Patrick Wintour writes:

[Secretary of State John] Kerry said the Americans were planning an “unbelievably small” attack on Syria. “We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing – unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”

Especially in light of this assertion:

President Bashar al-Assad did not personally order last month’s chemical weapons attack near Damascus that has triggered calls for US military intervention, and blocked numerous requests from his military commanders to use chemical weapons against regime opponents in recent months, a German newspaper has reported , citing unidentified, high-level national security sources.

The intelligence findings were based on phone calls intercepted by a German surveillance ship operated by the BND, the German intelligence service, and deployed off the Syrian coast, Bild am Sonntag said. The intercepted communications suggested Assad, who is accused of war crimes by the west, including foreign secretary William Hague, was not himself involved in last month’s attack or in other instances when government forces have allegedly used chemical weapons.

Granted, Kerry’s statement is that one of three people is responsible and the German report only rules out Assad, but the façade of Western unanimity is cracking.

Previously…

A unscientific snapshot of readers of the Marietta Times taken this morning indicates that nearly three-quarters of those responding to the question: Do you plan to listen to President Obama’s presentation on Syria Tuesday? chose “No, I’m opposed to U.S. actions.”

Granted, Marietta leans heavily red, and my experience is that that leaning encompasses most of those who respond to the Times‘ polls, but I don’t think this bodes well for President Obama.

This may be the best “get out the vote” video since this.

Next Sunday I will celebrate my 58th birthday. Today, my dad celebrates his 84th.

I’ll call later today, but I sent him this note this morning:

Dear Dad,

I know that I get wrapped up in my own drama and don’t say this as often as I should, but I recognize that I am very fortunate to have you as a father. Every day I deal with students with troubled parents or no parents at all and who are growing up without the anchor in life that you provided for me. For the go karts, Cub Scouts, science fairs, Boy Scouts, baseball, all the driving when I should have bought a car and the thousands of other gifts of your time that you have given me over the years I am thankful. I am a better man because I am your son.

Happy Birthday!

Love,

Jeff

Glenn Greenwald writes:

One big problem the NSA and US government generally have had since our reporting began is that their defenses offered in response to each individual story are quickly proven to be false by the next story, which just further undermines their credibility around the world. That NSA denial I just excerpted above has already been disproven by several reports (see, for instance, the letter published in this article, or the last document published here), but after Sunday, I think it will prove to be perhaps the NSA’s most misleading statement yet.

As one comment thread on Greenwald’s story notes:

….One big problem the NSA and US government generally have had since our reporting began is that their defenses offered in response to each individual story are quickly proven to be false by the next story, which just further undermines their credibility around the world…..

In other words nobody believes a pathological liar.

While I may not agree with the conclusion of this response to the comment, I must agree with the sentiment:

Which is why I don’t believe them when they say Assad gassed his people. They have proven themselves to be liars. Until Clapper is charged with perjury, I won’t believe a word Obama, Kerry, etc. say. If they say Assad did it, then that tells me either the rebels (Al Qaeda) or the CIA did it and framed Assad for it.

At what point will President Barack Hussein Obama realize that he can no longer lie to the American public, and the rest of the world? When will he realize that there is no magic wand, no spell, no potion that can stop the avalanche of shoes?

Previously…

David Corn writes:

The president is about to engage the Republicans on two contentious fronts: a battle over the funding of the federal government (with a possible government shutdown at risk) and a fight over raising the debt ceiling (with a possible financial crisis at risk). And tea party Republicans are attempting to bring Obamacare into the brewing mess. (Their threat: If you don’t defund Obamacare, we’ll shut down the government.) With all this looming, Democrats certainly don’t want Obama’s standing weakened, and if he loses the vote on the Syria resolution, he will be diminished.

And maybe not just at home. If Obama fails to win congressional support—at the moment, his prospects are much better in the Senate than the House—frenemies and foes abroad will no doubt consider this a sign of infirmity. And the president will confront yet another dilemma: whether to proceed with an attack. He has not ruled out an assault unauthorized by Congress. Yet if he bombs Syria without the support of Congress (or with only the Senate backing him)—a prospect discounted by several former Obama officials—he may well prompt a political crisis at home. (Yes, some GOPers will call for impeachment.) At the least, he will face a fusillade of criticism and the charge that he’s a hypocrite who only abides by the Constitution when it suits him. Yet if the resolution does not pass both houses of Congress and Obama stands down on Syria—after having hurled exceedingly tough talk—he will probably appear weak to allies and enemies overseas.

Ibrahim Mothana writes:

We are the poorest country in the Middle East with over 50 percent of our people living on less than 2 dollars a day. We are running out of water and out of oil, our major source of foreign revenue. Our nation has been troubled by decades of conflicts and an irresponsible, corrupt governments. A lot of my childhood friends are unemployed and live a daily struggle to maintain their basic human needs. In 2011, millions of Yemenis who lived decades under one autocratic ruler rose up in a largely peaceful revolution calling for democracy, accountability and justice, the very values cherished in American democracy.

