Year: 2015

There is No Evidence that Mass Surveillance Makes Us Safe

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This is not an exaggeration/

Pro Publica examined almost a decade of mass surveillance, and could not any meaningful benefit derived from drinking from the data fire hose:

Current and former government officials have been pointing to the terror attacks in Paris as justification for mass surveillance programs. CIA Director John Brennan accused privacy advocates of “hand-wringing” that has made “our ability collectively internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.” Former National Security Agency and CIA director Michael Hayden said, “In the wake of Paris, a big stack of metadata doesn’t seem to be the scariest thing in the room.”

Ultimately, it’s impossible to know just how successful sweeping surveillance has been, since much of the work is secret. But what has been disclosed so far suggests the programs have been of limited value. Here’s a roundup of what we know.

An internal review of the Bush administration’s warrantless program – called Stellarwind – found it resulted in few useful leads from 2001–2004, and none after that. New York Times reporter Charlie Savage obtained the findings through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and published them in his new book, Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post–9/11 Presidency:

[The FBI general counsel] defined as useful those [leads] that made a substantive contribution to identifying a terrorist, or identifying a potential confidential informant. Just 1.2 percent of them fit that category. In 2006, she conducted a comprehensive study of all the leads generated from the content basket of Stellarwind between March 2004 and January 2006 and discovered that zero of those had been useful.

In an endnote, Savage then added:

The program was generating numerous tips to the FBI about suspicious phone numbers and e-mail addresses, and it was the job of the FBI field offices to pursue those leads and scrutinize the people behind them. (The tips were so frequent and such a waste of time that the field offices reported back, in frustration, “You’re sending us garbage.”)

This isn’t security, it’s security theater, and the victories it achieves are in battles between for budget money from Congress. 

More IP Idiocy

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The Swiss charity the Anne Frank Fonds will be atempting to add her father as co-author to the book in an attempt to expand the copyright term, which has the effect of preventing public posting of the work which otherwise would have happened on 1 January:

When Otto Frank first published his daughter’s red-checked diary and notebooks, he wrote a prologue assuring readers that the book mostly contained her words, written while hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex of a factory in Amsterdam.

But now the Swiss foundation that holds the copyright to “The Diary of Anne Frank” is alerting publishers that her father is not only the editor but also legally the co-author of the celebrated book.

The move has a practical effect: It extends the copyright from Jan. 1, when it is set to expire in most of Europe, to the end of 2050. Copyrights in Europe generally end 70 years after an author’s death. Anne Frank died 70 years ago at Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp, and Otto Frank died in 1980. Extending the copyright would block others from being able to publish the book without paying royalties or receiving permission.

This sort of sh%$ is getting out of hand.

IP protections have become more and excessive, and they have nothing to do with the intended purpose of IP protections, which is to encourage innovation and creativity.

The New York Times Calls Out Intelligence Officials for Exploiting the Paris Attacks to Further their Anti-Privacy Agenda

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Seeing as how the Times is the very much the voice of the conventional wisdom, so when they have excoriated intelligence officials’ opportunistic statements following the Paris attacks, it implies that there has been a shift in customary thinking:

It’s a wretched yet predictable ritual after each new terrorist attack: Certain politicians and government officials waste no time exploiting the tragedy for their own ends. The remarks on Monday by John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took that to a new and disgraceful low.

Speaking less than three days after coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris killed 129 and injured hundreds more, Mr. Brennan complained about “a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”

What he calls “hand-wringing” was the sustained national outrage following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, that the agency was using provisions of the Patriot Act to secretly collect information on millions of Americans’ phone records. In June, President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, which ends bulk collection of domestic phone data by the government (but not the collection of other data, like emails and the content of Americans’ international phone calls) and requires the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to make its most significant rulings available to the public.
These reforms are only a modest improvement on the Patriot Act, but the intelligence community saw them as a grave impediment to antiterror efforts. In his comments Monday, Mr. Brennan called the attacks in Paris a “wake-up call,” and claimed that recent “policy and legal” actions “make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging.”

It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the C.I.A. had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.

