russia stop its military operation in support of the Syrian government, which has been making serious gains on the ground.A day after the talks collapsed, it was revealed that Turkey has begun preparations for an invasion of Syria, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. On Thursday, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said: “We have good reasons to believe that Turkey is actively preparing for a military invasion of a sovereign state – the Syrian Arab Republic. We’re detecting more and more signs of Turkish armed forces being engaged in covert preparations for direct military actions in Syria.” The U.N. and the State Department had no comment. But this intelligence was supported by a sound of alarm from Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Turkey, which has restarted its war against Kurdish PKK guerillas inside Turkey, is determined to crush the emergence of an independent Kurdish state inside Syria as well. Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan stopped the Syrian Kurds from attending the aborted Geneva talks.A Turkish invasion would appear poised to attack the Syrian Kurdish PYD party, which is allied with the PKK. The Syrian (and Iraqi) Kurds, with the Syrian army, are the main ground forces fighting the Islamic State. Turkey is pretending to fight ISIS, all the while actually supporting its quest to overthrow Assad, also a Turkish goal.Saudi Arabia then said on Thursday it was prepared to send its ground forces into Syria if asked. Carter welcomed it. Of course Biden, Erdogan, Carter and the Saudis are all saying a ground invasion would fight ISIS. But their war against ISIS has been half-hearted at best and they share ISIS’ same enemy: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. If the U.S. were serious about fighting ISIS it would have at least considered a proposal by Russia to join a coalition as the U.S. did against the Nazis.

European privacy regulators are putting U.S. surveillance practices under the microscope, this time with a crucial transatlantic data deal hanging in the balance.Legal and privacy advocates say European nations are poised to strike down the deal if they decide the U.S. hasn't done enough to reform its spying programs.The new test comes after the European Commission and the Commerce Department — after months of tense negotiations — reached a deal this week permitting Facebook, Google and thousands of other companies to continue legally handling Europeans’ personal data.ADVERTISEMENTCritics though have long warned that unless the U.S. overhauls its privacy and national security laws, there is no legal framework that can stand up in European court, where privacy is considered a fundamental right under the EU Charter.A working group of 28 EU nations’ data protection authorities — domestic entities separate from the Commission that will be in charge of enforcing the new agreement — may now cast the deciding vote.The group is spending the next few months picking through the so-called Privacy Shield agreement to determine if it adequately protects the personal data of European citizens.

“The Commission has said, ‘We’re satisfied. We believe them. We believe the U.S. has substantially changed its practices,’ and they are no longer going off the [Edward] Snowden revelations in the media,” said Susan Foster, a privacy attorney at Mintz Levin who works in both the EU and the U.S.“Whether the working group will go along with it is another question.”The privacy advocate whose complaint against Facebook brought down the Privacy Shield’s 15-year-old predecessor agreement is already questioning the new deal’s validity.“With all due respect ... a couple of letters by the outgoing Obama administration is by no means a legal basis to guarantee the fundamental rights of 500 million European users in the long run, when there is explicit U.S. law allowing mass surveillance,” Max Schrems of Austria said in a statement Tuesday.The United States has been fighting against the perception that it tramples on civil liberties after ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed the breadth of the agency’s snooping.One sticking point in the Privacy Shield negotiations was over the scope of an exception allowing surveillance for national security purposes.

In announcing the deal, Commission officials insisted that the U.S. had provided “detailed written assurances” that surveillance of Europeans’ data by intelligence agencies would be subject to appropriate limitations.“The U.S. has clarified that they do not carry out indiscriminate surveillance of Europeans,” Andrus Ansip, Vice President for the Digital Single Market on the European Commission, said Tuesday.The U.S. has also agreed to create an office in the State Department, to address complaints from EU citizens who feel their data has been inappropriately accessed by intelligence authorities.Complicating the working group’s approval of the deal is the hodgepodge of competing regulators in Europe. Each nation has an agency in charge of its own country’s regulation. Some countries — such as Germany — are seen as tougher on privacy than others, like France or the U.K.While some countries consider U.S. privacy protections to be satisfactory, in others they are seen as woefully inadequate.

