Pentagon looks to be undercounting how many civilians it kills

Not a shocker. Presumably they set the bar about as high as it goes, for what "officially" counts as a civilian death or serious injury caused by U.S. military action.

As U.S. military forces continue to kill and wound civilians in multiple countries during the ongoing 21-year War on Terror while chronically undercounting such casualties, a pair of Democratic lawmakers on Monday asked the Pentagon to explain discrepancies in noncombatant casualty reporting and detail steps being taken to address the issue.

"The report did not admit to any civilian deaths in Syria, despite credible civilian casualty monitors documenting at least 15 civilian deaths." In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—who have both led calls to hold the military accountable for harming noncombatants—said they are "troubled" that the Pentagon's annual civilian casualty report, which was released in September as required by an amendment Warren attached to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), again undercounts noncombatants killed by U.S. forces...

"Every time Congress is briefed about an instance of civilian harm, we are almost always told that the service member followed the proper protocol and processes," Jacobs told Politico earlier this month. "So I think it's clear that it's an institutional not an individual problem."

While it is notoriously difficult to track how many civilians have been killed by a military that, in the words of Gen. Tommy Franks, doesn't "do body counts," researchers at the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimate that combatants on all sides of the U.S.-led War on Terror have killed as many as 387,000 civilians as of late last year. - Common Dreams

Israeli violence against Palestinians sets a new record

This horrific new mark could well be broken next year, the year after, and so on, unless something changes.

The UN Officer of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has issued a press release detailing the views of its experts on the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians during the past year, which they say has seen the worst death rate among the Occupied population since the organization began systematically tracking fatalities in 2005.

The experts rebuked Israel for the excessive use of force deployed by Israeli forces against Palestinians and the unbridled violence of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank, which have left 150 Palestinians dead this year in the Occupied West Bank, including 33 children...

Fanatical Israeli squatters who have built on land owned by Palestinian families and walk around armed are a particular concern for the UN human rights experts. They say that:

“Armed and masked Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians in their homes, attacking children on their way to school, destroying property and burning olive groves, and terrorising entire communities with complete impunity.”

Each year has seen more Israeli squatter attacks than the year before since 2016. Ironically, it was in 2016 that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution demanding an end to such Israeli squatting. - Informed Comment

How Big Oil plans to stay on top

I wouldn't describe our corporate overlords as generally intelligent, in meaningful ways. But they often do display remarkable cunning.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee recently released internal fuel company documents providing an insider’s view of what they say is a multi-year effort by four leading fossil fuel firms to greenwash their public image. The documents show employees and executives discussing climate policies and pledges they knew would do more to protect their business model than secure a meaningful reduction in pollution.

At first glance, the committee’s accompanying report on the climate disinformation is a partisan project and somewhat unsurprising given the fossil fuel industry’s history of misleading the public. However, a closer look reveals that the largest oil and gas companies are leveraging the climate crisis to further entrench their domination of energy markets across the world. The documents raise thorny questions for climate-minded Democrats, who found that industry groups will support liberal climate priorities such as methane regulation if that keeps oil and gas relevant and protects profits in the long run. Oil companies also “resist and block” environmental rules for pollution control they don’t like, as one employee of BP America observed in a 2016 email to executives obtained by the committee. - Truthout

Believe it or not, the right really is coming after birth control

Probably this judge will get the same kind of public rebuke that Aileen Cannon got, if he goes through with it. Probably. But like the story says, this is just for openers.

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas, recently released an opinion that “the Title X program violates the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.” Title X is a federal family planning program that provides services including contraceptives, pregnancy testing, testing for sexually transmitted infections, infertility help, and more. It offers services to adolescents as well as adults—and that’s where the right-wing challenge, and Kacsmaryk’s decision, comes in...

