On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the Obama administration had spied on the Israeli government and, in the process, roped in communications the Netanyahu administration had with members of the U.S. Congress.

This news sparked a denunciation by Florida senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio. “Obviously people read this report, they have a right to be concerned this morning about it,” said Rubio on Fox News Wednesday morning. “They have a right to be concerned about the fact that while some leaders around the world are no longer being targeted, one of our strongest allies in the Middle East — Israel — is. I actually think it might be worse than what some people might think, but this is an issue that we’ll keep a close eye on, and the role that I have in the intelligence committee.”

Rubio’s newfound objection to surveillance appears to be limited to spying on the Israeli government. The senator has been a long-time defender of the NSA’s mass surveillance. “There is no evidence that these programs have been systematically abused,” he said in 2014, decrying what he described as “paranoia” around surveillance programs.

The previous year, he defended spying on foreign government officials, saying that “everybody spies on everybody, it’s just a fact.” In the most recent presidential debate, he accused rivals, like Ted Cruz, of endangering U.S. security by supporting modest reforms to the surveillance regime.

One reason Rubio may be carving out a special objection to spying on the Israeli government is that he is competing in the so-called Adelson primary — a contest for the financial backing of the pro-Israel casino magnate who spent $150 million during the 2012 election.

Already, Rubio has locked in the support of Paul Singer, a billionaire hedge funder who has invested tens of millions of dollars in promoting pro-Israel causes. Singer hosted a fundraising event for Rubio in New York City earlier this month.

As of the time of publication, the Rubio campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Rubio Outraged by Spying on Israel’s Government, OK with Mass Surveillance of Americans appeared first on The Intercept.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has assailed Bernie Sanders for supporting a small payroll tax increase to finance paid leave (the FAMILY Act) and universal health care. Her top domestic policy adviser, Ann O’Leary, pushed out Clinton’s line that she is “the only candidate” who wants to “raise your incomes — not middle class taxes”:

O’Leary was offering a very different take just a few years back, however. In an issue brief co-authored with the Center for American Progress’ Heather Boushey and Alexandra Mitukiewicz, she wrote of the “economic benefits of family and leave insurance,” touting the FAMILY Act, saying it would “relieve the financial burden of taking unpaid time off for many families, particularly low-income families.” O’Leary noted that the framework for this proposal was “first proposed by the Center for American Progress. … Benefits would be paid through a newly created insurance fund, funded by employee and employer payroll contributions of two-tenths of 1 percent of a worker’s wages, or 2 cents for every $10 in wages.”

She concluded the brief by writing that there “is every reason to provide this critical protection to America’s workforce by passing and implementing the FAMILY Act — and no reason to delay.”

But for Hillary Clinton, this tiny increase in payroll taxes is not only a reason to delay, but a reason to oppose the legislation altogether — something O’Leary has apparently discarded her own previous advocacy for.

It is worth noting that this position puts O’Leary and her boss Clinton in opposition to 21 Senate Democratic caucus sponsors of the FAMILY Act and 116 in the House of Representatives.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The post Clinton Senior Adviser Authored Paper Arguing for Paid Leave Proposal She Now Opposes appeared first on The Intercept.

Democracy Now! 2015-12-08 Tuesday

• Headlines for December 08, 2015
• "I Want a World of Peace": In Exclusive Interview UK Labour Head Jeremy Corbyn Opposes Bombing Syria
• "A Legal Black Hole": Jeremy Corbyn Calls for Closing of Guantánamo, Hails Release of Shaker Aamer
• Jeremy Corbyn Connects Western Bombing Campaigns & Refugee Crisis: "What Goes Around Comes Around"
• War & Climate Change: Jeremy Corbyn on the Brutal Quest for Oil & the Need for a Sustainable Planet
• Top Climate Expert: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk
• "Loss and Damage": U.S. Stymies Push for Compensation for Climate Devastation at U.N. Climate Summit
• Indian PM Links Worst Floods in a Century to Climate Change as More Cities Face Extreme Weather

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Any time you find yourself doing a repetitive task in emacs, you should stop and think about whether you could be using a macro to automate it. To use a macro you start a recording and do whatever edits or other commands you need for your task, then stop the macro and execute it to repeat the task as many times as you like. There is a great introduction and overview of macros at emacs-fu.

I wanted to pick out from that article a useful feature of macros that I have neglected until recently. Normally a macro is saved until you record a new one, in which case it is overwritten. However it is possible to give your macro and name and then save it for future use.

