I’m not even going to touch the massive stream of news out of Washington over the last 24 hours, from the Washington Post piece featuring ‘leaked’ transcripts of Trump’s whack doodle conversations with Mexico’s and Australia’s presidents to the impaneled grand jury and subpoenas. Plenty of other material not getting adequate air time.

Speaking of air time, hope you have a chance to catch Marcy on Democracy Now. She spoke with Amy Goodman about the confirmation of Chris Wray as FBI Director as well as former Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler’s lawsuit against Fox News.

Onward…

~ 3 ~

Venezuela’s state-run oil producer PDVSA is cutting oil sales to U.S. refining unit Citgo Petroleum. At the same time it is increasing shipments of oil to Russia’s largest oil producer, Rosneft. Venezuela is using its oil to pay down a $1.6 billion loan extended to PDVSA last year. Rosneft has loaned an even larger sum of money in the not-too-distant past, but the terms aren’t known; payments in oil as well as a hefty minority stake in Citgo were believed to be included in negotiations.

The threat to U.S. gasoline supply: though at lower levels than a decade ago, Venezuela is the third largest supplier of oil to the U.S.

Citgo has, however, been shifting its purchasing wider afield than just PDVSA:

Citgo last year started sending gasoline and other fuels to Venezuela in exchange for a portion of its crude supply. But Citgo has increased the volume of U.S. oil it refines, and has also has also expanded its crude import sources.
[…]
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has promised strong economic sanctions against Venezuela’s government after a Constituent Assembly was elected last week in what United States called a “sham” vote. The new body will have power to rewrite the constitution and abolish the opposition-led Congress.

If those sanctions were to constrain Venezuela’s oil shipments to the United States, Citgo could be ahead of its competitors in finding new supply sources.

The public will feel at the pump whatever happens to Citgo and other gasoline producers. Gasoline prices are already $0.16-0.24 per gallon higher than they were last year.

Who is profiting from this?

~ 2 ~

I’ve been thinking about the tagline, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” right about now after the arrest of Marcus Hutchins, a.k.a. MalwareTechBlog following Defcon’s end in Las Vegas. You’ve probably read Marcy’s piece already (catch up if you didn’t); since she published her post the information security community has been digging into Hutchins’ past and stewing about why/what/how.

Some speculate this was an aggressive recruitment effort; this might explain why the U.K. didn’t arrest him before he left for Defcon. Or did the U.K. and the U.S. agree not to spook any Defcon attendees by stopping Hutchins before he arrived in Vegas? Responses by U.K. authorities are annoyingly banal:

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We are in touch with local authorities in Las Vegas following reports of a British man being arrested.”

The UK’s National Crime Agency said: “We are aware a UK national has been arrested but it’s a matter for the authorities in the US.”

Others speculate he was framed as the target of revenge by someone caught up in Alphabay’s seizure. How does shutting down WannaCry fit into this scenario?

I don’t have a favorite theory right now. All I know is that WannaCry’s heat map sticks in my craw.

One thing which should come out of this situation is a dialog about coding, malware, and intent; the infosec community is having that discussion now, but it needs to be wider. If a white hat codes malware in part or whole to investigate capabilities, they are only separated from criminal malware producers/sellers/distributors by intent. How does law enforcement determine intent?

~ 1 ~

Your opinion is constantly shaped by the media you consume. Some consumers aren’t conscious of this shaping; neither are some producers.

And some producers know it but are just plain jerks.

A very important way in which opinion is shaped is by the perspective presenting a viewpoint. If only the members of one-half of the population ever gets a chance to present a perspective, consumers’ opinions are narrowed by that same factor. This is why gender equity in media is critical; if you’re only hearing men you’re not getting but part of the picture.

WIRED magazine knows that gender equity in content is important, but their last issue contained only male-written content. As a twisted tribute to the women who helped produce the issue, WIRED stuck a colophon listing important females.

Including a dog.

Really? The women of WIRED are on the same footing as a pet?

Somebody/ies at WIRED need a kick in the sass; I don’t give a fig if half the staff is female if the content itself is all-male. I’m going to do my best this next month not to cite WIRED.

Don’t think for a moment this is just WIRED, either. The VIDA Count measures annually gender equity in literary arts. There’s progress though slow.

~ 0 ~

That’s a wrap on this open thread. Let’s hope with Tiny Hands McGolfer on vacation that news slows a bit as we enter this weekend. I’m not holding my breath though. Behave.

I’ve got to run some errands, only have time for a very quick three things post.

~ 3 ~

Because Trump wants a cheaper Air Force One, the Air Force bought a bankrupt Russian company’s canceled Boeing 747s.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Wanted a Cheaper Air Force One. So USAF Is Buying a Bankrupt Russian Firm’s Undelivered 747s
https://t.co/sIZrj6HmZv pic.twitter.com/HloxqVzEFW

— Defense One (@DefenseOne) August 1, 2017

Why does this sound like 1) a crap deal which doesn’t solve the need for an attack-resistant AF1, 2) a bail-out for some entity, whether Boeing or whoever in Russia is holding the bag on the down payment?

