Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Texas bluesman Phillip Walker. Enjoy!

"There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! ... There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies. ... The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, it has been since man crawled out of the slime."

-- Paddy Chayefsky

News and Opinion

Trump’s climate denial is just one of the forces that point towards war

Wave the magic wand and the problem goes away. Those pesky pollution laws, carbon caps and clean-power plans: swish them away and the golden age of blue-collar employment will return. This is Donald Trump’s promise, in his video message on Monday, in which the US president-elect claimed that unleashing coal and fracking would create “many millions of high-paid jobs”. He will tear down everything to make it come true. But it won’t come true. Even if we ripped the world to pieces in the search for full employment, leaving no mountain unturned, we would not find it. ...

Trump has also announced that on his first day in office he will withdraw America from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). ... But withdrawal will not, as he claims, “bring jobs and industry back to American shores”. The work in Mexico and China that Trump wants to reclaim will evaporate long before it can be repatriated. ...

But it’s not just Trump. Clinton and Bernie Sanders also made impossible promises to bring back jobs. Half the platform of each party was based on a delusion. The social, environmental and economic crises we face require a complete reappraisal of the way we live and work. The failure by mainstream political parties to produce a new and persuasive economic narrative, which does not rely on sustaining impossible levels of growth and generating illusory jobs, provides a marvellous opening for demagogues everywhere.

Governments across the world are making promises they cannot keep. In the absence of a new vision, their failure to materialise will mean only one thing: something or someone must be found to blame. As people become angrier and more alienated, as the complexity and connectivity of global systems becomes ever harder to manage, as institutions such as the European Union collapse and as climate change renders parts of the world uninhabitable, forcing hundreds of millions of people from their homes, the net of blame will be cast ever wider.

Eventually the anger that cannot be assuaged through policy will be turned outwards, towards other nations. Faced with a choice between hard truths and easy lies, politicians and their supporters in the media will discover that foreign aggression is among the few options for political survival. I now believe that we will see war between the major powers within my lifetime. Which ones it will involve, and on what apparent cause, remains far from clear. But something that once seemed remote now looks probable.

Trump Backs Off Promise to Bring Back Torture

President-elect Donald Trump has backed off of one of the most controversial pledges of his campaign today, his promise to bring back torture of detainees, saying following a talk with retired Gen. James Mattis that he was told torture doesn’t work as well as building a rapport with prisoners.

During the primaries, Trump emphasized his belief that the US needed to bring back waterboarding and “worse” tactics to better compete with ISIS’ own brutality. At the time, he dismissed arguments torture didn’t work on the grounds that the people being tortured “deserve it.” He also called the US ban on torture a “sign of weakness.” ...

Gen. Mattis, who is seen as a front-runner for Secretary of Defense, told Trump that in his experience torture and abuse didn’t work well, and that he’d do better with “a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers.” Trump cited this conversation in his statement today backing away from torture.

Are Trump's Plans to Expand Obama's Surveillance State & Activate Muslim Registry Unconstitutional?

US House Seeks Syria-War Escalation

Late in the day, on Nov. 15, one week after the U.S. elections, the lame-duck Congress convened in special session with normal rules suspended so the House could pass House Resolution 5732, the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act” calling for intensifying the already harsh sanctions on Syria, assessing the imposition of a “no fly zone” inside Syria (to prevent the Syrian government from flying) and escalating efforts to press criminal charges against Syrian officials.

HR5732 claims to promote a negotiated settlement in Syria but, as analyzed by Friends Committee for National Legislation, it imposes preconditions which would actually make a peace agreement more difficult.

There was 40 minutes of “debate” with six representatives (Ed Royce, R-California; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; Dan Kildee, D-Michigan; Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida) all speaking in favor of the resolution. There were few other representatives present, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that the resolution was passed “unanimously” without mentioning these special conditions.

According to Wikipedia, “Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives … such as naming Post Offices…” In this case, however, the resolution could lead to a wider war in the Middle East and potentially World War III with nuclear-armed Russia.

Most strikingly, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for the United States to impose a “no fly zone” inside Syria, a sovereign nation, an act of war that also would violate international law as an act of aggression. It also could put the U.S. military in the position of shooting down Russian aircraft.

To call this proposal “non-controversial” is absurd, although it may say a great deal about the “group think” of the U.S. Congress that an act of war would be so casually considered. Clearly, this resolution should have been debated under normal rules with a reasonable amount of Congressional presence and debate.

Erdogan: Turkish Forces Attacking al-Bab Will Invade Manbij Next

Addressing the ongoing siege of the ISIS city of al-Bab, in northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the forces there intend to invade the nearby city of Manbijj next, reiterating his demands that the Kurds cede the city to his forces. ...

The YPG has promised to leave Manbij repeatedly, most recently last week, but there is no indication they are actually doing so. Local militias set up by the Kurds since they captured the city have also indicated they are opposed to Erdogan, suggesting Turkey won’t be welcomed into the city easily.

Syrian Rebels Blocking Aleppo Civilians From Fleeing

While rebels in the Nusra Front-dominated eastern portion of Aleppo have presented the lack of civilians leaving as proof that no one trusts Russia and the Syrian government to let them out, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that the rebels are actually blocking the civilians from getting out.

