5: The music world mourns the death of iconic singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen, the iconic singer-songwriter whose appeal spanned six decades, crossing multiple generations and winning fans of all musical tastes, died at the age of 82 at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday.
“It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter, and artist Leonard Cohen has passed away,” the singer’s Facebook page said. “We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries.”
Vice News
4: WHO WILL BE PRESIDENT TRUMP’S DR. STRANGELOVE?
IF HE COULD, President Donald Trump might roll up his sleeves and single-handedly manage U.S. foreign and military policy. He would be the only man in the room for the coming negotiations with Russia and NATO. He would personally select targets for lethal strikes in places like Yemen, Iraq and Syria. He might even spend his afternoons piloting each of the unmanned drones and choosing the right moment to pull the trigger.
But he can’t. It’s too much work for one man. Instead, he’ll likely pursue his overseas agenda through the administrative instrument over which the White House has the most direct control—the National Security Council, or NSC, and the National Security Advisor.
John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, emphasized the raw power of the NSC in a four-page staffing memo that he sent to President-elect Obama in 2008. “The White House really has two Chiefs of Staff,” Podesta wrote: the actual chief of staff, and “the National Security Advisor,” who runs the NSC on the president’s behalf. The memo was among the hacked Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks in the run-up to the election.
Evidence of the NSC’s vast, opaque powers runs through postwar presidential history. As President Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger cemented his access to the Oval Office and outmaneuvered his rival, Secretary of State William Rogers, eventually taking Rogers’s job. Under President George W. Bush, the National Security Council was discussing the possibility of invading Iraq as early as July 2001, at the suggestion of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
It seems unlikely that a President Trump would invest anyone with the kind of trust held by Kissinger or Rumsfeld. Trump burned through a number of high-level campaign staff during the months leading up to the election, and the only consistent members of his inner circle are his immediate family.
One worry among the national security community is that Trump may wind up being, in effect, his own National Security Advisor.
The Intercept
3: Will Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Be a “Cash Machine” for Military & Private Prison Contractors?
By now, global markets have rebounded after plummeting upon the news of Trump’s victory. Stocks of some companies surged, including the largest private prison contractor, Corrections Corporation of America—which recently changed its name to CoreCivic—whose shares are up 43 percent since Trump’s victory. GEO Group, another private prison contractor, is up 21 percent. Meanwhile, stocks also surged for many military contractors, including Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, and Seth Freed Wessler, reporter with The Investigative Fund who has been following private detention centers.
Democracy Now
2: UN: ISIL executes civilians en masse in Iraq
ISIL fighters have reportedly shot and killed scores of civilians in Mosul in recent days, the United Nations has said, as it confirmed the discovery of a mass grave in the nearby town of Hammam al-Alil in which more than 100 bodies were found.
In a brief published on Friday detailing a series of ISIL executions and abuses, the UN’s human rights office said that 40 people were executed by the armed group on Tuesday for “treason and collaboration” with Iraqi forces and their allies closing in on the city during a major military push.
The victims were dressed in orange jumpsuits, and after being shot their bodies were hung from electrical poles in several areas around Mosul, the UN said.
Aljazeera
1: Privacy experts fear Donald Trump accessing global surveillance network
Privacy activists, human rights campaigners and former US security officials have expressed fears over the prospect of Donald Trump gaining access to the vast global US and UK surveillance network.
They criticised Barack Obama’s administration for being too complacent after the 2013 revelations by the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, and making only modest concessions to privacy concerns rather than carrying out major legislative changes.
The concern comes after Snowden dismissed fears for his safety if Trump, who called him “a spy who has caused great damage in the US”, was to strike a deal with Vladimir Putin to have him extradited.
Snowden, in a video link-up from Moscow with a Netherlands-based tech company on Thursday, said it would be “crazy to dismiss” the prospect of Trump doing a deal but if personal safety was a major concern for him, he would not have leaked the top-secret documents in the first place.
The Guardian