The NYPD has used cell-site simulators, commonly known as Stingrays, more than 1,000 times since 2008, according to documents turned over to the New York Civil Liberties Union. The documents represent the first time the department has acknowledged using the devices. The NYPD also disclosed that it does not get a warrant before using a Stingray, which sweeps up massive amounts of data. Instead, the police obtain a “pen register order” from a court, more typically used to collect call data for a specific phone. Those orders do not require the police to establish probable cause. Additionally, the NYPD has no written policy guidelines on the use of Stingrays. Stingrays work by imitating cellphone towers. They force all nearby phones to connect to them, revealing the owners’ locations. That means they collect data on potentially hundreds of people. They are small enough to fit in a suitcase, or be mounted on a plane.

When they were originally developed in 2003, Stingrays were designed for military use. But in the past decade, they have increasingly been purchased by law enforcement agencies. According to the ACLU, Stingrays are used by at least 59 police departments in 23 states, and at least 13 federal agencies, including the DEA, FBI, and the IRS. Because most departments withhold information about Stingrays, these numbers likely underrepresent the total.

Stingrays have long been a topic of concern for privacy activists. “Cell-site simulators are powerful surveillance devices that can track people, including in their homes, and collect information on innocent bystanders,” said Mariko Hirose, a senior staff attorney at the NYCLU.  “If they are going to be used in communities the police should at minimum obtain a warrant and follow written policies.” Instead, law enforcement agencies have fought to keep Stingrays secret, even dropping criminal cases to avoid disclosing anything about them. The FBI has forced local police agencies to sign Stingray-related non-disclosure agreements, claiming that criminals and terrorists who know about Stingrays could take countermeasures against them. The increasing use of Stingrays, coupled with the lack of transparency, has alarmed civil liberties groups. “I think it’s critical to have transparency about the use of technology like Stingrays,” said Faiza Patel, an attorney with the Brennan Center for Justice. “That’s what allows courts, the public, and our elected officials to weigh in on the proper rules.”

Russian military intervention in Syria has turned the course of that country’s civil war against U.S.-backed rebel groups, increasing the likelihood that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his loyalists will remain in power, U.S. intelligence officials testified Tuesday. The assessment amounts to an acknowledgment by U.S. spy agencies that Russian airstrikes have derailed the Obama administration’s aims of pushing Assad aside as part of a political settlement to the nearly five-year old conflict. “The Russian reinforcement has changed the calculus completely,” Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in Senate testimony. Assad is “in a much stronger negotiating position than he was just six months ago,” Stewart said. “I’m more inclined to believe that he is a player on the stage longer term than he was six months to a year ago.” As recently as last summer, U.S. intelligence officials were openly talking about an “endgame” for the Syrian leader, who is also supported by Iran.

Stewart’s remarks came during a pair of Senate hearings on Tuesday that served as a grim survey of the security problems — including cyberattacks, terror threats and failing states — that seem certain to confront the next occupant of the White House. Among those testifying were Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., FBI Director James B. Comey and CIA Director John Brennan, who was making his first public appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee since the panel issued a scathing 2014 report on the agency’s use of brutal interrogation methods on terrorism suspects. The lingering tensions behind that Senate probe erupted during a heated exchange Tuesday between Brennan and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who demanded an admission from the CIA chief that his staff had improperly accessed files of Senate investigators combing through agency records. As Wyden made his case, Brennan bristled, saying, “This is the annual threat assessment, is it not.”

Brennan seemed to be chiding Wyden for raising the computer intrusion issue during a hearing that is annually devoted to examining security threats. But the confrontation only continued, with both men raising their voices. Ultimately, Brennan admitted “very limited inappropriate actions” by CIA staff but accused Senate investigators of comparable transgressions and came close to shouting at Wyden: “Do not say that we spied on Senate computers or your files! Do not say that!”