~ 2 ~

A few days ago I read yet another right-wing character assassination attempt aimed at Robert Mueller, distributing disinformation related to Russia and radioactive materials. Real story completely stretched beyond recognition to attack the special counsel looking into Trump-Russia.

Meanwhile, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has improperly MAILED radioactive materials repeatedly.

This highlights our long-term problems with outsourcing nuclear sites’ management to private contractors.

Please let’s not allow Trump cut a deal on this matter. It’s bad enough we have Dancing With The Stars’ Rick Perry involved in any way. And watch for more disinfo about Robert Mueller as the Trump-Russia investigation heats up.

~ 1 ~

Baltimore Ravens need to get off it and hire Colin Kaepernick. Baltimore the city needs him. Not only is Kaepernick a good Plan B because of Joe Flacco’s back, the Ravens need a reset on their image — many women still don’t have a high opinion of the Ravens (or the NFL) after the Ray Rice scandal. And Kaepernick is a solid player worth watching; he doesn’t deserve the racist bullshit he’s received from the NFL, quietly blacklisted for exercising his First Amendment rights. Football isn’t slavery demanding forfeit of human rights, after all — or is it?

~ 0 ~

Off to run the roads. This is an open thread. Behave.

Too much going on here today but the existing threads are getting too deep and a couple are drifting off-topic. Here’s three quick things to chew on and an open thread.

~ 3 ~

The marketplace will bring death to oil long before the government. (Bloomberg). But will governments — US and oil-producing countries alike — get in the way of alternative energy in spite of the market demanding more alternatives to fossil fuels? With this trend away from combustion engines pressing on them, fossil fuel producers are shifting toward increased LNG for use in electricity production; this only shifts CO2 creation from vehicles to power plants. Will the market put an end to that, too?

~ 2 ~

There’s too much money out there if Delta can order multiple planes configured for all-first class service. I just spoke with a friend earlier today about round-trip fares from a major Midwest airport to major cities in Europe; they were quite high even with a departure date more than a month out, and higher than they had seen in a while. Fuel prices haven’t increased that much over the last year; low oil prices are threatening pipelines as financing construction costs more than the return on oil. Somewhere between slack fuel prices, firm fares and demand, Delta’s making enough money to build these let-them-eat-cake planes.

One could argue that if buyers have the money they can have whatever they want — except that taxpayers finance the infrastructure including essential safety regulatory system which will now protect the few and not the many while increasing congestion. Too money — somebody needs to pay more taxes to support the infrastructure they’re using.

~ 1 ~

Kaspersky Labs is releasing around the globe a free version of their antivirus software (Reuters). It won’t replace the paid version of their AV software, providing only very basic protection. I’m not using it, though, for two reasons: if it’s like Kaspersky’s existing free tool, it will send messages back to the parent company about infections it finds — and possibly more. Congress and the U.S. intelligence community may have concerns about Kaspersky Lab’s vulnerability to the Russian government; I’m more concerned about Kaspersky Lab having been breached at least once in 2015, compromising data in their systems. Your mileage may vary; use under advisement.

~ 0 ~

That’s it for now. This is an open thread. Behave.

P.S. The fight against attacks on the health care system isn’t over. Call your senator at (202) 224-3121. Other tools for your use in this post.

I had an epiphany recently. It sneaked up on me, right about the time I let go of my comfortable illusion of middle-class security and embraced the fact I may be faced with more than $26,000 per year in health care premiums and untold thousands in out-of-pocket deductibles and medication expenses. It could be more than my household income, forcing me to draw down on retirement savings nearly ten years prematurely.

Ticking off monthly expenses — what things could be reduced or eliminated in my household to make up for the additional health care expenses if some mutant abomination of AHCA passes — I came to an abrupt conclusion.

I don’t need a car anymore.

It costs more to own a car at my personal disposal than calling a car-for-hire, whether Uber or Lyft or local cab service.

I had to sit down after that. For nearly fifty years I’ve thought I needed a car, that every American aspired to vehicle ownership, save for big city residents for whom cars would be unmanageable. My entrance to adulthood was marked by the ability to drive a car; my personal freedom hinged upon being able to get away in my own vehicle.

But now? I might be trapped by a car. My six-year-old grocery-getter Mom mobile cost me more than I invested in the stock market the year it was manufactured — it’s worth a fraction of its original value, while my stock is worth several times over. My investment in wheels won’t pay for my future health.

I thought about my kids and the reality they face; only four years separates these two siblings, but a massive cultural shift occurred between them. My 23-year-old daughter drove off like the wind when I gave her my car keys seven years ago; she saw her first vehicle as freedom, just as I did when I was her age. She just signed her first lease on a vehicle, though; after crunching the numbers on new cars, it didn’t make sense to buy one. Leasing a car would yield a lower total cost to operate than buying one. She’s also not stuck with trying to sell it in a couple years when an electric vehicle might be preferred.

This isn’t an earth-shattering shift, but it’s a tectonic move; no one in my family has ever leased a vehicle. We have always bought and owned them over the last four generations.

And now my son. One might assume he was a car buff living here in the backyard of the Big Three Automakers, the progeny of one family which made its fortunes in auto parts and spawn of another family in which two successive generations made a living engineering in automobile manufacturing.

