We Speak For Earth

thepoliticalnotebook:

This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism. Subscribe here to receive this round-up by email.

• 106 people reported killed by Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Homs on Tuesday.
• Dozens were killed when a blast hit Aleppo University.
• Jari Lindholm on discovering a hasty mass grave in Aleppo.
• A translated interview with Medecins Sans Frontières’ Fabrice Weissman on the state of hospitals in Syria.
• The Syrian battle for the airports.
• There are splits and infighting between the jihadists and the more secular revolutionary Free Syrian Army.
• Despite a cable reported on in Foreign Policy which offered evidence that Syria had used chemical weapons in Homs in late December, a State Dept investigation is saying that evidence does not show this to be true.
• Netanyahu pledged over the weekend to follow through with settlement plans in the E-1 area of the West Bank after Palestinians were evicted. 
• The sentences of seven Omani bloggers convicted of insulting the king were upheld in court. 
• France has intervened in Mali, conducting operations against Islamists in the north.
• Militants in Algeria seized hostages, including Americans, in retribution for the French military assault on Mali. Algeria launched an assault on the militants, which freed some captives but left others dead. The fate of the individual hostages remains unknown.
• The US officially recognizes Somalia’s government.
• The US has continued to sell arms to Bahrain amidst its bloody crackdown on protesters.
• Iraq released hundreds of prisoners, conceded to Sunni protesters.
• Luke Mogelson embeds with Afghan soldiers tracking down the Taliban.
• The US will no longer send detainees to certain Afghan prisons based on fears of abuses.
• The US will sell Afghanistan unarmed aerial vehicles, but not, the Pentagon insists, drones of the killer variety.
• India and Pakistan agree to a de-escalation in Kashmir.
• Pakistani cleric/activist Tahir ul-Qadri ended his four days of protest after his party was granted input in the country’s electoral process.
• A court issued an arrest order for PM Raja Pervez Ashraf, but the anti-corruption chief refused, saying there was not enough evidence.
• Karman Faisal, the man investigating the graft case against PM Raja Pervez Ashraf, was found dead in Islamabad this morning.
• Der Spiegel looks into corruption, mistrust of the government and a massacre in Kazakhstan.
• Flag riots and sectarian violence continue to plague Northern Ireland as the loyalist/Protestant working class youth erupt.
• Bombs were detonated in the homes of five Greek journalists last weekend. The responsibility was claimed by anarchist group Lovers of Lawlessness.
• Teju Cole tweeted seven very short stories about drones: “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist’s.” 
• Steve Coll reviews Zero Dark Thirty.
• Here’s an electronic briefing book compiled by the The National Security Archive of all the available documents on Operation Neptune Spear (the mission to take down bin Laden).
• The Atlantic may not have comported itself well with the sponsored content about Scientology, but this article about the Free Syrian Army by Barak Barfi raises some huge questions about journalists who write about torture and why this particular piece went to press. Check out the comments feed for discussion.
• There were as many as 349 military suicides in 2012 (239 confirmed, 110 under investigation). That would be the highest since 2001, when the Pentagon first started compiling detailed stats.
• US special operations forces are preparing to be sent to expand the training of Mexican commando teams in the war on the drug cartels.
• Sorry, no Death Star.
• Former Sen. Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings for Sec. of Defense are set for Jan. 31.
• Current Secretary of Defense Panetta says the only people who need armor-piercing bullets are the military, backing the president’s call for an assault weapons ban.
• Former US Army staff sergeant Clinton Romesha will receive the Medal of Honor next month, becoming the fourth living recipient.

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Photo: Azaz, Syria (north of Aleppo). A bloody Free Syrian Army fighter walked down the street after a missile attack. Muzaffar Salman/Reuters

(via thepoliticalnotebook)

mehreenkasana:

Thanks to Subashini for showing me this. Zero Dark Thirty’s Twitter account is promoting drone warfare. I want to be surprised but I’m not. Hollywood is never neutral. This is disgusting.

drugpolicyreform:

Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke

If you’ve ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you’ve ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or “drug paraphernalia” in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.

Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who’s ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a “record” financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.

The banks’ laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC’s Mexican branches and “deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.”

This bears repeating: in order to more efficiently move as much illegal money as possible into the “legitimate” banking institution HSBC, drug dealers specifically designed boxes to fit through the bank’s teller windows. Tony Montana’s henchmen marching dufflebags of cash into the fictional “American City Bank” in Miami was actually more subtle than what the cartels were doing when they washed their cash through one of Britain’s most storied financial institutions.

cartoonpolitics:

“Fox News is nothing if not impressive. No matter how harsh the criticism it endures, the network somehow always manages to prove itself even worse than we had previously imagined.” ~ Eric Alterman

anarcho-queer:

climateadaptation:

Al Jazeera nails it.

“The industry is not that transparent; we don’t know exactly how much water is being used in different places,” Lorne Stockman, research director of advocacy group Oil Change International, told Al Jazeera. “Public discomfort with the fracking boom is growing, especially in states like Ohio… I can’t say if it will come to a head.”

Despite concerns about water quality, energy companies and supporters of unconventional gas extraction say the process is good for the environment, as it means “dirty” coal could be replaced by gas in power plants and other facilities. 

The jury is still out on whether that’s correct.

A study released in the journal Nature earlier this month found that fracking operations in Utah and Colorado leak about nine percent of the total methane contained in the wells. Methane, the chief component of natural gas, is a far worse contributor to global warming compared with carbon dioxide, and the figure of nine percent claimed by the study is higher than previously thought. Via

“Methane, the chief component of natural gas, is a far worse contributor to global warming compared with carbon dioxide,”

(via littlesquigglylines)