Many young people like me grew up looking to America and its people for inspiration. Among many other things my teenage years were enriched by Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, Martin Luther King Junior’s speeches, Mark Twain’s sarcasm and American TV shows. The promise of equality and freedom seemed fulfilled when America elected its first black president. With an upsurge of happiness, many Yemenis celebrated the inauguration day and, at that point, President Obama was more popular among my friends than any other Yemeni figure. I was inspired by President Obama’s promise of “a new era of leadership that will bring back America’s credibility on human rights Issues and reject prioritizing safety to ideals.”

But happiness and inspiration gave way to misery. My admiration for the American dream and Obama’s promises has become overshadowed by the reality of the American drones strike nightmare in Yemen.
The Impact on Yemen and its People of the US Targeted Killing Policy

In the past few years, I have visited and worked in areas of Yemen that are the forefront of what the United States views as a global conflict against Al-Qaeda and associated forces. I have witnessed how the US use of armed drones and botched air strikes against alleged militant targets has increased anti-American sentiment in my country, prompting some Yemenis to join violent militant groups, motivated more by a desire for revenge than by ideological beliefs.

We Yemenis got our first experience with targeted killings under the Obama administration on December 17, 2009, with a cruise missile strike in al-Majala, a hamlet in a remote area of southern Yemen. This attack killed 44 people including 21 women and 14 children…

I remember my dad telling me, in his best DI voice, “This is your M1 bone…”

Stanley Kubrick nailed the moment in history when their was a true, moral choice for humanity. All subsequent events, up to and including our decisions to develop, deploy and detonate weapons of mass destruction, are a matter of degree.

Nothing changes until we figure out how to put the bone back in the pile.

Using mindfulness we will find that anything, anything, we bring our full attention to will begin to open up and reveal worlds we never suspected existed. p. 2

From Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Then the men in black show up…

The cessation of suffering and the existence of well-being is the Third Noble Truth. When the roots of suffering are absent, we can be free and happy, and we can act ethically, motivated by our understanding and compassion. p. 51

From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Yes, this is an amazingly bizarre revelation for me…

James Ball writes:

The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.

The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – “the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet”.

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with “brute force”, and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.

Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities – known as backdoors or trapdoors – into commercial encryption software.

This is as if police had pass keys to ever home in the United States. Why is anyone OK with this?

This story has been reported in partnership between the New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by the Guardian.

Matt Taibbi writes:

Back in June, journalist Simone Foxman at the global economic site Quartz reported that in addition to the two-second head start some Thomson Reuters customers were getting on the release of the University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, other customers may have been getting their data even earlier, “nearly an hour in advance” in some cases.

Rolling Stone has since learned that a whistleblower complaint has been filed to the SEC identifying 16 of the world’s biggest banks and hedge funds as the allegedly even-earlier recipients of this key economic data. The complaint alleges that this select group of customers received the data anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour ahead of the rest of the markets.

The identity of these 16 firms has not been made public yet, but sources describe the firms as major financial institutions, many of them well-known to the general public. Their inclusion in this case would significantly expand the scope of the scandal.

Are you OK knowing that your 401K plan is simply a slush fund for gambling addicts?

William Polk, writing on the present situation in Syria, poses and answers thirteen questions:

I will try to put in context 1) what actually happened; 2) what has been reported; 3) who has told us what we think we know; 4) who are the possible culprits and what would be their motivations; 5) who are the insurgents? 6) what is the context in which the attack took place; 7) what are chemical weapons and who has used them; 8) what the law on the use of chemical weapons holds; 9) pro and con on attack; 10) the role of the UN; 11) what is likely to happen now; 12) what would be the probable consequences of an attack and (13) what could we possibly gain from an attack.

Tim Russo offers a contrarian view.

I read Polk’s books as an undergraduate studying the Middle East in my Poli-Sci classes at Ohio University. His credentials are spotless and, I think, his arguments focused and correct.

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? — Lt. John Kerry, April 1971.

How do you ask a man to be the first man to die in Syria? How do you ask a man to be the first man to die for a mistake? — Secretary of State John Kerry, September 2013.

Oops! The second quote is a personal fantasy. My bad…

Robert Reich writes:

President Obama’s domestic agenda is already precarious: implementing the Affordable Care Act, ensuring the Dodd-Frank Act adequately constrains Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, saving Social Security and Medicare from the Republican right as well as deficit hawks in the Democratic Party, ending the sequester and reviving programs critical to America’s poor, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, above all, crafting a strong recovery.

Time and again we have seen domestic agendas succumb to military adventures abroad — both because the military-industrial-congressional complex drains money that might otherwise be used for domestic goals, and because the public’s attention is diverted from urgent problems at home to exigencies elsewhere around the globe.

James Ball writes:

US law enforcement officers working on anti-drugs operations have had access to a vast database of call records dating back to 1987, supplied by the phone company AT&T, the New York Times has revealed.

The project, known as Hemisphere, gives federal and local officers working on drug cases access to a database of phone metadata populated by more than four billion new call records each day.

Of course, you have nothing to worry about if you’re not involved in illegal drugs, or know anyone who is involved with illegal drugs, or know anyone who knows anyone one who is involved with illegal drugs…