But no — he dragged his feet for nearly three years getting his license. He just didn’t care to get it; the only reason he got a driver’s permit was that everyone else his age had done so. He had the public school bus to get him to class every day, and me to get him to every intramural event. Why should he bother when he had it so good?

Especially when it came to the annoying expense of having his own vehicle. Being in a high-risk group — male, 16-25, driving more than 25 miles a week — he might pay more in insurance each year than the purchase price of the car he would drive. And then gas, which was near $4.00/gallon when he got his permit. And car washes, tires, wipers, oil changes, other increasingly frequent car repairs, and so on…this was not freedom.

His sister had been fortunate to land an internship for the duration of her college career, which helped defray automobile expenses. This has not been the case for her brother because of their different academic pursuits. He works at a summer job, stashing as much of his paycheck away for the academic year while living on his tips during the season. The paycheck and tips combined from his summer service job do not equal the amount his sister made each year; he simply cannot afford a car of his own.

We don’t know how long this may be the case, either. His prospects are different from his sister’s given his field of study. He may need to pursue a master’s degree immediately after he gets his bachelor’s. Leads on internships for his junior year of college are good, but the pay may be less than his sister made at the same point in their studies. A car of his own is a very iffy prospect for years.

Let’s face it: my son’s life is closer to that of the overwhelming number of American’s his age than my daughter’s is to her cohort. This is the shift in our culture, one in which we begin to let go of personal and family automobiles as a norm.

The more I thought about it, the more disturbed I became. Both of my kids will leave college without any debt; I spent what should probably have been my retirement health care savings on their tuition and board. In contrast, my prospective son-in-law carries $40,000 in debt after his graduation this month. Thankfully he has a good job and can pay it down quickly, but what of all other college students in the U.S.? The overwhelming majority will be saddled with a similar or greater amount of debt and middling jobs. They’re part of nearly 50% of America which cannot muster $400 cash in the event of an emergency, perhaps part of the 53% participating in the stock market but still one of the precarious.

These youngsters will be hard pressed to juggle health insurance premiums and deductibles under AHCA with massive college tuition debt and rising rents.

They will be hard pressed to buy a car outright. Screw all of those idiotic “Millennials are killing everything!” opinion pieces; their parents and grandparents have done little to ensure college would not burden them as much or more than an automobile payment.

Or a mortgage. I realized, too, that I am financing and paying taxes on a garage and a driveway I rarely use. I must trek out and shovel tons of snow every year to keep that rarely-used driveway clean; when it’s too much to do by hand, I break out the gas-guzzling, exhaust-belching snowblower.

All in service to a rapidly depreciating fossil-fueled demi-god with a deteriorating finish and in need of an oil change. I’ve become an adherent of a cargo cult, who has for too long believed that possessing this object would yield some greater blessing from the great god of capitalism. Instead of throwing several handfuls of dollars per mile traveled into a gaping maw I should be riding my bike or taking a bus.

When the rest of the U.S. wakes up to this same reality, the real earth-shattering shift will begin. Perhaps it already has.

What happens to a people when they lose their religion? We’re about to find out.
__________
Food for thought:
U.S. automakers question possible excess capacity – but is the challenge too much manufacturing capacity or too little buyers’ capacity due to decades of stagnant wages?

If carmakers like Volvo are already committed to switching completely to electric while entire cities and countries are forcing fossil fuel’s phase out, are potential car buyers simply driving their gas guzzlers to death until the industry has completely migrated?

Or maybe the future isn’t on the road but in the air; will buyers save their pennies for a flying car?

Secrecy News just released an NSA notice to Congress of authorized disclosure of classified information. The notice was dated December 13, just two days before 60 Minutes had a solicitous piece on the NSA.

Here’s the classified information the NSA says they gave what must be 60 Minutes.

The reference to assisting in locating hostages probably map to the metadata analysis of pirates done onscreen (albeit with altered phone numbers).

But what’s not there in unredacted form — at least beyond the vague description of “USG efforts to mitigate cyber threats” was the China kaboom story told on the show.

John Miller: Could a foreign country tomorrow topple our financial system?

Gen. Keith Alexander: I believe that a foreign nation could impact and destroy major portions of our financial system, yes.

John Miller: How much of it could we stop?

Gen. Keith Alexander: Well, right now it would be difficult to stop it because our ability to see it is limited.

One they did see coming was called the BIOS Plot. It could have been catastrophic for the United States. While the NSA would not name the country behind it, cyber security experts briefed on the operation told us it was China. Debora Plunkett directs cyber defense for the NSA and for the first time, discusses the agency’s role in discovering the plot.

Debora Plunkett: One of our analysts actually saw that the nation state had the intention to develop and to deliver, to actually use this capability– to destroy computers.

John Miller: To destroy computers.

Debora Plunkett: To destroy computers. So the BIOS is a basic input, output system. It’s, like, the foundational component firmware of a computer. You start your computer up. The BIOS kicks in. It activates hardware. It activates the operating system. It turns on the computer.

This is the BIOS system which starts most computers. The attack would have been disguised as a request for a software update. If the user agreed, the virus would’ve infected the computer.

