Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Truman announces Japan’s surrender in World War II; Blackout hits Northeast U.S., Canada; FDR signs Social Security; British troops arrive in N. Ireland; A strike in Cold War Poland; Steve Martin born.
Breakfast Tunes
Breakfast News
US troops land on Iraq’s Mt Sinjar to plan for Yazidi evacuation
A team of US marines and special forces landed on Mount Sinjar in Iraq on Wednesday to assess options for a potential rescue of of 30,000 Yazidi civilians threatened by Islamic extremists and worn down by lack of food.
The personnel flew in on V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft that can land vertically, joining a small number of American special forces who, the Guardian has been told, had been on the mountain for some days. That team had been assessing the military and humanitarian situation and guiding US air strikes against Islamic State (Isis) fighters encircling the mountain.
A handful of British SAS soldiers were also in the area to “gather intelligence”, a British official said. The developments were the first confirmation that international forces were on Mount Sinjar.
Gaza conflict: Israel and Hamas agree to extend ceasefire by five days
Hamas and Israel have agreed five more days of truce and talks after a tense final countdown to the end of the current 72-hour ceasefire on Wednesday night.
The current truce, which is the eighth bid to stop the five-week long war, had been due to expire at midnight, and rocket fire on Israel two hours before its end prompted fears of a new outbreak of violence.
Hamas, the Islamist organisation in power in Gaza, denied they had launched rockets, however, and shortly before midnight Palestinian delegates in Cairo announced the extension.
Missouri police ‘shoot second man’ in city where teenager was killed
A second man has been shot by police in the Missouri city where an unarmed black 18-year-old was shot dead last weekend, according to multiple reports.
Police officials told local reporters that the man was shot in Ferguson by a St Louis County officer after pointing a handgun at him soon after 1am on Wednesday, following fresh demonstrations over the death on Saturday of Michael Brown.
The officer was responding to reports of shots being fired and men wearing ski masks carrying shotguns. The man was in critical condition in hospital, a police spokesman told the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Fox 2 and KMOV, and his gun was recovered at the scene.
A woman was separately being treated in hospital after being shot in the head during a drive-by shooting in the city. The incidents followed the peaceful end earlier to a tense standoff between protesters and police, prompting hopes of avoiding a third night of violence.
Snowden casts doubt on NSA investigation into security disclosures
Snowden casts doubt on NSA investigation into security disclosures
NSA whistleblower says he left detectable digital traces of his removal of documents which the agency did not pick up National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has called into question the competence of the investigation into the aftermath of his disclosures, which was overseen by the NSA’s new deputy director, Rick Ledgett.
In a new cover story for Wired magazine, the former NSA contractor provided writer James Bamford with previously unreported allegations of NSA cyberattack tools, including a piece of software, codenamed MonsterMind, that would automate a hostile response when it detected a network intrusion. He also alleged that a 2012 incident that took Syria’s internet offline was the fault of the NSA.
Snowden told Bamford, a longtime chronicler of the agency, that he left detectable digital traces of his removal of scores of documents from the technically sophisticated agency, allowing the NSA to know precisely what he did and did not take. Yet making a specific determination of the extent of the data breach has escaped the agency, which has simultaneously made vast and dire claims about the damage Snowden caused.
Fields Medal mathematics prize won by woman for first time in its history
It will go down in history as the moment one of the last bastions of male dominance fell. A woman has won the world’s most prestigious mathematics prize for the first time since the award was established nearly 80 years ago.
Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian maths professor at Stanford University in California, was named the first female winner of the Fields Medal – often described as the Nobel prize for mathematics – at a ceremony in Seoul on Wednesday.
The maths community has been abuzz with rumours for months that Mirzakhani was in line to win the prize. To outsiders her work is esoteric, abstract and impenetrable. But to more qualified minds, she has a breathtaking scope, is technically superb and boldly ambitious. She describes the language of maths as full of “beauty and elegance”.
US has nearly 1,000 troops in Iraq
There are now almost 1,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Another 129 troops were sent to Iraq this week. Including 100 or so troops who are assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, a total of about 964 troops are now in the country.
Pentagon officials say the soldiers are not “combat troops,” but they are armed and can take self-defense measures.
The latest troops includes 80 Marines who are assessing how the U.S. might help thousands of Yazidis stranded on Mt. Sinjar in northern Iraq. The Yazidis are members of a religious minority in Iraq who have been chased from their villages by fighters with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an extremist Sunni Muslim group.
About 200 U.S. troops are in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital in Iraq. The rest of the U.S. troops are in and around Baghdad.
Former Hillary aide sought to ‘neutralize’ greens on Keystone
A former spokeswoman to Hillary Clinton worked for the Canadian province of Alberta to “neutralize the environmentalist arguments” against the Keystone XL pipeline, new filings with the Justice Department reveal.
Hilary Lefebvre, who served as the director of broadcast media for Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, was paid $53,725 during the 10-week contract, according to the documents.
The contract was officially signed with FeverPress, a PR firm Lefebvre co-founded with David Press, though disclosure documents say it was Lefebvre who worked on the account.
Lefebvre, who spent seven years in broadcast journalism working for CNN and ABC’s “Nightline,” reached out to print, radio and TV journalists who could provide “top-tier features with cable news amplification” about Keystone, according to the contract.
Must Read Blog Posts
Comment: “Why Tech Still Hasn’t Solved Education’s Problems” Cassiodorus, Humanitarian Left
To the FCC on the issue of Network Neutrality OPOL, Humanitarian Left
Gender Prison: Apparently we deserve the murders we get Robyn, Voices on the Square
Mary Jo White was Supposed to Turn Around the S.E.C. She Hasn’t. Jesse Eisinger, ProPublica
Michelle Rhee to step down as CEO of StudentsFirst Elias Isquith, Salon
Why Is The Cuomo Administration Automatically Deleting State Employees’ Emails? Thoduric Meyer, ProPublica
As Expected, Kerry’s Power Sharing Agreement in Afghanistan Falling Apart Jim White, emptywheel
The Daily Wiki
The Ogallala Aquifer is a shallow water table aquifer located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. One of the world’s largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 mi² (450,000 km²) in portions of eight states: (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas). It was named in 1898 by N.H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska. The aquifer is part of the High Plains Aquifer System, and rests on the Ogallala Formation, which is the principal geologic unit underlying 80% of the High Plains.
About 27 percent of the irrigated land in the United States overlies the aquifer, which yields about 30 percent of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Depletion is accelerating, with 2% lost between 2001 and 2009 alone. Certain aquifer zones are now empty; these areas will take over 100,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall.
The aquifer system supplies drinking water to 82 percent of the 2.3 million people (1990 census) who live within the boundaries of the High Plains study area.
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I’m sorry, if you were right, I’d agree with you.
Stupid Shit by LaEscapee
Cross posted at Docudharma and Voices on the Square
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