This is a really, really weak case, in other words. There’s a decent chance that, if Kacsmaryk goes ahead and tries to block Title X funding, he will be overturned at the appellate level, even given that the case would be appealed to the very conservative Fifth Circuit. Even the Trump-McConnell Supreme Court might not be willing to go this far yet. But either way, Kacsmaryk could at least temporarily mess up a vitally important health care program. And he’s showing that, yes, the right-wing legal movement, up to and including a federal judge, has its sights set on birth control rights. - Daily Kos

The shale oil "boom" has seen better days

A good example of how motivated reasoning and cognitive rigidity rule in big corporate America.

It appears that the U.S. fracking boom is ending far earlier than many industry experts and CEOs predicted. After an understandable dip in 2020 due to the pandemic, oil production still has not regained the record levels achieved in 2019, and predictions that the industry would set new records this year have not materialized, despite 2022’s high oil prices...

There’s a saying in the oil industry: “The rocks don’t lie.” It means that regardless of what is predicted, geology calls the shots on how much oil can be extracted.

Although rocks don’t lie, it is becoming increasingly evident that the shale oil industry greatly over-promised how much oil it could produce and knowingly relied on flawed models. These faulty models inflated the amount of oil production promised to investors by up to 30 percent. - DeSmog

There actually is a global treaty on plastics

But, unfortunately and predictably:

Last March, environmental advocates celebrated a landmark victory when United Nations negotiators agreed to write a binding global treaty on plastic pollution. As the meeting concluded, diplomats emotionally declared that multilateralism is “still alive,” and called the intergovernmental environmental deal the most significant since the 2015 Paris Agreement. The treaty couldn’t be more urgent, as the production of plastic — made primarily from fossil fuels — is expected to soar over the coming decades, adding millions of tons of waste to the oceans and greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.

Now comes the hard part: hammering out the details of the treaty. Representatives from 135 countries spent last week in Punta del Este, Uruguay, at the first of five sessions of an “intergovernmental negotiating committee,” or INC, that is expected to produce a final treaty by the end of 2024.

If last week’s negotiations are any indication, reaching that end goal will be an arduous, divisive process, with some countries pursuing a comprehensive agreement to phase down plastic production while others seek to water down the treaty’s ambition. Observers noted with frustration that negotiators failed to agree on virtually any of the conference’s main agenda items, including the election of a body to organize future sessions and the resolution of questions related to the treaty’s scope and objectives. - Grist

Emmer and colleagues play mega-CYA on crypto

I despise cryptocurrencies and I think they should be banned. But I'm not in charge of such matters, nor am I ever likely to be. Anyway:

Nearly nine months after a bipartisan group of U.S. House members sent a letter questioning the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into cryptocurrencies, including the failed FTX exchange, the lawmakers are maintaining their position that the agency’s approach to regulating crypto is deeply flawed.

In public comments since FTX’s collapse last month, the congressmen, led by Minnesota Republican Tom Emmer, have largely called FTX’s demise a singular issue that deserves scrutiny.

They argue the episode only reinforces their point that the SEC’s regulation of cryptocurrencies is arbitrary and ineffective.

FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame was a major campaign contributor to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the political action committee Emmer controlled as the head of the House Republican campaign arm in the 2022 election cycle. - Minnesota Reformer

Another failed Pentagon audit, another record Pentagon budget

Both have become automatic, and grossly underreported in corporate "news" media.

In response to news of the proposed $847 billion Pentagon budget, the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies issued the following comment:

“This month, news broke that the Pentagon once again failed to pass a basic audit showing that it knows where its money goes. And instead of holding out for any kind of accountability, Congress stands ready to give a big raise to an agency that failed to account for more than 60 percent of its assets.

This is a sign of an agency that is too big, plain and simple. Other major government agencies have long since passed audits. But the Pentagon, with its global sprawl of more than 750 military installations, and a budget increase that alone could more than double the diplomacy budget at the State Department, is so big and disjointed that no one knows where its money goes.

Here’s one solution: the Pentagon needs to be a lot smaller. After twenty years of war, and in a time when government spending is desperately needed elsewhere, the Pentagon’s fifth failed audit in as many years (and having never, ever passed) should be the last straw." - Institute for Policy Studies