The U.S. dropped at least 23,144 bombs on six Muslim-majority countries in 2015 — Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.The government has not officially declared war in Syria, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, but this hasn’t stopped it from bombing them, or from waging a secretive drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia for more than a decade.Yet it appears these wars are not enough. The Obama administration is “on the verge of taking action” against ISIS in Libya, Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Politico.The U.S. insists it does not plan to deploy ground troops to the oil-rich North African country, but Obama said the same thing about Iraq and Syria, and there are now 3,700 American soldiers in the former and scores of special operations forces in the latter.

The notion that the U.S. is considering another bombing campaign in Libya in order to fight ISIS is almost laughably ludicrous, because it was in fact the first U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Libya that brought ISIS into the North African nation in the first place.

Hawkish Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton played a pivotal role in this war, essentially leading it as secretary of state. The Washington Post reports that she has since “repeatedly defended the Libya military intervention as U.S. ‘smart power at its best.'”When Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was sodomized with a bayonet by rebels, Clinton gloated live on TV, declaring “We came, we saw, he died.”The real Benghazi scandal is that the once bustling city is in ruins today, in the wake of the NATO war, with large chunks of it under the control of extremist group Ansar al-Sharia.

A federal judge in New York ruled in favor of Apple on Monday, saying that an obscure Colonial-era law did not authorize him to force the firm to lift data from an iPhone at the government’s request. The ruling is not binding in any other court, but it takes on an outsize importance as the U.S. government battles Apple in a separate case in California over whether the tech firm should help unlock a phone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack in December. The two cases involve different versions of iPhone’s operating system and vastly different requests for technical help, but they both turn on whether a law from 1789 known as the All Writs Act can be applied to cases in which the government cannot get at encrypted data stored on suspects’ devices. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn, who sits in the Eastern District of New York, has become the first federal judge to rule that the act does not permit a court to order companies to pull encrypted data off a customer’s phone or tablet.

In a 50-page opinion disdainful of the government’s arguments, Orenstein found that the All Writs Act does not apply in instances where Congress had the opportunity but failed to create an authority for the government to get the type of help it was seeking, such as having firms ensure they have a way to obtain data from encrypted phones.

He wrote that the government’s interpretation of the 200-year-old law was “absurd” in that it would authorize what they were seeking even if every member of Congress had voted against granting such authority. It would, he added, undermine “the more general protection against tyranny that the Founders believed required the careful separation of governmental powers.” [Read the magistrate’s order in favor of Apple] He also found that ordering Apple to help the government by extracting data from the iPhone — which belonged to a drug dealer — would place an unreasonable burden on the company. None of the factors he reviewed in the case, Orenstein said, “justifies imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government’s investigation against its will.”

In addition to withdrawing from districts in Helmand province in mid-February, the Afghan Army has begun to leave areas in Uruzgan. On March 1, troops abandoned areas of the district of Shahidi Hassas in the neighboring Uruzgan province. A provincial spokesman indicated that troops will likely leave other districts in order to create a “a reserve battalion.” From Reuters: Provincial government spokesman Dost Mohammad Nayab said about 100 troops and police had been pulled from checkpoints in two areas in Shahidi Hassas district and sent to the neighbouring district of Deh Rawud. The Afghan Taliban, seeking to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul and reimpose Islamic rule 15 years after they were ousted from power, said the move, which came after heavy fighting late Monday, had left the area around the village of Yakhdan under their control. The decision to leave the posts follows months of heavy fighting with the Taliban, who have put government forces under heavy pressure across southern Afghanistan. “We want to create a reserve battalion in Deh Rawud, and we may ask our soldiers and policemen from other districts also to leave their checkpoints,” Nayab said. Nayab said the withdrawal was prompted by a shortage of troops and police, worn down by combat losses and desertions. He said troop numbers in the province were about 1,000 short of their assigned strength while police were hundreds short.