At the moment I am rewriting some LaTeX notes into org mode to use in lecture slides. This involves several repetitive tasks, like converting a section heading like this

\subsection{Object on vertical spring}

into this

** Object on vertical spring

The trick to making a good macro is to make it as general as possible, like searching to move to a character instead of just moving the cursor. In this case I did the following:

1. Start with the cursor somewhere on the line containing the subsection and hit C-x C-( to start the macro recording
2. C-a to go to the start of the line
3. C-SPC to set the mark
4. C-s { to search forward to the “{” character
5. RET to exit the search
6. C-d to delete the region
7. Type “** ” to add my org style heading
8. C-e to move to the end of the line
9. BACKSPACE to get rid of the last “}”
10. C-x ) to end the recording

Now I can replay my macro with C-x e but I know I’ll need this again many times in the future so I use M-x name-last-kbd-macro and enter a name for the macro (e.g. bjm/sec-to-star). Now I go to my emacs config file and add the following

;;macro to convert latex sections to org-mode subheadings
;;use M-x insert-kbd-macro to add the following line
(fset 'bjm/sec-to-star
   [?\C-a ?\C-  ?\C-s ?\{ return ?\C-d ?* ?* ?  ?\C-e backspace ?\C-x])

;;bind this to a key
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b *") 'bjm/sec-to-star)

Where the fset line was added by using M-x insert-kbd-macro and then selecting the macro name I just used to save the macro. Finally I bind this to a key for ease of use in the future.

You can use M-x edit-named-kbd-macro to see a nicer view of your macro and tweak it if needed.

Finally, note that macros are not limited to simple editing commands. You can e.g. create, edit and save new files or do other more complex procedures within a macro.

I present a fantasy narrative of a soldier's life during a raid in Cappadocia. The details are all taken from Byzantine sources.

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In July, British tabloid the Daily Mail came out with a screaming headline: “EXCLUSIVE: Video shows Hillary Clinton boarding private jet just hours after launching global-warming push.” Clinton’s strategy to slash carbon dioxide emissions, the Mail gleefully reported, didn’t preclude her from traveling on an aircraft that burns hundreds of gallons of jet fuel every hour.

Air travel by environmentalists has long been an easy punching bag for conservative pundits — and private jets like Clinton’s probably deserve some sneering. But for those of us who have to make do with commercial airliners, flying is becoming much easier to defend. Michael Sivak, a transportation researcher at the University of Michigan, has found that from 1970 to 2010, the amount of energy consumed per mile, per passenger, on an average domestic flight dropped 74 percent. From 1968 to 2014, the fuel efficiency of new airplanes improved 45 percent, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).

For this good news, we can thank airlines’ obsession with fuel, which accounts for roughly one-third of their expenses. At Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft manufacturer, there’s a rule of thumb: A 1 percent improvement in efficiency adds up to $1 million in fuel savings over the course of a single-aisle plane’s 25-year life span.

How are aircraft manufacturers making planes more efficient? For starters, they’re continually fine-tuning jet engines to create more thrust, by squeezing hotter, higher-pressure air into the turbines and increasing the flow of air around the jet. Planes are also becoming more aerodynamic with design changes like drag-reducing wingtip fins and a more slippery paint inspired by sharkskin. They’re getting lighter, as manufacturers experiment with new composite materials and shave ounces everywhere from the engine to the onboard entertainment system.

And they’re more crowded: Today the average domestic flight takes off with 84 percent of its seats filled, up from 70 percent in 2002, according to federal data. (The number of people flying has been on a steady incline since bottoming out after 9/11 and dipping again following the 2008 recession.) Add up these and other factors and, according to Sivak’s research, you’ll find that flying uses 52 percent less energy than driving does to move one person one mile.

All that sounds encouraging, but don’t give up just yet on your plans to drive to Mom’s house for the holidays. Sivak’s findings could be misleading, says Dan Rutherford, an aviation analyst at the ICCT, because they’re based on fuel efficiency data for U.S. passenger aircraft and cars during an average trip, which is nine miles for cars but more than 900 miles for planes. In other words, they show that the average car ride consumes more energy per mile, per passenger, than the average flight. But that’s like comparing apples and oranges, Rutherford says: “You don’t fly a plane to the corner store.” If a car and a plane both make a trip that’s between 300 and 500 miles, the math tips back in favor of cars.