John Miller: So, this basically would have gone into the system that starts up the computer, runs the systems, tells it what to do.

Debora Plunkett: That’s right.

John Miller: –and basically turned it into a cinderblock.

Debora Plunkett: A brick.

John Miller: And after that, there wouldn’t be much you could do with that computer.

Debora Plunkett: That’s right. Think about the impact of that across the entire globe. It could literally take down the U.S. economy.

John Miller: I don’t mean to be flip about this. But it has a kind of a little Dr. Evil quality– to it that, “I’m going to develop a program that can destroy every computer in the world.” It sounds almost unbelievable.

Debora Plunkett: Don’t be fooled. There are absolutely nation states who have the capability and the intentions to do just that.

John Miller: And based on what you learned here at NSA. Would it have worked?

Debora Plunkett: We believe it would have. Yes.

As I noted at the time, the story — the claim that a country of 1.3 billion people who have become very interdependent with the United States would want to destroy the US economy — was a bit absurd.

I’ll need to go back and review this, but the jist of the scary claim at the heart of the report is that the NSA caught China planning a BIOS plot to shut down the global economy.

To.

Shut.

Down.

The.

Global.

Economy.

Of course, if that happened, it’d mean a goodly percentage of China’s 1.3 billion people would go hungry, which would lead to unbelievable chaos in China, which would mean the collapse of the state in China, the one thing the Chinese elite want to prevent more than anything.

But the NSA wants us to believe that this was actually going to happen.

That China was effectively going to set off a global suicide bomb. Strap on the economy in a cyber-suicide vest and … KABOOOOOOOM!

And the NSA heroically thwarted that attack.

That’s what they want us to believe and some people who call themselves reporters are reporting as fact.

Anyway, like I said, no unredacted mention that this was among the classified information shared with CBS. Even accounting for the fact that NSA didn’t identify the country in question to CBS, even the description of the plot would seem to be classified.

If it were true.

But it doesn’t appear on the list of classified things revealed to CBS.

At about 10:46 yesterday morning, Andrea Mitchell reported that ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson was expected to be named Donald Trump’s Secretary of State.

Donald Trump is expected to nominate ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, two sources close to the transition process told NBC News on Saturday.

The 64-year-old veteran oil executive has no government or diplomatic experience, although he has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The pick would put to rest weeks-long speculation of who would earn the post as the U.S.’s top diplomat, and would place Tillerson fourth in line to the presidency.

[snip]

Tillerson, of Wichita Falls, Texas, has already notified his corporate board about taking on the new role, sources told NBC News.

Since then, the chattering class has discussed the Tillerson nomination at length, focusing mostly on his close ties to Vladimir Putin (see this report by Steve Coll, who wrote a book on Exxon’s private empire), not the fact that such a nomination would further demonstrate that Trump plans on reversing any efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change as President. Curiously, Russian hawks turned oil company players Condi Rice and Robert Gates reportedly recommended him. In the face of a potentially problematic confirmation battle, Trump’s campaign has since tried to deflate that trial balloon, suggesting the pick won’t be announced for another few days.

While the chattering class was focusing on Tillerson and on competing stories about why Russia hacked Hillary Clinton’s team, something else was happening: oil states were agreeing to cut production. At first, yesterday morning before Mitchell’s scoop, it was just the Saudi led OPEC states, making good on a plan announced November 30.

But then, yesterday afternoon, something unexpected happened. Russia and other non-OPEC petro-states joined in, and Saudi Arabia claimed it would cut production even further.

Saudi Arabia signaled it’s ready to cut oil production more than expected, a surprise announcement made minutes after Russia and several non-other OPEC countries pledged to curb output next year.

Taken together, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’s first deal with its rivals since 2001 and the Saudi comments represent a forceful effort by producers to wrest back control of the global oil market, depressed by persistent oversupply and record inventories.

“This is shock and awe by Saudi Arabia,” said Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd. in London. “It shows the commitment of Riyadh to rebalance the market and should end concerns about OPEC delivering the deal.”

Oil prices have surged more than 15 percent since OPEC announced Nov. 30 it will cut production for the first time in eight years, rising this week briefly above $55. The price rise has propelled the shares of energy groups from Exxon Mobil Corp. to shale firms such as Continental Resources Inc.

[snip]

[N]on-OPEC countries agreed to reduce production by 558,000 barrels a day, suggesting he had been waiting for the deal before committing to further cuts. The non-OPEC reduction is equal to the anticipated demand growth next year in China and India, according to data from the International Energy Agency.

We’ll see whether these commitments actually take place; such promises have a way of being broken, or at least cheated on.

Nevertheless, this signals that the petro-states — even those that worked to get Trump and his petro-cabinet elected — are finally going to work in concert to raise prices again.

Throughout the election, I kept remembering the Saudis could do such a thing, which would have tanked Obama’s “recovery.” High gas prices in 2008 were already making things difficult for John McCain, even before Wall Street crashed the global economy.

They waited, but even with dirt cheap oil prices, the pro-Saudi candidate lost.

Now prices are likely to go up — maybe not all that much, but consumers won’t be paying $2.50 for gas anymore, which will make their economic malaise all the worse.

In this roundup: Turkey, pipelines, and a border not meant to be crossed.

