Obama's Hotel Bill for One Night in Brisbane: $1.7M

p>President Obama stayed only one night in Australia for the G-20 summit, but the entire presidential delegation required over 4,000 rooms costing in excess of $1.7 million for the entire stay. Rooms at three different hotels were reserved for the U.S. delegation, and due to the large number of countries involved in the summit, the Australian government parceled out available hotels to each nation's delegation. The majority of the U.S. delegation stayed at the Brisbane Marriott, with the remainder staying at two other Brisbane hotels, the Urban and the Adina. 

Presidential visits, such as for the G-20 summit, require advance teams for security and logistics, and may also include arrangements for officials conducting discussions and negotiations before and after the president himself is in the host country.

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Israeli warplanes strike targets in Dimas, Damascus

(CNN) -- Planes believed to be Israeli struck inside Syria on Sunday, the Syrian government and an opposition group said, but the two entities differed over whether the targets belonged to the Syrian military.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency characterized the strikes as "a flagrant attack on Syria, targeting two safe areas in (the) Damascus countryside in Dimas and near Damascus International Airport." There were no casualties, SANA reported.

But a London-based opposition group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said "warplanes believed to be Israeli" struck a "military area" in Dimas, a Damascus suburb.

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Mark Udall Promises America Will "Be Disgusted" at CIA Torture Report

The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Dianne Feinstein of California, is soon expected to release its summary of the so-called CIA Torture Report, the committee’s four-year-long investigation into the CIA’s Bush-era torture practices. Release of the summary is the result of months of wrangling and negotiating with the White House on what would be released to the public and when—and it will likely be heavily redacted. During an interview conducted on Friday, November 21, by Esquire writer at large Scott Raab, outgoing senator Mark Udall of Colorado, who lost his reelection race on November 4, once again said that if the report is not released in a way he deems transparent, he would consider all options to make it public.

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Snowden movie picks up top docu award

"CitizenFour," a documentary about former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on top secret NSA materials, exposing US surveillance network worldwide, has won the International Documentary Association top award for best feature in LA.

The International Documentary Association (IDA), a 30-year-old nonprofit organization, is dedicated to serving the needs of a "thriving documentary culture", attempting to be at the forefront of major issues confronting documentary artists, activists and journalists. The documentary features a series of face-to-face meetings between Berlin-based filmmaker Laura Poitras, who is on the US Homeland Security “watch list”, and the whistleblower Snowden, who got in touch with Poitras last January when she was working on a feature about surveillance in the post-9/11 era.

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Russian sex bomb spy Anna Chapman ordered to seduce Ed Snowden

Honey trap: The temptress tried to enthrall the man who exposed American cyber snooping

Sex bomb Anna Chapman was ­ordered by her Russian spy bosses to ­seduce US whistleblower Edward Snowden, a defector reveals.

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Rumain Brisbon's Friend Disputes Phoenix Police Account Of Killing

A friend who was with an unarmed black man killed by a white Phoenix police officer on Tuesday said cops are misleading the public about how the shooting unfolded and accused police of papering over their mistakes by focusing on details that hurt his friend's reputation.

Rumain Brisbon, 34, died Tuesday after being shot twice by an officer who police said thought Brisbon had a gun. The fatal encounter started, according to police, when Brisbon fled from his Cadillac SUV into an apartment after an officer tried questioning him about possible drug-dealing from the vehicle.

But that's not how the killing really happened, said Brandon Dickerson, Brisbon's friend who was in the SUV when the unnamed officer pulled the trigger around 6 p.m.

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Ron Paul: ‘US provoking war with Russia, could result in total destruction’

Former congressman Ron Paul has lashed out at the resolution the House passed against Russia, branding it “one of the worst pieces of legislation ever.” It could even pave the way for a potential war with Russia, as it was with Iraq, he warns.

Resolution 758 strongly condemns the actions of Russia under Vladimir Putin, for what it describes as a policy of “aggression against neighboring countries,” in a motion that describes Moscow’s political and economic domination in the region.

However, Ron Paul says the bill was nothing but “16 pages of war propaganda that should have made even neocons blush.”

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Can Ashton Carter rein in a Pentagon out of control?

WASHINGTON POST

Chuck Hagel may not have been able to work with the ever more powerful National Security Council staff, but this discussion of personalities misses the point. The key to success for a defense secretary today is the ability to manage not White House aides but rather the Pentagon, which is the world’s most complicated and most dysfunctional bureaucracy.

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The 'New World Order'

In a running disagreement between many regular contributors to OLive, some folks try to pretend that the influence of Big Business is not out of hand nor of any greater significance than it has been in the past. I predictably counter that point of view with claims that many transnational corporations have operating budgets larger than many nation states, and now use traditional nation states as clients who do their bidding (rather than the other way around). In the last two days, two disparate articles have come to my attention that forcefully make this point. I shall summarize both, then post links for those seeking to verify my conclusions and to absorb the much deeper details provided in the links.

The first deals with the sudden and unexpected crash of oil prices. This actually is a big story, is multi-dimensional, and is going to have far-reaching economic, social, political, and possibly military ramifications.

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President Obama’s unilateral action on immigration has no precedent

WASHINGTON POST

THE WHITE House has defended President Obama’s unilateral decision to legalize the presence of nearly 4 million undocumented immigrants as consistent, even in scope, with the executive actions of previous presidents. In fact, it is increasingly clear that the sweeping magnitude of Mr. Obama’s order is unprecedented.

Central to the administration’s argument is its contention that the 4 million covered by the president’s order — some 36 percent of the estimated undocumented population of 11 million — is in line with the percentage covered by a comparable action by President George H.W. Bush in 1990.