That’s because cars get better fuel efficiency on the highway, and planes on short flights consume as much as 25 percent of their fuel during takeoff and landing. On longer flights, that peak burn rate is averaged out over more miles, meaning the overall fuel efficiency is better. In other words, the farther your flight, the more competitive its efficiency becomes compared with that of cars. (For what it’s worth, the best way to get home for the holidays is on a bus: Rutherford found that for trips between 300 and 500 miles, intercity buses have about three times the per-passenger fuel efficiency of an average car.)

The cars versus planes debate has other confounding factors: Due to the burn rate on takeoff and landing, any flight that requires a connection is a nonstarter, climate-wise. Meanwhile, scientists have estimated that the global-warming impact of airplane emissions at cruising altitude is up to four times greater than the impact when similar gases are released by cars on the ground.

Because airlines are so obsessed with lowering costs, they continue to tinker with technologies that will improve fuel efficiency. One of the most promising is an open-rotor jet engine that would get rid of the heavy casing surrounding the rotating fan blades and allow more air to flow around the jet, boosting propulsion. Recent tests by General Electric suggest this change could reduce fuel consumption by a quarter. Airlines are also exploring ways to use more biofuels. United, for example, will soon use on some flights fuel made partially from farm waste. And over the summer, the Obama administration lobbed another potential fuel efficiency incentive at airlines: a proposal to designate emissions from planes as a danger to human health. This would be an initial step toward implementing the nation’s first fuel efficiency standards for aircraft.

So, private jets aside, there’s no need to swear off flying altogether: Reduced-guilt aviation could be just over the horizon.

Image from New York Times video of mourners at the Place de la Republique in Paris.

At the time of the attacks in Paris, FAIR’s website led with a piece by Ben Norton (11/13/15) about US reporting on the ISIS bombing in Beirut—noting references to the civilian neighborhood targeted by the bombing as a Hezbollah “stronghold” (MSNBC, 11/13/15), “bastion” (Reuters, 11/12/15) or “area” (NPR, 11/12/15). Given this framing—and the generally limited amount of coverage granted to the Lebanese victims—it’s unsurprising that the Beirut terror failed to provoke the same sorrow, horror and identification among US audiences that the Paris massacres did.

It feels callous to question the allocation of outrage; empathy is in such short supply in this world that one hesitates to question it when it emerges. But as a long-time citizen of New York City, I’m all too aware of the weaponization of grief. The outpouring of no-context, ahistorical sympathy after 9/11 helped pave the way for a violent reaction that killed in Iraq alone roughly 150 times as many people as died in Lower Manhattan  that day—an opportunistic catastrophe that did more to mock than avenge those deaths.

Just as the question of Al-Qaeda’s motives in 2001 provoked more self-congratulation than serious inquiry (Extra! Update, 10/01), coverage of Paris in 2015 tends to skirt over political realities. Thus the New York Times (11/13/15) could report: “A stunned and confused French capital was again left to wonder: Why us? Once again?” The obvious answer was alluded to obliquely by a soccer stadium spectator: “With all the strikes in Syria, we’re not safe anymore.”

Readers were presumed to know this referred to the French bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria, which began in September, following aerial attacks against ISIS’s positions in Iraq that started last year (CNN, 9/27/15). Just last week, France joined in intensified strikes against ISIS-controlled oil fields in Syria (New York Times, 11/12/15). By last summer, Western airstrikes against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria had reportedly killed at least 459 civilians, including more than 100 children (Guardian, 8/3/15).

Nor does the piece asking “why us?” mention that France has been “the most prominent backer of Syria’s armed opposition” (Guardian, 12/7/12), giving funds to rebels trying to overthrow the Damascus government as early as 2012. When ISIS took advantage of the Syrian civil war to occupy large portions of the country, France doubled down by sending weapons directly to  insurgents, with President François Hollande saying that “we should not stop the support that we have given to these rebels who are the only ones to take part in the democratic process” just because such support had helped the apocalyptic ISIS movement to thrive (AFP, 8/21/14).

Photo accompanying New York Times article about French President François Hollande describing the Paris attacks as an “act of war.”

None of this background was  explained when the New York Times (11/14/15) reported Hollande’s assertion that the attacks in Paris were “an act of war,” as though France hadn’t long been making war on ISIS, and repeated without context his claim (using an Arabic acronym for ISIS) that “France, because it was foully, disgracefully and violently attacked, will be unforgiving with the barbarians from Daesh.”

Noting that France’s enthusiasm for military intervention in the Middle East long predated the Paris attacks puts one at risk of being mistaken for an apologist for ISIS war crimes. Indeed, one suspects that fear of such misidentification leads journalists to downplay or omit French violence in describing the context of the attacks. Such willful avoidance of history helps perpetuate the illusion that Western violence is the solution to ISIS’s terror—rather than one of its main causes.

Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.

Skepticism is the rule when US media covers terrorist attacks against official enemies. (photo: Alexei Nikolsky via AP/US News)

FAIR (11/13/15, 11/16/15, 11/17/15) has noted the contrast between US media coverage of Paris and Beirut after the militant ISIS movement claimed responsibility for terror attacks in both cities. It may be even more illuminating to look at media reactions to another ISIS-claimed disaster, the bombing of Metrojet Flight 9268, a Russian tourist plane that went down over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on October 31, killing all 217 people on board. When the victims of terror come from an official enemy state, it’s clear that different media rules apply.

Before it was determined that a bomb caused the crash, Associated Press‘s Jim Heintz (11/7/15) wrote a speculative piece that began, “No matter what caused the fatal crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt, the answer will almost certainly hit Russia hard—but not President Vladimir Putin.” Whether it was terrorism or mechanical failure, Heintz wrote, “Either answer could challenge Russia’s new self-confidence—but could also be used by Putin to advance his aims and reinforce his power.”

Needless to say, we’re not seeing a lot of coverage of how France’s François Hollande could use the Paris attacks “to advance his aims and reinforce his power.”

While US outlets were circumspect to the point of being unintelligible in drawing a connection between France’s war against ISIS in Syria/Iraq and the Paris attacks, AP had no trouble making it clear that Russia had been targeted not because of its values or symbols but because of its military attacks against a violent adversary: “A faction of the militant Islamic State group claimed it had downed the airliner in retaliation for Russia launching airstrikes on IS positions in Syria a month earlier.”

AP raised the question, seldom heard in the French context, of whether the terror attacks should lead Russia to rethink its military strategy in the Middle East:

The crash has provoked a national wave of grief and anxiety, and if terrorism is proven, many Russians could reconsider the wisdom of the country’s airstrikes in Syria against opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, which include IS…. But although such concerns could be strong, they are unlikely to gain enough momentum to threaten Putin’s policies or his hold on power.

The New York Times‘ Neil MacFarquhar (11/10/15) listed the Metrojet bombing as part of “a series of nasty shocks to Russia, some of them direct results of Mr. Putin’s actions”:

And last week, a Russian charter flight plummeted into the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board, in what British and American intelligence agencies suspect was a terrorist attack in response to the Kremlin’s military intervention in Syria.

Yet the basic reaction is to shrug and point a finger elsewhere, preferably at the West.

Imagine the response the Times would have gotten if, in the wake of the Paris massacre, one of its writers had chided the French for blaming anyone other than Hollande for the violence.

How the Washington Post depicts the aftermath of terrorism when the victims come from an unfavored nation. (photo: Khaled Elfiqi/European Pressphoto Agency)

Yet the Times‘ take was relatively sympathetic compared to a Washington Post editorial (11/6/15), which found in the mass killing of Russians new reasons to declare its enmity toward the Russian government. The Post had no doubt who was to blame for ISIS blowing up the airliner, and it wasn’t ISIS:

Yet to concede that the Islamic State might have penetrated Egyptian security at the Sharm el-Sheikh airport, and that Mr. Putin’s Syrian ad­ven­ture could have prompted the worst civil air attack in Russia’s history, would be not just an embarrassment but a potentially grievous political wound.

Comparing Putin to Egyptian ruler Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Post declared:

Both rulers have sold themselves as warriors courageously taking on the Islamic State and its affiliates; both are using that fight as a pretext to accomplish other ends, such as repressing peaceful domestic opponents and distracting attention from declining living standards.

France has likewise been enduring years of anemic growth, resulting in Hollande consistently coming in third behind the leading right-wing and far-right parties in polling about the 2017 elections. But you’re unlikely to see that brought up as a possible motivating factor when US media report on Hollande’s request for extended emergency powers, including “increased surveillance, soldiers on the streets, the ability to place people under house arrest and sweeping capabilities to carry out additional raids and searches by security forces” (USA Today, 11/18/15).

Because Russia’s government is considered to be an enemy of Washington, US media express skepticism about its interest in increasing its powers, suspecting it might have its own self-interest rather than the safety of its citizens foremost in mind. US news outlets depict Russia as living in a world of cause and effect, where Moscow’s own actions have an impact on how other nations and groups respond to it; it is not portrayed as a passive victim of others’ inexplicable violence. The Kremlin’s power is seen as finite, with its ability to achieve its ends not guaranteed by its good intentions and inexhaustible supply of willpower.

