Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Operation Desert Storm begins; Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for last time; Prohibition takes effect.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Supervillains
It’s quite impressive that the prisoners in Gitmo are the masterminds behind everything bad that happens in the world. Maybe it isn’t a prison camp at all, but an Evil Lair Of Evil, a base of operations for all terrorism everywhere. If so, we probably should close it, no?
Breakfast News
Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists
Humans are “eating away at our own life support systems” at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.
Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.
Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded “safe” levels – human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertiliser use
Judge’s decision could cost BP $13bn for Deepwater Horizon oil spill
A federal judge determined on Thursday that more oil than BP estimated spilled into the Gulf of Mexico following a rig explosion in 2010, a decision that could potentially cost the London-based oil giant more than $13bn.
US district judge Carl Barbier ruled that 3.19 million barrels – just under 134m gallons – were discharged into the Gulf after a rig explosion at BP’s Macondo well. The number is more than the 2.4m barrel figure BP had argued for and less than the government’s estimate of about 4.2m, a figure that could have meant $18bn in maximum penalties under the Clean Water Act.
Those penalties are to be determined in a trial set to open on Tuesday. In pre-trial briefs, the government has argued that the oil giant should pay as much as $4,300 per barrel spilled. The discharge figure Barbier settled on Thursday means maximum penalties could reach about $13.7bn – but he has not yet decided how much per barrel BP must pay. BP has argued that the penalties should be lower than what the government is asking for, but has not offered a specific figure.
Secret US cybersecurity report: encryption vital to protect private data
A secret US cybersecurity report warned that government and private computers were being left vulnerable to online attacks from Russia, China and criminal gangs because encryption technologies were not being implemented fast enough.
The advice, in a newly uncovered five-year forecast written in 2009, contrasts with the pledge made by David Cameron this week to crack down on encryption use by technology companies.
In the wake of the Paris terror attacks, the prime minister said there should be no “safe spaces for terrorists to communicate” or that British authorites could not access.
Cameron, who landed in the US on Thursday night, is expected to urge Barack Obama to apply more pressure to tech giants, such as Apple, Google and Facebook, which have been expanding encrypted messaging for their millions of users since the revelations of mass NSA surveillance by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Two men dead in Belgium counter-terror raids
Counter-terrorist units foiled what was described as a jihadist plot to stage a major attack in eastern Belgium on Thursday evening, killing two gunmen and wounding another in a shootout in the town of Verviers near the German border.
The federal prosecutor, Eric Van Der Sypt, denied there was any link with last week’s attacks in Paris, but drew parallels with the Charlie Hebdo incident.
He said a terrorist outrage may only have been hours away: “This operation stopped a major terrorist attack from taking place. You could say a second potential Paris has been averted.”
All three gunmen, he said, were Belgian nationals.
John Boehner explanation for foiled Capitol shooting plot at odds with FBI
The speaker of the House has offered an explanation for the apprehension of a suspect in a planned Capitol shooting at odds with the FBI’s description of the case.
John Boehner said on Thursday that Christopher Cornell, the 20-year old Ohio man arrested for allegedly planning a Capitol Hill shooting spree, had his plot foiled thanks to communications intercepted by US authorities. [..]
Yet according to the criminal complaint against Cornell, a secret government informant, not the communications interception covered by Fisa, was the key to the case.
The complaint, released on Wednesday, said the “confidential human source” who sought leniency for unrelated criminal offenses “supplied information to the FBI about a person using the alias of Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah (defendant Christopher Cornell) who posted comments and information supportive of [the Islamic State] through social media accounts”.
Cornell’s Twitter account, identified as the now-deleted @ISBlackFlags, was public, and would not have required a warrant under Fisa for law enforcement to view it.
Pressure grows on Saudi Arabia over blogger facing second flogging
Pressure is building over the case of Raif Badawi, the jailed Saudi blogger who is due to be flogged for a second time on Friday as part of his controversial punishment for setting up a website to promote free speech.
