5: 

How ISIL seized most of its weapons from Iraq military

An Amnesty International report has detailed how the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group obtained the bulk of their vast arms supply from the Iraqi army.

The rights organisation concluded that a substantial amount of ISIL’s arsenal comprises weapons and equipment “looted, captured or illicitly traded from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks”.

ISIL, which seized large swaths of Syria and Iraq in recent years, has obtained a significant portion of its weapons from capturing key military bases in both countries.

According to Amnesty, “[ISIL] fighters are now equipped with large stocks of mainly AK variant rifles, but also US military-issued M16, Chinese CQ, German Heckler & Koch G3 and Belgian FN Herstal FAL type rifles.

“Experts have also observed: Austrian Steyr and Russian Dragunov SVD sniper rifles; Russian, Chinese, Iraqi and Belgian machine guns; former Soviet Union/Yugoslav anti-tank missiles; and Russian, Chinese, Iranian and American artillery systems.

“In addition, [ISIL] has captured more sophisticated equipment, such as guided anti-tank missiles (Russian Kornet and Metis systems, Chinese HJ-8, and European MILAN and HOT missiles), and surface-to-air missiles.”

Aljazeera

4: 

Exposed: Academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel funding

Leading climate sceptic who will testify at Ted Cruz senate hearing today agrees to write pro-fossil fuel paper secretly funded by oil company

A Greenpeace undercover investigation has exposed how fossil fuel companies can secretly pay academics at leading American universities to write research that sows doubt about climate science and promotes the companies’ commercial interests.

Posing as representatives of oil and coal companies, reporters from Greenpeace UK asked academics from Princeton and Penn State to write papers promoting the benefits of CO2 and the use of coal in developing countries.

The professors agreed to write the reports and said they did not need to disclose the source of the funding.

Citing industry-funded documents – including testimony to state hearings and newspaper articles – Professor Frank Clemente of Penn State said: “In none of these cases is the sponsor identified. All my work is published as an independent scholar.”

Leading climate-sceptic academic, Professor William Happer, agreed to write a report for a Middle Eastern oil company on the benefits of CO2 and to allow the firm to keep the source of the funding secret.  

Greenpeace

3: 

The US Is Assessing Claims That Coalition Airstrikes Killed 26 Civilians in Syria

An airstrike suspected to have been carried out by the US or its allies has killed at least 26 Syrian civilians, a monitoring group said on Tuesday, prompting American officials to launch a “credibility assessment” of the reports. 

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said aircraft from the US-led anti-Islamic State (IS) coalition had bombed a village in northeastern Syria’s Hasakah governorate, leaving at least 26 dead, including seven children and four women. 

The coalition, which has been bombing IS targets in Syria and neighboring Iraq for more than a year, confirmed that it had carried out five strikes near Hasakah’s Al-Hawl on Monday — which it said hit four IS tactical units and destroyed two fighting positions and a vehicle — but did not mention civilian casualties.

But spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told AFP that the coalition was currently “assessing the credibility” of the reports. “Every time we get information about the possibility of a civilian casualty incident, we always do a credibility assessment on that information,” he said. “If the information is found to be credible, we’ll conduct an investigation, and we’ll release the results of that investigation.”

Vice News

2: 

Donald Trump’s “Ban Muslims” Proposal Is Wildly Dangerous But Not Far Outside the U.S. Mainstream

Hours after a new poll revealed that he’s trailing Ted Cruz in Iowa, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump issued a statement advocating “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what’s going on.” His spokesperson later clarifiedthat this exclusion even includes Muslim-American citizens who are currently outside the U.S. On first glance, it seems accurate to view this, in the words of The Guardian, as “arguably the most extreme proposal to come from any U.S. presidential candidate in decades.”

Some comfortable journalists, however, quickly insisted that people were overreacting. “Before everyone gives up on the republic, remember that not even a single American has yet cast a vote for Trump,” said New York Timescolumnist Ross Douthat. The New York Daily News opinion page editor, Josh Greenman, was similarly blithe: “It’s a proposal to keep Muslims out of the U.S., made in a primary, being roundly condemned. We are a long way from internment camps.”

Given that an ISIS attack in Paris just helped fuel the sweeping election victory of an actually fascist party in France, it’s a bit mystifying how someone can be so sanguine about the likelihood of a Trump victory in the U.S. In fact, with a couple of even low-level ISIS attacks successfully carried out on American soil, it’s not at all hard to imagine. But Trump does not need to win, or even get close to winning, for his rhetoric and the movement that he’s stoking to be dangerous in the extreme.

The Intercept

1: 

COP21 is too male dominated and has male priorities, says UN special envoy

The climate change talks going on in Paris are too dominated by men, to the detriment of effective action on saving people from the ravages of global warming, the UN’s special envoy on climate change has said.

Mary Robinson, the former UN human rights chief and Ireland’s first female president, told the Guardian in an interview: “This is a very male world [at the conference]. When it is a male world, you have male priorities.”

She pointed to the line-up of ministers now leading the talks, few of whom are women. “If you don’t have women here, how can you say this is about people?”

Tuesday was officially designated as “gender day” at the fortnight-long talks, which began nine days ago. 

At Paris, governments are meeting in the hope of signing a new global agreement on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, which would kick in from 2020 when current commitments expire. It is seen as the last chance for the UN negotiations, which have been carrying on since 1992.

“We have to humanise this, we need to send a strong message that this is about people. We need to have legal text on human rights and gender equality,” said Robinson. “Women in developing countries are among the most vulnerable to climate change.”

The Guardian