………

These reforms are only a modest improvement on the Patriot Act, but the intelligence community saw them as a grave impediment to antiterror efforts. In his comments Monday, Mr. Brennan called the attacks in Paris a “wake-up call,” and claimed that recent “policy and legal” actions “make our ability collectively, internationally, to find these terrorists much more challenging.”

It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the C.I.A. had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.

………
In truth, intelligence authorities are still able to do most of what they did before — only now with a little more oversight by the courts and the public. There is no dispute that they and law enforcement agencies should have the necessary powers to detect and stop attacks before they happen. But that does not mean unquestioning acceptance of ineffective and very likely unconstitutional tactics that reduce civil liberties without making the public safer.

That was a major case of whup ass that was unloaded on the leaders of the US state security apparatus.

Traitors

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And no, I am not talking about treason against the United States, which is, as I have noted before, very specifically defined in the Constitution, the only crime so defined.

Rather, I am suggesting that the House vote to exclude Syrian refugees is treason against the whole of humanity, which necessary has a less specific definition:

Responding to increased fears of terrorism in the United States following the Paris attacks, the House of Representatives passed a Republican-backed bill Thursday that would temporarily freeze Syrian and Iraqi refugees’ entry into the United States and revamp the vetting process. The bill passed 289 to 137, with near-unanimous support from Republicans and 47 Democrats backing the measure.

………

The bill “would immediately shut down resettlement of refugees from the Syria and Iraq region,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said Wednesday. “This rash reaction ignores the fact that all of the Paris attackers identified thus far are either French or Belgian, and that many terrorist threats are homegrown.” A Syrian passport was discovered by the body of one of the Paris attackers, but French officials said soon afterward that it was a forgery.

The bill does not explicitly halt admission of Syrian refugees, a response that some Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), called for this week. But it does require additional vetting of refugees by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, without specifying the procedures. Implementing the bill “would cause a pause” in the admission of refugees, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters.

It would also increase the FBI’s role in the screening process and require the secretary of homeland security, the FBI director, and the director of national intelligence to personally certify to Congress that each individual refugee is “not a threat” to the United States.

I’m sure that someone out there is going to talk about the reality of politics, but most of these districts are safe enough that the only way that a caught on camera eating babies.

When I make quick look at the list, a few names stick out;

  • Patrick Murphy, who was a Republican bankster until he wanted to run for Congress, and is now the establishment’s choice to run for Florida Senate.
  • Steve Israel, former Blue Dog who has been single minded in attempting to restore that caucus.
  • Marcy Kaptur, who defeated Dennis Kucinich in the primary after they were redistricted together.
  • Dan Lipinski, who inherited the seat from his father, and is the most reactionary Democrat in Congress.

There are a couple of Reps on this list who are not complete tools, like Louise Slaughter, but it doesn’t matter.

This vote is that bad.

After the break is a list of the Dems who voted for this.

  • Pete Aguilar (CA-31)
  • Brad Ashford (NE-02)
  • Ami Bera (CA-07)
  • Sanford Bishop (GA-02)
  • Julia Brownley (CA-26)
  • Cheri Bustos (IL-17)
  • John Carney (DE-AL)
  • Gerry Connolly (VA-11)
  • Jim Cooper (TN-05)
  • Jim Costa (CA-16)
  • Joe Courtney (CT-02)
  • Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
  • John Delaney (MD-06)
  • Lloyd Doggett (TX-35)
  • Tulsi Gabbard (HI-02)
  • John Garamendi (CA-03)
  • Gwen Graham (FL-02)
  • Gene Green (TX-29)
  • Janice Hahn (CA-44)
  • Jim Himes (CT-04)
  • Steve Israel (NY-03)
  • Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
  • Bill Keating (MA-09)
  • Ron Kind (WI-03)
  • Annie Kuster (NH-02)
  • Jim Langevin (RI-02)
  • Dan Lipinski (IL-03)
  • Dave Loebsack (IA-02)
  • Stephen Lynch (MA-08)
  • Sean Maloney (NY-18)
  • Patrick Murphy (FL-18)
  • Rick Nolan (MN-08)
  • Donald Norcross (NJ-01)
  • Scott Peters (CA-52)
  • Collin Peterson (MN-07)
  • Jared Polis (CO-02)
  • Kathleen Rice (NY-04)
  • Raul Ruiz (CA-36)
  • Tim Ryan (OH-13)
  • Kurt Schrader (OR-05)
  • David Scott (GA-13)
  • Terri Sewell (AL-07)
  • Kyrsten Sinema (AZ-09)
  • Louise Slaughter (NY-25)
  • Marc Veasey (TX-33)
  • Filemon Vela (TX-34)
  • Tim Walz (MN-01)