A group of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans are seeking $34.5 billion dollars in damages from wealthy individuals and companies they accuse of financing and profiting from Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and other abuses of their rights. The plaintiffs include Palestinians who have lost family members in Israeli attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Their lawsuit is the latest effort to expose and curb the role of organizations that operate as tax-exempt US charities in fueling violence and settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land. It names as defendants US tycoons Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Irving Moskowitz and Oracle founder Lawrence Ellison.

Adelson is renowned for using his huge casino fortune to advance his pro-Israel political agenda and is a major financial backer of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Republican Party. Saban has donated millions of dollars to US Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Moskowitz is one of the main financiers of settler efforts to force Palestinians out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem. The lawsuit also names Israeli diamond magnate and settlement builder Lev Leviev and Christians United for Israel founder, the US Evangelical pastor John Hagee. Twelve US-based charities and a number of Israeli and US corporations are also named as defendants. The charities include Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, The Hebron Fund and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities.

The plaintiffs, represented by the law firm Martin McMahon and Associates, allege that the defendants are directly responsible for violence and for the expansion of settlements. The lawsuit, filed in a Washington, DC, federal court on Monday, alleges a wide range of crimes under US and international law, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, conspiracy, money laundering, racketeering, perjury and pillage. It alleges that charitable donations are sent to the Israeli army, a violation of US laws against funding a foreign military. Last December, some of the same plaintiffs using the same law firm sued the US Treasury for allowing billions of dollars of tax-exempt donations to flow to Israeli settlements. This lawsuit targets those who are supplying the money. Several are powerful billionaires who the lawsuit contends have defrauded the US tax authorities by funnelling huge sums of money meant for illegal purposes through tax-exempt organizations. According to the lawsuit, approximately $1 billion is sent through these organizations each year, with $104 million going to the Israeli army in 2014.

France has invoked an EU treaty collective defense article requesting military help from its European partners in response to the terror attacks in Paris. EU officials say the mutual defense article is being used for the first time.

The assistance would come from 28 European partners under Article 42.7 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, which outlines mutual defense among the EU members. Called the ‘mutual defense clause’, the Article reads that if any EU country “is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.”

Speaking at a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said all 28 EU member states unanimously accepted France's formal call for “aid and assistance” under the EU treaty and he expected all to help quickly in various regions, Reuters reports.“This is firstly a political act,” Le Drian said of the decision to invoke article on mutual defense of the EU treaty.The minister said France at this time does not have sufficient capabilities to wage several different military operations simultaneously, and expects full military support from its European partners.

The Chief of the Russian Main Operations Center of the Russian Army’s General Staff, Andrey Kartapolov, confirmed that the Russian and French military forces will launch joint operations against terrorists in Syria. The statement follows previous announcements by the Russian Presidency, following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and subsequent developments.

Kartapolov’s statement comes at the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle is heading towards the Mediterranean to launch operations against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL or Daesh in Syria. It remains at this time uncertain on what legal grounds France launches air strikes against Daesh on Syrian territory and whether Paris has back channel talks with Syria, facilitated by Moscow in that regard. Russia is currently the only nation that operates in Syria on invitation of the Syrian government and on the basis of international law.

Just has I had been predicting for a couple of weeks, Russia did dramatically increase the pace of her anti-Daesh operations. First, Russia has used all her most powerful long-range aviation bombers (Tu-22M3, Tu-95MC and even Tu-160) to strike Daesh targets with cruise missiles and gravity bombs. 