It’s nearly the end of the final Monday of 2016’s General Election campaign season. This shit show is nearly over. Thank every greater power in the universe we made it this far through these cumulative horrors.

Speaking of horrors, this Monday’s movie short is just that — a simple horror film, complete with plenty of bloody gritty gore. Rating on it is mature, not for any adult content but for its violence. The film is about illegal immigrants who want more from life, but it plays with the concepts of alien identity and zombie-ism. Who are the illegals, the aliens, the zombies? What is the nature of the predator and their prey? Does a rational explanation for the existence of the monstrous legitimize the horror they perpetuate in any way?

The logline for this film includes an even shorter tag line: Some borders aren’t meant to be crossed. This is worth meditating on after the horrors we’ve seen this past six months. Immigrants and refugees aren’t the monsters. And women aren’t feeble creatures to be marginalized and counted out.

Should also point out this film’s production team is mostly Latin American. This is the near-future of American storytelling and film. I can’t wait for more.

Tough Turkey
The situation in Turkey is extremely challenging, requiring diplomacy a certain Cheeto-headed candidate is not up to handling and will screw up if he places his own interests ahead of that of the U.S. and the rest of the world.

• Luxembourg’s foreign minister compares Erdoğan’s purge to Nazi Germany (Deutsche Welle) — Yeah, I can’t argue with this when a political party representing an ethnic minority and a group sharing religious dogma are targeted for removal from jobs, arrest and detention.
• Op-Ed: Erdoğan targeting critics of all kinds (Guardian) — Yup. Media, judges, teachers, persons of Kurdish heritage or Gulenist religious bent, secularists, you name it. Power consolidation in progress. Democracy, my left foot.
• HDP boycotts Turkish parliament after the arrest of its leaders (BBC) — Erdoğan claimed the arrested HDP leaders were in cahoot with the PKK, a Kurdish group identified as a terrorist organization. You’ll recall HDP represents much of Turkey’s Kurdish minority. But Erdoğan also said he doesn’t care if the EU calls him a dictator; he said the EU abets terrorism. Sure. Tell the cities of Paris and Brussels that one. Think Erdoğan has been taking notes from Trump.
• U.S. and Turkish military leaders meet to work out Kurd-led ops against ISIS (Guardian) — Awkward. Turkish military officials were still tetchy about an arrangement in which Kurdish forces would act against ISIS in Raqqa, Syria, about 100 miles east of Aleppo. The People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia — the Kurdish forces — will work in concert with Arab members of Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) coalition in Raqqa to remove ISIS. Initial blame aimed at the PKK for a car bomb after HDP members were arrested heightened existing tensions between Erdoğan loyalists and the Kurds, though ISIS later took responsibility for the deadly blast. Depending on whose take one reads, the Arab part of SDF will lead the effort versus any Kurdish forces. Turkey attacked YPG forces back in August while YPG and Turkey were both supposed to be routing ISIS.

In the background behind Erdoğan’s moves to consolidate power under the Turkish presidency and the fight to eliminate ISIS from Syria and neighboring territory, there is a struggle for control of oil and gas moving through or by Turkey.

Russia lost considerable revenue after oil prices crashed in 2014. A weak ruble has helped but to replace lost revenue based on oil’s price, Russia has increased output to record levels. Increase supply only reduces price, especially when Saudi Arabia, OPEC producers, and Iran cannot agree upon and implement a production limit. If Russia will not likewise agree to production curbs, oil prices will remain low and Russia’s revenues will continue to flag.

Increasing pipelines for both oil and gas could bolster revenues, however. Russia can literally throttle supply near its end of hydrocarbon pipelines and force buyers in the EU and everywhere in between to pay higher rates — the history of Ukrainian-Russian pipeline disputes demonstrates this strategy. Bypassing Ukraine altogether would help Russia avoid both established rates and conflict there with the west. The opportunities encourage Putin to deal with Erdoğan, renormalizing relations after Turkey shot down a Russian jet last November. Russia and Turkey had met in summer of 2015 to discuss a new gas pipeline; they’ve now met again in August and in October to return to plans for funding the same pipeline.

A previous pipeline ‘war’ between Russia and the west ended in late 2014. This conflict may only have been paused, though. Between Russia’s pressure to sell more hydrocarbons to the EU, threats to pipelines from PKK-attributed terrorism and ISIS warfare near Turkey’s southwestern border, and implications that Erdoğan has been involved in ISIS’ sales of oil to the EU, Erdoğan may be willing to drop pursuit of EU membership to gain more internal control and profit from Russia’s desire for more hydrocarbon revenues. In the middle of all this mess, Erdoğan has expressed a desire to reinstate the death penalty for alleged coup plotters and dissenters — a border too far for EU membership since death penalty is not permitted by EU law.

This situation requires far more diplomatic skill than certain presidential candidates will be able to muster. Certainly not from a candidate who doesn’t know what Aleppo is, and certainly not from a candidate who thinks he is the only solution to every problem.