And While We are on the Subject of Uber………

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It appears that they retaliated against one of their drivers for talking to the press:

An Uber driver who critiqued the company’s top-brass at a highly publicized event now tells the San Francisco Examiner he’s facing backlash from the tech company.

Last Friday Eric Barajas, a Bay Area-based Uber driver who works in San Francisco, leveled criticism to Uber which garnered exposure in national news. The next day, he said, he was unable to get fares via the Uber app.

Barajas showed the Examiner video of two phones with two Uber driver accounts side by side, one showing “pings” for ride requests, while Barajas’ phone had no pings. Now he says he isn’t sure what to do – his three children and wife depend on his earnings to live, and without his income from Uber he may face dire financial straits.

The Examiner contacted Uber, and only an hour after a phone conversation with an Uber spokeswoman, Barjas saw his account suddenly reactivated.

He also reported “strange” modifications to his profile and Uber login screen, what he said are clear signs Uber was trying to shore up the story they told this reporter.

“You call them, and then its active,” Barajas told the Examiner. “That says to me they’re trying to cover their tracks.”

He still worries that his account may be deactivated or otherwise modified in the future, once media exposure dies down. That exposure began last Friday, when former Obama campaign manager turned-Uber advisor David Plouffe was onstage at the Next Economy Conference in San Francisco.

As cameras rolled, Plouffe invited drivers to speak at a microphone. Barajas made his voice heard.

“I just wanted to know how you guys are helping the economy when there are full time drivers like me… who are struggling to make ends meet, barely making minimum wage,” he said. On Craigslist, Uber in the past has said drivers could make $35 an hour, Barajas said, but that isn’t near what he earns.

“After all the expenses I’m really struggling, I don’t know if I can pay my PG&E bill and my water bill,” he said.

Uber is founded and run by bad people whose goal is to privatize their profits and to socialize their losses.

It is a fundamentally evil and hypocritical business model.

When Your Business Model Is to Use Law Breaking to Enter Markets, This Is Inevitable

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In Pennsylvania, a $50 million dollar fine against Uber in response to their deliberately and knowingly breaking the law:

Judges for the Pennsylvania agency that regulates buses and taxis recommended on Tuesday a record $50 million fine against ride-sharing company Uber for operating in the state without approval.

Two administrative law judges issued the decision, subject to approval by the Public Utility Commission, to punish Uber Technologies Inc. for rides by its subsidiaries from February 2014 until it received experimental authority six months later.

The judges rejected Uber’s argument that it did not run afoul of commission rules because it’s a software company whose services aren’t necessarily available to the public at large.

“Uber took a more active role in providing transportation service than simply providing the Uber app for people with cars to use to provide rides for people who need transportation — it was not a disinterested invisible entity in the background,” wrote judges Mary Long and Jeffrey Watson.

Uber spokesman Taylor Bennett said the San Francisco-based company was disappointed and hoped to come to a “reasonable resolution” after being unable to settle with the commission.

After a 30-day period to allow both sides to respond, the Public Utility Commission will consider the recommendation. If approved, it would be the largest fine ever imposed by the agency.

Uber’s arguments in this hearing describe their business model in a nutshell:

  • Break the law.
  • Profit
  • When the hammer falls, blame their employees while claiming that their employees aren’t their employees.

While there are a tech business models that make no sense, Uber’s business model makes a lot of sense.

It’s been used by con men and organized crime for years.

That’s Gonna Leave a Mark

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President Obama just called the Republican cowardice explosion over Syrian refugees a sign that they were afraid widows and orphans:

President Obama is lashing out at Republican politicians who oppose allowing Syrian refugees into the U.S., accusing them of being “scared of widows and orphans.”

