SAR #15354

If we really wanted to change, we already would have.

Wayback Machine: Turns out that Juniper Networks, which provides encrypted networking and communications for the US government has been secretly and successfully hacked for three years. The hackers were good enough to defeat security systems and to change the security logs to erase their presence. No one knows what, or how much, was stolen. The usual suspects (China, Russia) are suspected, but it might have been some kid in Bayone, NJ. They don't know. Might as well have been using Hillary's email server.

Decoder Ring: The US military has upwards of 60 secret bases strung across Africa from which it operates drones neutralizing (sounds better than just 'killing') a growing jihadist presence in the "theater of operations". Or killing fields...

Fealty: At the UN, 177 countries voted to support Palestinians' right of self-determination. Israel/United States, several minor US dependencies, and Canada voted against the basic right of people to chose their own governments. To back it up the US is giving Israel $3.1 billion a year to keep the Palestinians in their place, soon to be raised to $5 billion, while Netanyahu threatened to strip 230,000 Palestinians of the right to live in Jerusalem.

What's Shaking? A 4.6 magnitude earthquake in northeastern British Columbia last August has been attributed to fracking, making it the largest fracking-induced earthquake on record. So far.

Follies: Macedonia's Lake Ohrid, the most biodiverse lake of its size in the world and home to 350 novel species, is going to be paved over so tourists can be flown in and fleeced. New Zealand has opened 3000 square kilometers of a marine sanctuary set aside for the critically endangered Maui dolphin for seismic blasting and exploratory drilling by the oil industry in search of even more surplus fossil fuels. The toxic mud from the dam burst by minng giants BHP Billiton and Vale SA's joint venture Samarco has reached the Atlantic off Brazil. A court, ruling that Samarco does not have the financial resources to pay for even a small part of the damage, has frozen the assets of the parent companies. To show its commitment to slowing global warming before we make the entire world uninhabitable, the US has pledged to spend almost as much on saving civilization as it gives to each of five separate for-profit pretend college.

Repeat After Me: There have been no, none, zero terror attacks in the United States by individuals who had been radicalized via social media.

Remember The Deficit: Republicans, in their rush to fund all their owners' pet projects, went on a half-trillion dollar spending spree of unpaid-for-tax cuts for the 1% as part of the goodie-packed spending bill. When it comes to tax cuts for the rich, deficits don't matter. Now about all that frivolous spending on Social Security and education...

Priorities: After a 23 year-old Army private wrote a letter opposing the government's plans for mass deportation of American citizens who had chosen the wrong parents, he was spied on by military intelligence and the FBI for the next 20 years. When he died, the Bureau's file on legendary folk singer Pete Seeger was over 1,800 pages long - 90 of which are still classified.

As Sure As Night Follows Day: In case you haven't been paying attention to US cities, Middle Eastern wars and the global refugee problem, let us point out that social upheaval and gross inequality often, perhaps always, lead to extreme right-wing political dominance. And we're not just talking France.

Porn O'Graph: Separate but equal.