In other words, if you want US media to cover your government’s response to a terrorist attack in a way that’s actually useful to you as a citizen, you might get more news you can use if you live under an enemy regime rather than one counted as a friend of the United States.

Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.

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This week on CounterSpin: The Paris attacks by the group known as ISIS have dominated news outlets, but if the goal really is to prevent the recurrence of such violence, then reporting that eliminates political context can’t be the way forward. We talk about the differing ways corporate media report terrorist violence with FAIR’s own Jim Naureckas.

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Also on the show: In the wake of the Paris attacks, the word is that activism at the upcoming UN conference on climate change in that city may be restrained. But activism outside of these global gatherings is often the source of a clearer picture of where we stand on the problem, as opposed to where we need to be. Janet Redman, director of the Climate Policy Program at the Institute for Policy Studies, will join us to talk about that.

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As usual, we take a quick look back at the week’s press, including the New York Times‘ blood-soaked expert, David Brooks’ $120,000 vacation and police sexual assault.

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Democracy Now! 2015-11-19 Thursday

• Headlines for November 19, 2015
• Glenn Greenwald: "Shameless" U.S. Officials Exploit Paris Attacks to Defend Spying & Attack Snowden
• Glenn Greenwald on "Submissive" Media's Drumbeat for War and "Despicable" Anti-Muslim Scapegoating

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More on the 158 campaign donors here. It may not come as a surprise that they skew heavily Republican. One of them apparently brings home $68.5 million a month. After taxes.

Democracy Now! 2015-11-12 Thursday

• Headlines for November 12, 2015
• Center for American Progress Hosts Netanyahu as Leaked Emails Show Group Censored Staff on Israel
• Our Economy Is Not Working: Joseph Stiglitz on Widening Income Inequality & the Fight for $15
• "A Very Big Mistake": Joseph Stiglitz Slams Obama for Pushing the TPP
• Stiglitz: Sanders is Right - Everybody Has the Right to Healthcare, Sick Days and Family Leave

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Democracy Now! 2015-11-02 Monday

• Headlines for November 02, 2015
• The Endless War Grows: Obama Sends U.S. Forces to Syria, Reversing Pledge of No Boots on the Ground
• Andrew Bacevich: Ongoing Wars in Iraq & Syria Continue Decades of Failed U.S. Militarism in Mideast
• More Countries Than Ever Are Bombing Syria -- Will They Find a Way to Make Peace?
• Turkish President Erdogan Regains Parliamentary Majority in Vote Held Amid Violence & Fear

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Democracy Now! 2015-10-26 Monday

• Headlines for October 26, 2015
• Syria Burning: Charles Glass on the Roots & Future of the Deadly Conflict
• Charles Glass: Tony Blair is Right - Those Who Removed Saddam Hussein Share Blame for Rise of ISIL
• Knife-Wielding Israeli Settler Attacks Founder of Rabbis for Human Rights
• Voices of Rise Up October: Quentin Tarantino, Cornel West, Victims' Families Decry Police Violence
• Complicity in Neoslavery: Chris Hedges Calls Out Corporate America for Exploiting Prison Labor

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Democracy Now! 2015-10-21 Wednesday

• Headlines for October 21, 2015
• Prison for Exxon Execs? Lawmakers Seek Probe of Oil Giant for Hiding Knowledge of Climate Change
• Bill McKibben: Climate Activists Celebrate Obama's Arctic Drilling Freeze & Harper's Canadian Defeat
• U.S. Sells New Warships to Saudi Arabia Despite Warnings of War Crimes & Civilian Deaths in Yemen
• How a $100M Facebook Donation for Neoliberal School Reform Sparked a Grassroots Uprising in Newark

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Democracy Now! 2015-10-22 Thursday

• Headlines for October 22, 2015
• "Domestic Terrorism": Spate of Black Church Burnings Near Ferguson Raise New Hate Crime Fears
• Shaker Aamer: After 5,000 Days of Torment, Last British Prisoner at Guantanamo is Set for Release
• U.S. Ally Saudi Arabia Prepares to Behead, Crucify Pro-Democracy Protester Ali Mohammed al-Nimr
• "Where Does This End?": After Drone Papers Leaks, U.K. Gov't Has a Kill List of Its Own
• As Hillary Clinton Testifies Before GOP Panel, Friends of 2 Benghazi Victims Remember the Lives Lost

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Tues 10/20/15 Hr 2 JBS: Tues  Hr 2, JBS: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin. EastWestAccord.com.