Speaking to reporters Wednesday morning in the Philippines, Obama scoffed at attempts to block refugees following the Paris terror attacks as “political posturing” that “needs to stop.”

“Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America,” Obama said of Republicans. “At first, they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three year old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.”

Obama apparently directed his ire at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who said Tuesday he opposes allowing people fleeing the conflict in Syria to resettle in the U.S., even “orphans under five.”

………
“We are not well served when, in response to a terrorist attack, we descend into fear and panic,” he said. “We don’t make good decisions if its based on hysteria or an exaggeration of risks.”

What is going on with the refugees right now is cowardice, naked pants-soiling cowardice, and it’s nice to see Obama calling it out.

I Would Call Chuck Schumer a Schmuck, but a Schmuck has a Head

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The distinguished gentleman from New York just came out publicly against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States.

I’m sure that if he had been alive in 1939, he would have been comfortably playing Mahjong with friends while the passengers on the MS St. Louis were sent back to die at the hands of the Nazis:

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, on Tuesday said it may be necessary to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the United States.

Republicans immediately seized on Schumer’s comment, which breaks with other Democrats who have argued against halting the program.

Schumer, however, declined to take the option off the table ahead of a special briefing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon on the process that is now used to vet refugees entering the United States.

“We’re waiting for the briefing tomorrow, a pause may be necessary. We’re going to look at it,” he said.

Schumer is widely expected to become leader of Senate Democrats in the next Congress, after Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) retires.

A spokeswoman for Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) highlighted Schumer’s statement as an example of “bipartisan concern” over refugees.

Centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) signed a letter to President Obama Monday calling on him not to allow another Syrian refugee into the country unless federal authorities can guarantee with 100-percent assurance they are not connected to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Other Democrats have rejected freezing Obama’s plan to resettle at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the current fiscal year.

What a toxic combination of stupidity, cowardice, and evil.

His position is deeply wrong, and will be seized on by Islamist terrorists as a recruiting tool.

I wish that I was registered to vote in New York so that I could vote against him.

The Car for My Midlife Crisis Has Returned

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1980s Version


New Version

For some reason, the styling of the original always appealed to me, and if I were to get a car with just two seats and a tiny trunk, that would be it.

And now, it’s back:

Fiat unveiled a “new” two-seat sports car at the Los Angeles Auto Show Thursday — the reborn version of the the Fiat 124 Spider.

It marks the return of a model name that hasn’t been available in the United States since 1985.

The original Fiat 124 Spider was a small, fun-to-drive sportscar that had adoring fans, but also a reputation for mechanical troubles boiled down to the memorable joke “Fix It Again, Tony.”

That bit is not quite fair.

The 80s Spider was a simple, and, at least by the standard of 1980s vintage Fiats,* fairly reliable.

I’ve not had my midlife crisis yet, but if I do, I will get the model with manual transmission, because if you are going to have a midlife crisis, and buy a 2 seat convertible, it’s lame to use an automatic transmission.

I think that I’d get the model with the manual roof too, because ……… well ……… midlife crisis.

There are two ways to go with a midlife crisis car, super car, or something that you would have driven as a kid.

I swing the latter way.
*Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

We are Going to Bail Out These Motherf%$#ers Too

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The private equity group Blackstone is now the largest private owner of real-estate in the world:

Blackstone has grown its size nearly four-fold since its 2007 IPO.

But the biggest private equity firm on Wall Street has seen even greater growth in its real estate division, which has expanded from a $17.7 billion business when Steve Schwarzman took his company public to one that today manages nearly $100 billion worth of property.

Steve Schwarzman is America’s landlord, now, and he’s not afraid to acknowledge it.

“We’re now, we believe, the largest owner of real estate in the world,” he told Business Insider in an interview at his company’s Park Avenue headquarters in midtown Manhattan.

“We have a performance record that is… pretty much in a league of our own, we’ve compounded [returns of] around 18% after fees. We’ve had almost no losses of any type.”

They went into real estate after the crash, which was the bottom of the market.

They have been making insane margins, which means insane risk, though they probably do not realize this, 

Then this game of Jenga ends with a crash comes tumbling down, and it will, Blackstone will be too big to fail.

It’s already too big to fail.