Cybery miscellany

• Tesco bank shut down cards temporarily to stop attacks on accounts (Bloomberg)– Tesco bank, the financial arm of UK’s Tesco grocery store chain, halted card transactions in order to stop widespread breaches of client accounts. Some reports said as many as 20,000 accounts had been attacked, with amounts ranging from a handful to several hundred pounds per account. Little detail yet about the breach mechanism.
• Kremlin email allegedly hacked by Ukraine (NakedSecurity) — You knew this was coming, right? Following this stuff is like the old Mad Magazine Spy vs. Spy comic. East hacks West, then West hacks East, hijinks ensue.
• Cisco’s job application site leaked applicants’ personal data (The Register) — Not good; the company’s mobile site was affected for limited windows of time and has now been fixed. I’ve run into this before with Fortune 500 companies’ career portal sites. Job applications often include input fields for Social Security numbers along with home address information — more than enough to steal someone’s identity.
• Facebook’s Zuckerberg may not be helping humans with approach to AI (Three Pound Brain) — op-ed which should give you pause about monolithic technology companies and their development of artificial intelligence for profit.

That’s it for now. I’ll put up an open thread dedicated to all things election in the morning. Brace yourselves.

In this roundup: Dakota Access Pipeline news, Hawaiian sovereignty and other indigenous peoples news, the death of space art, and fusion jazz.

It’s Friday — time for some jazz. This time it’s eastern-western fusion, melding Spanish flamenco and Indian classical music. The embedded video here is a real treat, an entire hour and 13 minute concert featuring Anoushka Shankar on sitar, Melon Jimenes on guitar, and Sandra Carrasco’s vocals. My favorite cut is Baleria which begins at 0:42:10 in this video. It feels like the high point of the concert to me, where all the artists are in the same state of flow at this point. I really shouldn’t minimize the contributions of the other artists here — Sanjeev Shankar on the shenhai, Pirashanna Thevarajah on several different percussion instruments, and El Pirana on the cajon — all add incredible depth. Sanjeev Shankar’s shenhai sounds so human in Traveller; I’d really love to hear El Pirana in other jazz work, will have to hunt down more of his work.

Problematic pipeline

• Militarized law enforcement threatening DAPL protesters after prayer session (Indian Country) — The photos featured in the article at this link don’t do justice to the threat from law enforcement.
• Note Twitter user @notaxiwarrior’s feed beginning 28-SEP through yesterday showing law enforcement carrying shotguns and automatic weapons, and in at least one case aiming their weapon at protesters. The thread indicates police used tear gas and flash-bang grenades on a prayer group of mostly women and children. Same thread shows a possible contract agent provocateur who may have been trying to incite the protesters to violence.
• Low-flying aircraft may have dropped chemicals on protesters; 21 arrested (EcoWatch) — It’s not clear from videos and photos here and across the internet what one or more planes may have dropped. Some protesters believed Facebook may have halted streaming. At one point in a video police are loading their weapons. Nauseating to watch and listen.
• Oil company CEO thinks jobs, economic opportunity will stop DAPL protests (TelesurTV) — James Volker, CEO of Whiting Petroleum, thinks contracting Native American-owned companies for oil services and water hauling will make the affected tribes happy. White male privilege, much? How hard is it to understand the pipeline scars lands which never really belonged to whites, desecrating burial grounds and religiously significant sites, while putting land and water at risk of permanent damage? Imagine the outcry if a Chinese- or Saudi-owned company wanted to rip up the battlefield at Gettysburg for an oil pipeline. But Volker said “he was sensitive to Native American concerns over the pipeline and that he ‘wouldn’t want necessarily a pipeline to go through the cemetery where all my relatives are buried.'” Right. And he’d feel all better about it if somebody offered him a a few paltry bucks for his mother’s grave.
• Anti-pipeline protest in Vermont culminates in $500K bank account closure (Times Argus) — At a Mountpelier branch of TD Bank, locals protested both a planned Vermont Gas pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline. A TD Bank customer closed her $500K account because she was disgusted with TD Bank’s role financing pipeline construction.

Other indigenous news

• DOI looks at government-to-government relations with future sovereign Hawaii (NBC) — Protesters are unhappy, however, with the change in U.S. Department of Interior position allowing a Native Hawaiian government. In a nutshell, it’s not up to the DOI to tell Native Hawaiians and a sovereign Hawaii how to operate just as no illegal occupying force has a right to define the nation it illegally occupies.
• First Nations’ children ‘sold’ to Americans as recently as 1982 (CBC) — Heartbreaking read; between 1960-1982, indigenous children were taken from their families and ‘sold’ to adoptive families in the U.s., often labeled as ‘special needs’ when they were simply First Nations’ descendants.
• Interview: Kichwa leader José Fachín on oil and Peru (Guardian) — Fachín discusses a permanent protest underway, fighting against chronic oil pipeline leaks fouling land and water lived on by Kichwa and other indigenous peoples in Peru. Hard to imagine this persistent assault on indigenous peoples’ environment becoming just as embedded here in the U.S. — fossil fuel extraction must stop.
• Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi artist commemorates the loss of indigenous’ history in Sydney art installation (Guardian) — Nearly all artifacts of Australia’s indigenous peoples were destroyed in 1882 when an exhibition building burnt to the ground. Artist Jonathan Jones marks this epic loss with barrangal dyara (skin and bones) constructed from 15,000 gypsum shields marking the outline of the former building site.

