Observations on current events

The Enviromment:

CBC Climate change: May breaks global temperature record
"Driven by exceptionally warm ocean waters, Earth smashed a record for heat in May and is likely to keep on breaking high temperature marks, experts say. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Monday said May's average temperature on Earth of 15.54 C beat the old record set four years ago. In April, the globe tied the 2010 record for that month. Records go back to 1880..."


The War On Terror:

The Hill: Court releases DOJ memo justifying drone strike on US citizen
"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday released a secret 2010 Justice Department memo justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen killed in a drone strike in 2011. The court released the document as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union to make the document public. Then-acting Assistant Attorney General David Barron, in the partially redacted 41-page memo, outlines the justification of the drone strike in Yemen to take out al-Awlaki, an alleged operational leader of al Qaeda. Barron wrote that al-Awlaki had taken up arms against his country, and it was necessary to take him out with a drone because he could have caused his nation harm. 'The U.S. citizen in question has gone overseas and become part of the forces of an enemy with which the United States is engaged in an armed conflict; that person is engaged in continual planning and direction of attacks upon U.S. persons from one of the enemy's overseas bases of operation; the U.S. government does not know precisely when such attack will occur; and a capture operation would be infeasible,' wrote Barron, who was recently confirmed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. In April, The court ordered the redacted version of the document to be released because the administration had already made public and discussed al-Awlaki's killing. The administration decined to appeal the ruling, and Monday is the first time the memo has been released. Attorney General Eric Holder last year outlined a three-pronged justification for targeted killings of a U.S. citizen who is a leader of al Qaeda: The suspect must pose an imminent threat, capture must be infeasible, and the strike needs to adhere to applicable war principles..."


One Nation, Under Surveillance:

Ryan Gallagher: How Secret Partners Expand NSA’s Surveillance Dragnet
"Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden. The classified files, revealed today by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information in a reporting collaboration with The Intercept, shed light on how the NSA’s surveillance of global communications has expanded under a clandestine program, known as RAMPART-A, that depends on the participation of a growing network of intelligence agencies..."

Der Spiegel (DE) - Spying Together: Germany's Deep Cooperation with the NSA
"Cooperation between Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, and America's NSA is deeper than previously believed. German agents appear to have crossed into constitutionally questionable territory..."

"Say Cheese! No, wait, smile for the NSA"

We knew there would be more revelations that mock our conventional understanding of 'privacy'...
James Risen & Laura Poitras: N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images
"The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents. The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the agency has turned to new software to exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications, the N.S.A. documents reveal. Agency officials believe that technological advances could revolutionize the way that the N.S.A. finds intelligence targets around the world, the documents show. The agency’s ambitions for this highly sensitive ability and the scale of its effort have not previously been disclosed. The agency intercepts 'millions of images per day' — including about 55,000 'facial recognition quality images' — which translate into 'tremendous untapped potential,' according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. While once focused on written and oral communications, the N.S.A. now considers facial images, fingerprints and other identifiers just as important to its mission of tracking suspected terrorists and other intelligence targets, the documents show..."

The Banksters:

How is the FinReg legislation after 2008 actually serving the public interest, if this is still a risk? The correct solution Congress was unwilling to pursue was re-implementing Glass-Steagall, period, not the lobbyist-polluted legislation we ended up with.
Business Insider: BLACKROCK'S FINK: Leveraged ETFs Could 'Blow Up' The Whole Industry
"BlackRock Inc Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said on Wednesday that leveraged exchange-traded funds contain structural problems that could 'blow up' the whole industry one day. Fink runs a company that oversees more than $4 trillion in client assets, including nearly $1 trillion in ETF assets. 'We'd never do one (a leveraged ETF),' Fink said at Deutsche Bank investment conference in New York. 'They have a structural problem that could blow up the whole industry one day.' Fink spoke during a conversation with Deutsche Bank co-CEO Anshu Jain in a broader discussion about regulating financial companies. Leveraged ETFs account for 1.2 percent of the $2.5 trillion in global ETF assets under management. At the end of April, there were nearly 270 ETF funds with $30.3 billion in assets, said Deborah Fuhr, managing partner of ETF research firm ETFGI LLP. A leveraged ETF uses financial derivatives and debt to amplify the returns of an underlying index..."

# posted by Mike : 8:46 AM