And the rest of us are going to have to bail them out.

Between France and Russia, It Appears That the US May Adopt a Syria Strategy

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Putin & Obama Talk, Wingnut Heads Explode

Notice that I did not use the modifier, “New”.

Up to this point, the US has not had a plan beyond, “Freedum bomz!” up to this point.

Notice for example, how the US has hit Syrian government oil and energy facilities, but has done nothing to ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Whatever fuel convoys that have typically exported through Turkey.  (One assumes that this was because the Turks wanted to keep their profits from this trade, and we needed their airbases)

This has changed:

The U.S. claims it wants to hit the Islamic State but in one year of bombing it never really touched one of its biggest sources of income. Hundreds of oil tanker trucks are waiting every day at IS distribution points to smuggle oil to Turkey and elsewhere. Only one such distribution point was ever bombed and that attack was  by the Iraqi air force.

 Now the Russian President Putin played some “name and shame” at the G-20 meeting in Turkey and, lo and behold, the problem gets solved.

 The Obama administration recently claimed it would increase attacks on the most expensive Syrian oil infrastructure which is owned by the Syrian government but under IS control. But it said it would still not hit the large truck gatherings.

While the American-led air campaign has conducted periodic airstrikes against oil refineries and other production facilities in eastern Syria that the group controls, the organization’s engineers have been able to quickly repair damage, and keep the oil flowing, American officials said. The Obama administration has also balked at attacking the Islamic State’s fleet of tanker trucks — its main distribution network — fearing civilian casualties. But now the administration has decided to increase the attacks and focus on inflicting damage that takes longer to fix or requires specially ordered parts, American officials said.

The obvious target to stop the oil trade is to hit the trucks. Without trucks the other infrastructure is useless for IS as the oil can not be sold. With trucks destroyed the men behind the smuggling will lose all profits and leave the business. The “civilian casualties” argument does not hold. There could be warnings to avoid human damage or one could consider that these oil smugglers are dealing with terrorists and thereby accomplices. The real U.S. reluctance to hit the oil smuggling might be out of deference to the Turkish government which of course profits from such oil transfers.

 ………

Putin provided that information and the photos yesterday. Obama must have been deeply embarrassed and pissed. Suddenly, a day after Putin exposed the U.S. reluctance to hit IS where it is needed, a big truck assembly was bombed:

Intensifying pressure on the Islamic State, United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said. According to an initial assessment, 116 trucks were destroyed in the attack, which took place near Deir al-Zour, an area in eastern Syria that is controlled by the Islamic State.

MoA’s analysis is a bit simplistic, it is far more likely that this is happening because the US does not want France to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which would mandate a heightened involvement by the military alliance, probably involving the dreaded “boots on the ground”.

There is also the not so subtle call by French President Holland for the US and Russia to get their sh%$ together:

French President Francois Hollande says he will meet with U.S. and Russian leaders to discuss pooling their efforts to destroy the Islamic State group.

Hollande, speaking at a special joint meeting of the upper and lower houses of parliament in the Palace of Versailles, said he had requested meetings with Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.

Hollande said he wanted the talks “to unify our strength and achieve a result that has been too long in coming.” Hollande called for “a union of all who can fight this terrorist army in a single coalition.”French President Francois Hollande says he will meet with U.S. and Russian leaders to discuss pooling their efforts to destroy the Islamic State group.

Hollande, speaking at a special joint meeting of the upper and lower houses of parliament in the Palace of Versailles, said he had requested meetings with Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin.

Hollande said he wanted the talks “to unify our strength and achieve a result that has been too long in coming.” Hollande called for “a union of all who can fight this terrorist army in a single coalition.”

Reading between the lines, this translates to, “Enough with the Cold War nostalgia tour, we have sh%$ to do.”

Again, I think that the threat of an Article 5 invocation hovers above this statement.

It does appear that there appears to be some improved communication between US and Russian intelligence agencies:

The head of the CIA is “determined” to keep conversations open between the intelligence communities of the United States and Russia and wants to see relations between the two nations “enhanced” to prevent future terrorist attacks, particularly from the Islamic State group, commonly known as ISIS or ISIL.