The 31-year-old was flogged 50 times in a public square in the port city of Jeddah last week. He was sentenced last May to 10 years in prison, a fine and 1,000 lashes after criticising Saudi Arabia’s powerful clerics on his blog.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, said in a statement on Thursday that flogging is “at the very least, a form of cruel and inhuman punishment” prohibited under international human rights law.
Al-Hussein, a member of the Jordanian royal family, appealed to King Abdullah bin Abdelaziz to halt the flogging by pardoning Badawi “and to urgently review this type of extraordinarily harsh penalty.”
Edward Snowden film Citizenfour leads pack in Oscar documentary category
Laura Poitras’s film Citizenfour, looking at the exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden, has been nominated for the best documentary Oscar.
Poitras spent eight days with Snowden in Hong Kong as his revelations about the NSA were published in the Guardian, and instantly created a major diplomatic event. Along with input from Glenn Greenwald, the film also looks at the aftermath of the revelations, with Snowden moving to Russia while the US, having shown to be spying on its citizens on a vast scale, scrambled a response.
The film continues an arc for Poitras, who ended up on a US Homeland Security watchlist for her Iraq-based My Country, My Country, and who looked at the NSA’s spying in a 2012 film The Program with another whistleblower, William Binney.
US to ease restrictions on travel to Cuba as countries seek to normalise relations
Decades of punitive US sanctions on Cuba will be rolled back as early as Friday, in a move to swiftly normalise relations between the long-estranged countries.
From reversing the ban on foreign ships entering American waters to allowing travellers to return with $100 worth of cigars, the new guidelines published by the US Treasury go as far as possible to uphold Barack Obama’s pledge in December.
Though still constrained by legislation prohibiting fully liberalised tourism and free trade, several newly announced measures suggest a deliberate attempt to flood the communist economy with American technology and money in a bid to weaken its government’s grip on power and political dissent.
The 10 hibernating little brown bats hang from a corner of their tailor-made refrigeration chamber at Bucknell University like a clump of old potato skins, only less animated. In torpor, bats become one with their wintry surroundings, their body temperatures falling to just above freezing, their heart rates slowing to one or two beats a minute, their breathing virtually undetectable.
But suddenly, a male yanks himself free of the bunch and hops down to a dish on the floor. After taking a long, slow drink of water, the bat uses the claws on his folded wings to hoist himself along the wire mesh of the chamber, his motions angular, deliberative and spidery. A second bat rappels down for a drink, and then a third.
“Well, that’s a lucky break,” said Thomas Lilley, a tall and crisply composed postdoctoral fellow from Finland. “Multiple rounds of bat drama.”
Must Read Blog Posts
A few notes on the economy Ian Welsh
Joni Ernst To Deliver GOP Response To State Of The Union: Congratulations To My New Friend From Iowa Charles Pierce, Esquire’s Politics Blog
Sterling Trial: Condoleezza Rice Testifies Bush Instructed Her to Have Times Kill Story on Operation Merlin Kevin Gosztola, FDL The Dissenter
‘Christian’ Church Halts Woman’s Funeral Midway Because She Was Gay Peter Van Buren, FDL
Islamic State Recruiter in Afghanistan Was “Substantially Exploited” at Guantanamo Jim White, emptywheel
You call these “moderates”?! How the far right hopes to fool America (again) Heather Digby Parton, Salon
This is how elites protect each other: Today’s worst in Beltway hypocrisy Marcy Wheeler, Salon
DailyDirt: Fighting Off Infections In The Future Michael Ho, Techdirt
The Fed and the Price of Oil Charles Hugh Smith, Washington’s Blog
Study Finds People Assume War Is Only Last Resort David Swanson, Washington’s Blog
Government Releases Documents About Spying Just in Time for Christmas Nadia Kayyali, Electronic Frontier Foundation