Second, Russia has announced that 25 long range bombers will be fully allocated to the anti-Daesh campaign. Third, the Russian military has announced that another 37 aircraft will be send to reinforce the Russian contingent in Syria (including the most advanced aircraft in the Russian inventory, the SU-34). The combination of these long-range bombers from Russia and additional 37 aircraft in Syria will more than double the strike potential of the Russian military against Daesh.  Thus, this is a major expansion of Russian operations against Daesh. Finally, Putin has declared that he has ordered the Russian naval task force to ‘cooperate’ with the French naval task force lead by the aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle.  What better way to make sure that he French don’t “accidentally” strike the “wrong” targets than to fully “cooperate” with them?

German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel urged Saudi Arabia on Sunday to stop supporting religious radicals, amid growing concern among some lawmakers in Berlin about the funding of militant mosques by the world's biggest oil exporter. The unusual criticism of the Gulf state follows a report by Germany's foreign intelligence agency which suggested that Saudi foreign policy was becoming more "impulsive". The German government rebuked the BND agency for making such suggestions about Saudi Arabia, an important business partner that is involved in international talks to find a political solution to the Syria crisis.. "We need Saudi Arabia to solve the regional conflicts," Sigmar Gabriel, the head of the Social Democrats (SPD) who share power with conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel, told the mass-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "But we must at the same time make clear that the time to look away is past. Wahhabi mosques are financed all over the world by Saudi Arabia. In Germany, many dangerous Islamists come from these communities," he said. Saudi Arabia follows the ultra-conservative Wahhabi form of Islam, and some outsiders see it as a cause of the international jihadist threat.

Another senior Social Democrat, Thomas Oppermann, also homed in on Saudi Arabia, saying Wahhabism offered a ideology for IS insurgents and contributed to the radicalization of moderates. "We don't need or want it in Germany," he told the weekly Welt am Sonntag. Germans are worried about a possible attack on their soil, especially after the bombings and shootings in Paris on Nov. 13 that killed 130 people.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog IAEA has confirmed suspicions that Iran had a concerted nuclear weapons design programme until 2003 and conducted some sporadic weapons studies after that before ceasing all related activity in 2009. In response, the Iranian government denied on Wednesday that any such programme existed and declared the International Atomic Energy Agency investigation closed. In Washington, the state department said the report was proof of the administration’s own conclusions. “The IAEA report is consistent with what the US has long assessed with high confidence,” spokesman Mark Toner said. “We made this public first in our 2007 national intelligence estimate and that is that Iran had a nuclear weapons program that was halted in 2003.” Toner noted that the IAEA found no evidence of any weapons activity after 2009, adding that the report cleared the way for the investigation to be closed and for implementation to proceed of a comprehensive nuclear deal agreed in July between Iran, the US and five other major powers.

Republican skeptics may not have enough power to overturn Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s order to open all combat positions to women. But some are delivering a more subtle warning: it could lead to registering all young women in America for the draft. The Pentagon’s move on Thursday did not include any requirement that women register with the Selective Service when they turn 18, as their male counterparts are required to do — and Carter demurred when a reporter asked about it.Story Continued Below But congressional Republicans already are raising that prospect, in what appears to be an effort to point out that the Pentagon hasn’t fully grappled with the implications of its historic decision to allow women into all front-line combat jobs. It is a delicate political gamble for lawmakers who don't want to appear sexist but also insist that some misgivings about the decision within the ranks deserve more attention. “If this goes through, it’s going to be mandated that women be drafted,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan — and who maintains that women should still be barred from some combat roles. “If you’re going to have women in infantry units, if a draft ever occurred, America needs to realize that its daughters and sisters would be included." “The reason you draft people,” he added, “is because you have infantrymen dying.”

Fear-mongering gets most people to believe a phantom terrorist threat exists. State-sponsored false flags like 9/11 (the mother of them all), Paris in mid-November and most recently San Bernardino, make it easy to manipulate an uninformed public to support policies demanding condemnation. As long as most people rely on television for so-called news and information, they’ll remain mindless that terrorists “R” us. US intelligence covertly supports Al Qaeda and its affiliated entities. New York Times/CBS polling data show pre-Paris and San Bernardino, only 4% of Americans called terrorism the nation’s top problem. Now it’s 19%. Chances of a significant terrorist attack on US soil (a real one, not a false flag) is near zero. Public opinion believes otherwise. Asked in The Times/CBS poll “how likely is a terror attack in the US,” 44% said very, 35% somewhat, and only 17% not too likely or not at all.