 John Brennan also said the “ISIL threat demands” an “unprecedented level of cooperation” among the international intelligence community, mere hours before the Obama administration announced new rules easing the sharing of intelligence with France in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks.

 Speaking Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Brennan broadly addressed the need for greater information-sharing around the globe, but saved his most expansive comments for a partner that may surprise those who have watched the relationship between the US and Russia disintegrate since Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory in 2014.

This is a major turnaround for the US state security apparatus, which had, until recently, seemed to be longing desperately longing for a return to the Cold War.


Tu-160


TU-22M3


TU-95

While I do not whether this is anything more than talk by the US, the Russians appear to be escalating in Syria:

Russia sent nearly 40 heavy bombers and escorting fighter jets on a massive air raid in Syria. Moscow has now showed off almost all of its aerial arsenal in strikes in the embattled Middle Eastern country.

 Flying from bases in Russia, 25 Tu-160, Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3 bombers launched more than 30 cruise missiles and dropped dumb bombs on targets in Idlib and Aleppo provinces. A dozen Su-34 and Su-27SM fighter jets escorted the bombers on their mission.

 “The targets destroyed include command posts that were used to coordinate ISIL activities [and] munition and supply depots in the northwestern part of Syria,” chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov said, using a common acronym for the Islamic State terrorist group.

This is a big deal, but it is far less involved than a similar strike would be if conducted by the United States.

The Russians are about 1½ hours from their targets, while US bombers would likely sortie from  Diego Garcia, which is about a 7 hour trip, and would require multiple refuelings.  (The B-2s, would likely deploy from the US, which would be a 20+ hour trip one way)

Most significantly, the Russians provided advance notice to the US of the air strikes, so as to preventa possible incident:

For the first time since it began military operations in Syria, the Russian government alerted the United States of planned airstrikes, Defense Department spokesperson Peter Cook said Tuesday.

 Cook also said the Russian airstrikes were concentrated on targets from the Islamic State group, best known as ISIL or ISIS. That is a change from Pentagon statements in the past, which have identified the vast majority of Russian strikes as attacking non-ISIS forces aligned against the government of Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

 “In this instance, their most recent airstrikes, [Russia] did give us advanced notice through the memorandum of understanding that is in place,” Cook told reporters.

Russia appears to have launched a wave of new strikes in Syria over the last 24 hours, including cruise missiles and the first ever use of the Tu-160 strategic bombers in combat operations.

The US and Russia reached an agreement on deconfliction in October, but details on the agreement have been kept quiet, something the US said was at the behest of the Kremlin. This is the first time Russia has communicated directly to the US about incoming strikes, however.

Hopefully this presages a thawing, and I further hope that indicates a path forward for the US that actually has a modicum of coherence, but I am not holding my breath.

It Is Official

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Russia has formally declared that Metrojet Flight 7K9268 was taken down by a bomb:

Russia the first time on Tuesday that a bomb aboard a Russian charter jet full of vacationers had destroyed the aircraft that crashed more than two weeks ago on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and the Kremlin responded immediately by escalating airstrikes across Syria.

The Russians said they were coordinating their military campaign with France in sharply ratcheting up attacks on Syrian territory, especially areas held by the Islamic State, the militant group that has asserted responsibility for destroying the Russian jetliner and for the deadly attacks across Paris on Friday.

The timing of such a highly orchestrated announcement, after an outraged France had already started striking Islamic State targets and had called for a united front against the group, suggested that the Kremlin was using the moment to help rebuild frayed relations with the West.

The Kremlin also announced that President Vladimir V. Putin and his French counterpart, François Hollande, had spoken by telephone, had agreed to coordinate military attacks in Syria and will meet on Nov. 26 in Moscow.

It is not a surprise that they have made it official, and they do deserve props for waiting until they had some data, as opposed to, for example CNN, where they freak out over a mouse fart in DC.

And Another One Bites the Dust

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Bobby Jindal has left the building:

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a onetime rising Republican star whose popularity has plummeted in his own state, abruptly dropped out of the presidential race on Tuesday, conceding that he was unable to find any traction.

“This is not my time,” he said on Fox News.