Longread: Is ‘Space Art’ dying?
Interesting read about the history of space art and its impact on science. I wonder, though, whether space art has really been dying, or if it has merely been surpassed by the real beauty of space our current technology has been able to capture? Just browse through NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day — phenomenal images captured by cameras. Is the real problem space art faces a matter of imagination; are we not encouraging young artists to ponder what’s out there we have yet to capture with telescopes, space missions, and cameras?

Week’s over, already been tequila thirty here for nearly an hour. Have a nice weekend!

In this roundup: Recalling 25 years of Nirvana’s Nevermind, petro-pipeline-economic challenges, lead poisoning, anthrax, and cops gone wild.

Hard to believe it was 25 years ago this past weekend when Seattle grunge band Nirvana released its second and best-selling album Nevermind. This particular collection of songs continues to have deep impact on rock, in no small part because it gave voice to social alienation and frustrations of its decade.

Grunge as a genre petered out by the late 1990s, perhaps in response the impact of Cobain’s suicide, the aging of its audience, and the bursting of the dot com bubble. I’ve wondered, though, if its overwhelmingly white male angst merely went underground, disrupted by 9/11 and redirected toward the war on terror. The grunge generation was the first to be wholly free of the draft, born toward the end of or after the Vietnam War. It had no common goal, no shared sacrifice, at a time when technology became incredibly powerful and a key driver behind economic growth.

Then the dot com bomb, the towers fell, and the grunge generation was forced to look away from its navel, but not toward a positive aim with measurable success defined by concrete benchmarks. It was offered an identity defined by negatives: not ‘radical Muslim’, not ‘Old Europe’, not anything apart from with-Bush/Cheney because it wasn’t popular to be against them for the sub-40-year-old crowd.

Now that +20 years have passed, how are the grunge generation defined?

UPDATE 9:30 AM EDT — News worth updating and inserting higher in post: Congress avoided a government shutdown while simultaneously funding Flint, Michigan’s water system aid as well as Zika virus response. The amount allocated for Flint will be somewhere between $170 million (House) and $220 (Senate). It’s not anywhere near the amount needed for complete removal of damaged water mains and lead piping, but it’s a good start. Snappy synopsis here.

See also this particularly offensive POS from a hotel and tourism advocate in Puerto Rico, published before the deal. Too bad Mr. Miguel Vega will never have to actually carry a Zika infected fetus; his hand wringing over Zika fear is a perfect example of male privilege, applied on behalf of his employers. The real problem with Zika response has always been a lack of knowledge about the virus as well as inadequate concern for the welfare of citizens — not fear. /end update

Fossil Feud
All related to oil, all equally distressing.

• OPEC to cut oil output (Bloomberg) — The move supports the Saudis’ need for more cash. Russia will tweak its output levels after OPEC has finished setting a firmer level, though it pumped a record amount in September, tripling August’s daily output.
• Iran’s oil minister described as ‘happy’ (Bloomberg via Twitter) — Bijan Zanganeh’s reaction as the OPEC conference in Algiers ended Wednesday.
• Congress overrode Obama’s veto of 9/11 bill (Insurance Journal) — In spite of the White House’s effort to kill The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), the bill will become law after today’s rare override. The bill allows 9/11 victims and their families to sue Saudi Arabia for damages. Passage of the bill may cause the Saudis to delay sales of $10 billion of an international ‘megabond’ as investors could be put off by risks to RSA from lawsuits. But if oil prices go up due to production cuts, the bonds may not be as critical to RSA’s plans.
• Reps. Grijalva and Ruiz say Dakota Access Pipeline approvals did not comply with law (Indian Country) — After a meeting between Democratic Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Raul Ruiz and representatives of Standing Rock Sioux, Cheyenne River Sioux, Lakota, Apache tribes late last week, the representatives called for the Army Corps of Engineers’ permits to be revoked. Full assessments for environmental and historical impact had not been completed before the permits were issued; ACOE may have acted under the influence of pipeline and oil companies. Grijalva and Ruiz are members of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs. It’s not clear what will happen next given the anticipated rise in oil prices and the impending general election.
• Monbiot op-ed: Fossil fuels must remain in the ground to meet Paris Agreement (Guardian-UK) — Fossil fuel industry’s own data shows that current extraction rates and plans will push global temperatures above 1.5C-2C, undermining the Paris agreement on climate change. The only sure way to comply with the temperature goals is to stop extracting fossil fuels.

Use the anticipated increase in oil prices as incentive to reduce its use. Put on the big person’s panties and say no to pipelines and more extraction. Push for incentives to conserve while developing alternative energy. It’s long past time.