These numbers are the highest registered since since the post-9/11 October 1, 2001 Times/CBS poll. Asked the same question about the likelihood of a terrorist attack in America, 53% of respondents said very, 35% somewhat, and only 10% not too likely or not at all. Fear-mongering aided by false flags works. Instead of focusing on real issues like protracted Main Street Depression conditions, poverty and the threat of possible nuclear war, most people  nonsensically believe a phantom terrorist threat is likely or somewhat likely – not realizing they’ve been duped to support an agenda harming their welfare and security. For the first time since 2006 (before the 2008 financial crisis, creating protracted Main Street Depression conditions), most Americans fear a terrorist attack on US soil – either homegrown (63%) or originating from abroad (59%), clear evidence of public ignorance and the power of propaganda to manipulate people effectively. Nearly 70% of Americans consider ISIS a major threat. Only 11% say not at all – the public mindless about US responsibility for creating the terror group and others like it, used as imperial foot soldiers. Only one-fourth of Americans think the fight against ISIS is going well or somewhat well – not realizing Washington supports what it claims to oppose, or understanding US imperial wars caused the greatest refugee crisis since WW II.

The public is evenly divided on whether to let displaced Syrians enter America – even after a careful vetting process to screen out threats. Post-San Bernardino, Obama’s approval rating on combating terrorism sunk to 34%, a record low. 57% of Americans disapprove of how he’s handling the issue, a record high. Two-thirds of Democrats support him, compared to 90% of Republicans and 60% of independents against. His overall approval rating is 44% – astonishing it’s not much lower given how gravely he’s affected the welfare of the vast majority of Americans. Only 24% believe the country is headed in the right direction. The Times/CBS poll was conducted from December 4 – 8 among a random sample of 1,275 adults nationwide.

Last weekend, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Tomasz Szatkowski said that Poland is considering asking for access to nuclear weapons through a NATO program allowing non-nuclear states “to borrow” the warheads from the US. This is a reverberation from the intensified debates within alliances regarding the nuclear support of NATO’s operations.

Commenting on the debates that took place during an Oct. 8 meeting in Brussels between the defense ministers of NATO countries, Adam Thomson, the UK Permanent Representative to NATO, publicly bemoaned the fact that the alliance “has done conventional exercising and nuclear exercising” but has not conducted exercises on “the transition from one to the other.” He claimed that such a recommendation is being looked at within the North Atlantic alliance. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also supports strengthening the nuclear component in the military planning of this alliance that has identified Russia as its primary enemy. In their analyses, military-political and academic insiders in the West typically do not distinguish between the strategic and tactical nuclear weapons belonging to the three Western nuclear powers: the UK, US, and France. As they calculate how best to defend “the entire territory of NATO,” they begin with the assumption that all those nuclear weapons can be commanded en masse. And because those weapons must be used “as a means to deter aggression, along with conventional weapons,” their special status should once again be recognized, as it was during the height of the Cold War during the 1960s-1980s.

In his statement Tomasz Szatkowski emphasized the need for the Polish armed forces to have access to the same American nuclear weapons as those entrusted to five of the member states of the North Atlantic pact: Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Germany, all of which consented to stationing those weapons within their borders: “We want to see an end to the division of NATO members into two categories,” he said, explaining that he was referring to states that have long hosted American nuclear weapons vs. countries that still do not have them, meaning the allies that have only recently joined this military bloc, especially Poland. The Polish Defense Ministry hastened to disavow their own colleague’s words, arguing that “within the defense ministry there is presently no work underway concerning the accession of our country to the NATO Nuclear Sharing program.” But the further clarification that followed this message suggests otherwise, since the Polish defense ministry literally stated the following: “We have to consider various options, including some form of Poland’s participation in this program.” And as we all know, that program allows US nuclear weapons to be deployed within the borders of other states and to be used in military exercises that include the dropping of mock “nuclear bombs” from aircraft. We must also look closely at how the first part of that answer is expressed: “there is presently no work underway …” Today. And perhaps that is true. But in the future?