Mr. Jindal unveiled a series of policy proposals, ferociously attacked Donald J. Trump and spent considerable time courting conservatives in Iowa, which begins the presidential nominating process. None of it worked. He raised little money, did not rise high enough in the polls to appear on the prime-time debate stage and was overshadowed by unconventional candidates such as Mr. Trump and Ben Carson.

He’s not out because he, “Was overshadowed by unconventional candidates such as Mr. Trump and Ben Carson,” he’s out because he is Bobby Jindal.

He was clearly never ready for prime time, and this has been evident since his disastrous response to Obama’s first speech to Congress.

Both Jindal and Palin faced reality in the same week.

Hoodathunkit?

Buy-Bye.

Human Sacrifice, Dogs and Cats Living Together… Mass Hysteria!

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In the realm of “Real end of the world stuff, Sarah Palin just showed some introspection, and assigned herself some blame.

It only took 7 years:

Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said in an interview that aired Sunday that the question CBS anchor Katie Couric asked her about what publications she read to form her views on foreign policy was “fair,” but that she gave a “crappy” answer.

Couric’s infamous interview with the former Alaska governor grabbed headlines because of Palin’s lackluster responses.

Couric asked Palin about the newspapers and magazines she read to form her views on foreign policy.

Palin responded that she had a “great appreciation” for the media, but when Couric pressed her to name some of the publications she read, Palin said “all of ’em, any of ’em that have been in front of me over all these years.”

Palin later said she was “taken aback” by the question.

In the interview that aired Sunday, Palin said the question was “fair.”

“I had a crappy answer,” she said. “But it was a fair question.”

It’s rare to see any politician to have this level of self awareness and humility.

To see it from “Caribou Barbie” is mind boggling.

They Have Learned Nothing, and They Have Forgotten Nothing*

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We now have a report on the the police response that created the rioting in Baltimore.

It appears that excessively aggressive police actions, including when the police kettled large numbers of  students leaving high schools at the end of the day at Mondawmin in an misguided attempt at dick swinging, are not on the agenda:

As rioting erupted on Baltimore’s streets in April, the city police Command Center — where top decision-makers had gathered to get a handle on the situation — was itself in disarray, according to a new review of the agency’s response to the unrest.

 In a room designed to hold 30 to 40 people, as many as 100 had gathered, some without a clear role. The crowding was so severe that the department’s 10-person Analytical Intelligence Section, which was charged with developing information that could help the department deploy resources and anticipate threats, was blocked from its own equipment — and provided just two computers to do its work. The room was so loud the analysts could barely hear threat tips being relayed to them over the phone.

 That environment, described as “chaotic” and “distracting” by some in the room, was just one of many “major shortcomings” in the Baltimore Police Department’s handling of the unrest, according to a sweeping review by the Police Executive Research Forum, a highly regarded law enforcement think tank based in Washington.

 The group’s 79-page report, which then-Commissioner Anthony W. Batts requested this summer, is scheduled to be released publicly on Monday but was provided to The Baltimore Sun.

 The report — titled “Lessons Learned from the 2015 Civil Unrest in Baltimore” — provides new critiques of key top-level decisions and details that bolster previous criticism. It also highlights continuing gaps in knowledge about how the worst of the rioting, looting and arson erupted, noting that reviewers were “unable to determine who issued the order to cancel bus service” at Mondawmin Mall on April 27 — a decision that left many students stranded in the area that day.

 The report detailed a long list of “major findings,” reflected in 56 recommendations for the Police Department to implement. It said planning was inadequate, arrest policies were unclear, equipment was severely lacking, officer training was inadequate, mutual aid agreements with other localities were insufficient or unclear, and orders to officers were not clearly defined. Command positions were also changed at times without notice, causing confusion, the report said.

This is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

They cannot find out who gave the order to kettle what were primarily students trying to get home because it was a relatively low level functionary who has gotten his friends to cover for him, and they are covering for him, because these officers believe that it is essential for them to be kept in their place.

They thought that they were justified in taunting a bunch of adolescent teens and confining them for no reason because they were “Uppity.”

Unfortunately, this deeply toxic mindset is the rule, rather than the exception in policing in the United States.

You can find the full report here.

*This is frequently attributed to the French stateman Tallyrand, but he is not the source.