Miscellany

• Police across U.S. misusing databases for personal reasons (AP via Salt Lake Tribune) — After conducting illegal searches of confidential information including addresses and Social Security numbers, police have been punished hundreds of times over the last three years. The article says the number of unauthorized database searches identified during reporting are “unquestionably an undercount.” It’s not clear from this report if these databases also include information gathered from surveillance including Stingray use
• CDC’s flawed report left East Chicago IN children exposed to lead (Reuters) — Not clear how or why CDC’s 5-year-old report claimed “nearly 100 percent” of children’s blood lead levels had been tested in an area once home to a lead refinery. In reality, only 5 percent to 20 percent had been tested, and 22 percent of children around the West Calumet housing development area tested positive for elevated blood lead. This situation is so fishy; in my opinion, the Department of Justice should look more deeply into this case and not merely assist with obtaining settlement funding. Somebody inside the CDC did more than omit data or misstate conclusions.
• Mystery of USSR anthrax outbreak uncovered (Twitter) — Lifehacker’s science and health writer Beth Skwarecki tweeted a brief story about a Soviet-era anthrax epidemic. It’s a quick and fascinating read (unrelated to the recent anthrax outbreak, to the best of my knowledge).

Quite enough without adding a longer read or listen, huh? Catch you later!

I need a break — a change of pace after the last several day’s nonstop doom-and-gloom observing what has become an American version of the Day of the Dead. Add the nauseating bullshit misogynist circus piling on the “church faint” by a post-menopausal woman wearing too much clothing in humid weather while recovering from pneumonia. It’s unrelenting ridiculousness which can only be broken by the injection of dark humor.

I like this young director Almog Avidan Antonir’s body of short works, including this little zombie love story. Looking forward whatever he might have next up his sleeve.

The Dakotas

• Lawmaker unintentionally makes armed law enforcement drones legal in North Dakota (Independent-UK) — Way to go, dude. Legislator submitted a bill to outlaw armed drones; wretched police union got to the bill with revisions and now law enforcement can use drones armed with non-lethal force. North Dakota is now the first state in the U.S. to legalize armed drones. Want to bet law enforcement is already preparing to use this technology against pipeline protesters?
• South Dakota Yankton Sioux filed suit against U.S. government over pipeline (Indian Country Today) — While media focused attention on North Dakota’s Standing Rock Sioux protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Yankton Sioux in South Dakota filed against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Though the planned pipeline runs through tribal treaty lands, the government did not complete an environmental study or a consult with the affected tribe — same complaint in South as in North Dakota. The pipeline company, Energy Transfer, did not use tribe members to identify any challenges during planning of the pipeline route.
• Trespass charges against journalist Goodman blows off First Amendment and Justice Dept. (Committee to Protect Journalists) — CPJ’s Carlos Lauria said the warrant issued for Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman is “a transparent attempt to intimidate reporters” covering the NoDAPL protests. Morton County’s warrant ignores Justice Dept’s joint statement with Interior Dept halting pipeline construction, in which the departments said, “we fully support the rights of all Americans to assemble and speak freely. …” Goodman clearly identified herself as a reporter.
• Oil producers whine about pipeline delays interfering with cheap oil (Fortune) — These guys are just not catching the cluestick. It may take shareholder activism to wake these morons up about the end of fossil fuels and a need for entirely new business models instead of forcing oil pipelines through.
• Standing Rock: a new civil rights movement? (Guardian) — Op-ed looks at the birth of a new movement where environmental and civil rights activism join forces to protect indigenous people and Missouri River — the longest river in the continental U.S.

Flint Water Crisis

• Former state epidemiologist not talking about possible plea deal (MLive.com) — Corinne Miller, now retired, was arraigned in August on felony misconduct and misdemeanor neglect of duty. Miller suppressed action on children’s blood lead levels and told Michigan Dept of Health and Human Services employees to delete emails related to the blood lead data.
• Water bill moves forward in Senate (The Hill) — Emergency funding for Flint and its lead-contaminated water system closer to passing as part of a $9.4 billion bill for water-related infrastructure and clean drinking water. The bill also includes assistance for Louisiana’s flood recovery. Money for Flint’s aid may be paid by cutting the Energy Dept’s Advanced Vehicle Manufacturing Technology loan program.
• Water filters still needed by Flint residents through end of year, possibly longer (Detroit Free Press) — There’s no clear end to the water crisis, even though funding may soon be available. Thresholds for lead levels have not yet been agreed upon by state and federal officials. The amount of damage to the city’s water system continues to complicate recovery efforts.

Still Picking on Volkswagen

• VW engineer plead guilty to conspiracy, wire fraud and violating Clean Air Act (Jurist.org) — The record of engineer James Robert Liang’s June indictment was unsealed on Friday, revealing he and co-conspirators designed, implemented, and lied about emissions controls technology which evaded emissions standards. One interesting bit of new information is the involvement of an unnamed third-party engineering company partially owned by Volkswagen, referred to in the indictment as “Company A.”
• Awkward: Liang to be sentenced during North American International Auto Show (Detroit News) — Four months from now, smack in the middle press week for Detroit’s 2017 NAIAS, VW engineer Liang will be sentence in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan. This op-ed notes Liang’s plea hints at a much-larger conspiracy in VW pursued by investigators. Somebody had to sign off on this design, at a minimum. And somebody had to tell Bosch what and how to make the non-compliant electronic controls units.

Longread: Rakoff on Fiss and rights under a War on Terror
United States District Judge Jed S. Rakoff looks at a collection of essays by legal scholar Owen Fiss, written over the last 13 years while the U.S. the so-called “War on Terror.”

Toodles!