Now, in the latest example of just how tenuous Washington’s grip on the region has become, the Iraqi parliament's Security and Defense Committee is calling for the review and cancellation of Baghdad’s security agreement with the US.  “The government and parliament need to review the agreement signed with the United States on security because the United States does not seriously care about its fulfillment,” committee member Hamid al-Mutlaq, a senior Sunni lawmaker told Sputnik on Wednesday. “We demand that it be annulled,” he added. 

and in the fight against terrorism in Iraq," another committee member said earlier this week.  Recall that this is precisely what we said would happen once we learned in September that Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria had set up a joint intelligence sharing cell in Baghdad. It was clear from the beginning that Tehran saw an opportunity to consolidate its power in Iraq and preserve its influence in Syria by convincing Vladimir Putin that Russia could replace the US as Mid-East superpower puppet master by helping Tehran to defeat the insurgency in Syria and boot the US from Iraq once and for all. Moscow will of course get a warm reception from Iraqi lawmakers thanks to the fact that many MPs are loyal to Iran.  This makes sense logistically as well. Once the Russians and Iranians have retaken Aleppo (which admittedly is taking a while), they can push east towards Raqqa and from there, move straight across the border, effectively pinching ISIS between an advance from the west and Iran’s Shiite militias already operating in Iraq. Of course that will entail some measure of cooperation with the US, France, Britain, and, once in Iraq, the Peshmerga. It is at that point that Washington’s resolve when it comes to preserving whatever charade is being perpetrated in Raqqa will be put to the ultimate test.  In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how the US responds to a move by Baghdad to nullify the security agreement.

It now appears that the stage is set for Baghdad to claim that the US, like Turkey, is illegitimately occupying the country (again). If Iraq nullifies the security agreement and moves to invite the Russians into the country, the US will be forced to either pack up and leave, cooperate with Moscow, or fight for the right to preserve American influence. 

s Mayor Rahm Emanuel was apologizing Wednesday for the broken system of police accountability exposed by the Laquan McDonald case, city attorneys argued before a federal judge that footage of an officer fatally shooting a 17-year-old carjacking suspect nearly three years ago should be kept from public view.Lawyers for Cedrick Chatman's family allege the videos of his January 2013 killing contradict statements from police that Chatman had turned and pointed a dark object at police as he ran, prompting Officer Kevin Fry to fire in fear of his life. City attorneys argue releasing the footage — which they described as low-quality and incomplete — could inflame the public and jeopardize a fair trial.At a brief hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said the records should stay sealed for the time being. But the judge said he would likely lift the protective order next month if he was going to be asked to consider the videos in any pretrial rulings, a move that would automatically make them part of the public record.

"If it's likely going to come out through pretrial motions, then there really is no reason to wait," said Gettleman, who set a hearing on the issue for Jan. 14.Gettleman's ruling came three weeks after police dash-cam video of 17-year-old McDonald being shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke went viral, sparking protests and leading to the resignations of both police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and Scott Ando, who headed the Independent Police Review Authority, which has drawn criticism for its lax enforcement on excessive-force complaints.