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Operation Auroragold: How the NSA Hacks Cellphone Networks Worldwide

In March 2011, two weeks before the Western intervention in Libya, a secret message was delivered to the National Security Agency. An intelligence unit within the U.S. military’s Africa Command needed help to hack into Libya’s cellphone networks and monitor text messages.

For the NSA, the task was easy. The agency had already obtained technical information about the cellphone carriers’ internal systems by spying on documents sent among company employees, and these details would provide the perfect blueprint to help the military break into the networks.

The NSA’s assistance in the Libya operation, however, was not an isolated case. It was part of a much larger surveillance program—global in its scope and ramifications—targeted not just at hostile countries.

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Feds balk at releasing docs showing IRS sharing tax returns with White House

Less than a week after ’fessing up that it found some 2,500 documents potentially showing that the IRS shared taxpayer returns with the White House, the Obama administration has reversed course and won’t release the trove to a group suing for access.

In an abrupt decision, the Treasury inspector general’s office said that the documents are covered by privacy and disclosure laws and can’t be provided to Cause of Action, despite a promise last week to hand over some 2,500.

The decision coincides with publication this week of the Washington Examiner's series, "Watchdogs, lapdogs and attack dogs," that assesses problems with the IG system, including the tendency in some quarters to protect federal officials and agencies from critical scrutiny.

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FBI agent accused of tampering with evidence signed drugs out, documents say

An FBI agent accused of tampering with drug and gun evidence repeatedly checked heroin out of an evidence room, sometimes using a false signature, and some packages eventually came back damaged, according to court documents made public Tuesday.

Authorities investigating the agent, Matthew Lowry, also discovered that two guns — a Derringer pistol and a Remington shotgun — and marijuana that he seized during a search of a home and car in Maryland were never submitted into evidence.

These new details for the first time describe how Lowry is alleged to have pilfered drugs that were evidence in several criminal cases, forcing federal prosecutors to dismiss charges against at least 28 defendants and notify 150 more that the agent had participated in investigations targeting them.

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Critical networks in US, 15 other nations, completely owned, possibly by Iran

For more than two years, pro-Iranian hackers have penetrated some of the world's most sensitive computer networks, including those operated by a US-based airline, auto maker, natural gas producer, defense contractor, and military installation, security researchers said.

In many cases, "Operation Cleaver," as the sustained hacking campaign is being dubbed, has attained the highest levels of system access of targets located in 16 countries total, according to a report published Tuesday by security firm Cylance. Compromised systems in the ongoing attacks include Active Directory domain controllers that store employee login credentials, servers running Microsoft Windows and Linux, routers, switches, and virtual private networks.

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Iraq’s 50,000 ‘ghost soldiers’ analysis: This is further proof of army corruption

The Iraqi army includes 50,000 “ghost soldiers” who do not exist, but their officers receive their salaries fraudulently according to the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. “The Prime Minister revealed the existence of 50,000 fictitious names,” said a statement after a thorough headcount during the latest salary payments.

The Iraqi army has long been notorious for being wholly corrupt with officers invariably paying for their jobs in order to make money either through drawing the salaries of non-existent soldiers or through various other scams. One Iraqi politician told The Independent a year ago that Iraqi officers “are not soldiers, they are investors”.

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The US Still Thinks It Owns The World

By Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab spring is limited, but it's not insignificant. The western-controlled dictatorial system is being eroded. In fact, it's been being eroded for some time. So, for example, if you go back 50 years, the energy resources – the main concern of US planners – have been mostly nationalised. There are constantly attempts to reverse that, but they have not succeeded.

Take the US invasion of Iraq, for example. To everyone except a dedicated ideologue, it was pretty obvious that we invaded Iraq not because of our love of democracy but because it's maybe the second- or third-largest source of oil in the world, and is right in the middle of the major energy-producing region.

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US strategy on ISIS suffers series of weaknesses, study finds

The US strategy against Islamic State “suffers from a series of weaknesses,” a study by the Tel Aviv-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center found recently.

The center is a part of the Israeli Intelligence and Heritage Commemoration Center, which was founded in the 1980s by leading members of the Israeli intelligence community.

The report described goals in the American strategy as unrealistic.

It is extremely difficult to destroy an organization with a Salafist-jihadi ideology such as ISIS [Islamic State].

There are limits to what military force can achieve against jihadi organizations in general and ISIS in particular.

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French legislators vote in favour of recognising Palestinian state

The highly symbolic vote in the lower house National Assembly is not binding on French government policy but is likely to spark fury in Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned it would be a "grave mistake".

MPs voted 339 to 151 in favour of a motion that invites Paris to recognise the state of Palestine "as an instrument to gain a definitive resolution of the conflict."

Palestinians are seeking to achieve statehood in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank with east Jerusalem as the capital. With little progress on reaching a settlement, they have been lobbying foreign powers for international recognition.

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IRS shared confidential taxpayer info with White House

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Huge Risk of Ebola Spreading Globally After Treatment Target Deadline Missed

Experts have warned that there is still a huge risk of Ebola spreading globally after treatment and burial targets were missed. Tony Banbury, head of the United Nations Ebola response mission, set targets of 70% of Ebola patients being in treatment and 70% of bodies promptly buried by December 1st.

Speaking in Freetown, Sierra Leone, he said:

“There is a huge risk to the world that Ebola will spread. It may spread around this sub-region, or someone could get on a plane to Asia, Latin America, North America or Europe… that is why it is so important to get down to zero cases as quickly as possible”. (source)

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