Earlier this year, Lorenzo Davis, the IPRA supervisor who headed up the Chatman probe, filed a federal lawsuit alleging he was fired by Ando for concluding that officers in several shootings — including Chatman's — were not justified in using lethal force.Davis, who viewed the surveillance video as part of the IPRA inquiry, told the Tribune last month he did not see Chatman aim at or turn toward the officers."Cedrick was just running as the shots were fired," Davis said. "You're taught that deadly force is a last resort and that you should do everything in your power to apprehend the person before you use deadly force. I did not see where deadly force was called for at that time."An investigator on Davis' team alleged that Fry violated the department's deadly force policy, but that claim was ruled "unfounded" in the final IPRA report.

Earlier on Friday, Abadi asked his foreign ministry to submit a complaint to the United Nations about the presence of Turkish troops near the Isis-held city of Mosul. Abadi asked the security council to “shoulder its responsibilities” and order the withdrawal of the Turkish troops. “This is a flagrant violation of the provisions and principles of the UN charter and in violation of the sanctity of Iraqi territory,” a statement from his office said. US ambassador Samantha Power, the current council president, said on Friday night: “There’s growing alarm from the Iraqi government. Any troop deployment must have the consent of the Iraqi government.”

The first (and thus far only) roll-back of post-9/11 surveillance authorities was implemented over the weekend: The National Security Agency shuttered its program for collecting and holding the metadata of Americans’ phone calls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. While bulk collection under Section 215 has ended, the government can obtain access to this information under the procedures specified in the USA Freedom Act. Indeed, some experts have argued that the Agency likely has access to more metadata because its earlier dragnet didn’t cover cell phones or Internet calling. In addition, the metadata of calls made by an individual in the United States to someone overseas and vice versa can still be collected in bulk — this takes place abroad under Executive Order 12333. No doubt the NSA wishes that this was the end of the surveillance reform story and the Paris attacks initially gave them an opening. John Brennan, the Director of the CIA, implied that the attacks were somehow related to “hand wringing” about spying and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill to delay the shut down of the 215 program. Opponents of encryption were quick to say: “I told you so.”

But the facts that have emerged thus far tell a different story. It appears that much of the planning took place IRL (that’s “in real life” for those of you who don’t have teenagers). The attackers, several of whom were on law enforcement’s radar, communicated openly over the Internet. If France ever has a 9/11 Commission-type inquiry, it could well conclude that the Paris attacks were a failure of the intelligence agencies rather than a failure of intelligence authorities. Despite the passage of the USA Freedom Act, US surveillance authorities have remained largely intact. Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act — which is the basis of programs like PRISM and the NSA’s Upstream collection of information from Internet cables — sunsets in the summer of 2017. While it’s difficult to predict the political environment that far out, meaningful reform of Section 702 faces significant obstacles. Unlike the Section 215 program, which was clearly aimed at Americans, Section 702 is supposedly targeted at foreigners and only picks up information about Americans “incidentally.” The NSA has refused to provide an estimate of how many Americans’ information it collects under Section 702, despite repeated requests from lawmakers and most recently a large cohort of advocates. The Section 215 program was held illegal by two federal courts (here and here), but civil attempts to challenge Section 702 have run into standing barriers. Finally, while two review panels concluded that the Section 215 program provided little counterterrorism benefit (here and here), they found that the Section 702 program had been useful.

There is, nonetheless, some pressure to narrow the reach of Section 702. The recent decision by the European Court of Justice in the safe harbor case suggests that data flows between Europe and the US may be restricted unless the PRISM program is modified to protect the information of Europeans (see here, here, and here for discussion of the decision and reform options). Pressure from Internet companies whose business is suffering — estimates run to the tune of $35 to 180 billion — as a result of disclosures about NSA spying may also nudge lawmakers towards reform. One of the courts currently considering criminal cases which rely on evidence derived from Section 702 surveillance may hold the program unconstitutional either on the basis of the Fourth Amendment or Article III for the reasons set out in this Brennan Center report. A federal district court in Colorado recently rejected such a challenge, although as explained in Steve’s post, the decision did not seriously explore the issues. Further litigation in the European courts too could have an impact on the debate.