The Associated Press spoke to people within Syria familiar with the situation, saying that a number of civilians had told relatives outside the city that they’d decided to flee, and came to the al-Riz crossing to leave. The rebels told them they should wait until dark for safety.

When the families return at night, the rebels opened fire through the crossing out of the city to make sure that no one was able to get out. ... The Syrian military is also accusing the rebels of being a major reason behind the food shortages in eastern Aleppo, saying they believe the rebels are hoarding large amounts of food in several warehouses in the area.

Wilkerson: If Trump Moves U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, War Against Iran Could Come Next

WILKERSON: ... American power is receding at a rather rapid rate right now. If you’d been reading Lamoni, Der Spiegel, [Zazie Shimbun], the Financial Times or other newspapers which I do because they’re the only reputable newspapers left in the world. You understand that our allies and friends right now are not only questioning our sanity but our ability to govern ourselves. When that has happened historically, people begin to move in ways that balance the unstable power’s power.

That’s what’s happening in the world right now. China and Russia would flow into anything the United States did to simply tear up the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action - known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal - js] in a way that would make their seemingly budding alliance right now just enhanced, more dangerous more difficult to deal with and essentially to continue the diminishment of American power. We can’t keep doing these sorts of things Paul. If we pretend even to be in a way that we’ve been since WWII. Basically multilaterally, basically the leader, that bills and supports organizations like the IMF, the WTO, the United Nations itself and so forth. We can’t just isolate ourselves again and again and again and expect the rest of the world not to do something about it.

Sadly, the US, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy Carter will likely never be called to account for their support of the Khmer Rouge.

Cambodian court upholds life sentences for Khmer Rouge leaders

Cambodia’s UN-backed court upheld life sentences for two top former Khmer Rouge leaders on Wednesday for crimes against humanity, delivering a blow to their hopes of release as they face a second trial for genocide.

“Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea, 90, and ex-head of state Khieu Samphan, 85, were in 2014 the first top leaders to be jailed from a regime responsible for the deaths of up to two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979.

They appealed against their convictions, accusing the court of a string of errors and the judges of failing to remain impartial due to their personal experiences under the regime.

In a lengthy ruling on Wednesday after months of hearings, the bench upheld the bulk of the convictions and the jail terms, but accepted some legal errors had been made in the initial trial.

Kong Srim, the supreme court chamber’s top judge, said the pair “had a complete lack of consideration for the ultimate fate of the Cambodian population”, adding that the scale of their crimes was “massive”.

“The supreme court chamber considers that the imposition of a life sentence for each of the accused is appropriate,” he added.

The Khmer Rouge regime dismantled modern society in Cambodia in its quest for an agrarian Marxist utopia, killing vast numbers and leaving a generational scar.

NATO, Russia Spar Over Missile Deployment in Eastern Europe

NATO and the Russian Federation have continued their trend of arguing over their respective forces in Eastern Europe, and today it focused on yesterday’s announcement that Russia is deploying Iskander missiles and S-400 air defense systems into Eastern Europe.

Russian officials say putting the missiles in the exclave of Kaliningrad was in response to NATO’s buildup in the Baltics, as well as the US missile defense shield installation in the area. NATO insists the deployment of the S-400 defensive missiles is an “aggressive” act.

Russian officials rejected the complaints about their deployment, insisting they have every right to deploy military gear into Kaliningrad, which borders both Poland and Lithuania, both NATO members that are at the center of the NATO buildup.

US navy's most expensive destroyer breaks down in Panama Canal

The most expensive destroyer ever built for the US navy has suffered an engineering problem in the Panama Canal and had to be towed to port.

US Third Fleet spokesman commander Ryan Perry said a vice-admiral directed the USS Zumwalt to remain at ex-Naval Station Rodman in Panama to address the issues, which arose on Monday.

The ship was built at Bath Iron Works in Maine and was on its way to San Diego.

“The schedule for the ship will remain flexible to enable testing and evaluation in order to ensure the ship’s safe transit to her new home port in San Diego,” Perry said in a statement.

USNI News, a publication of the US Naval Institute, reported on its website that the ship was in the canal when it lost propulsion. ...

The Zumwalt cost more than $4.4bn and was commissioned in October in Maryland. It also suffered a leak in its propulsion system before it was commissioned. The leak required the ship to remain at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia longer than expected for repairs.

U.K. Parliament Approves Unprecedented New Hacking and Surveillance Powers

A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for the British government to admit that it was hacking into people’s computers and collecting private data on a massive scale. But now, these controversial tactics are about to be explicitly sanctioned in an unprecedented new surveillance law.

Last week, the U.K.’s Parliament approved the Investigatory Powers Bill, dubbed the “Snoopers’ Charter” by critics. The law, which is expected to come into force before the end of the year, was introduced in November 2015 after the fallout from revelations by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden about extensive British mass surveillance. The Investigatory Powers Bill essentially retroactively legalizes the electronic spying programs exposed in the Snowden documents — and also expands some of the government’s surveillance powers.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new law is that it will give the British government the authority to serve internet service providers with a “data retention notice,” forcing them to record and store for up to 12 months logs showing websites visited by all of their customers. Law enforcement agencies will then be able to obtain access to this data without any court order or warrant. In addition, the new powers will hand police and tax investigators the ability to, with the approval of a government minister, hack into targeted phones and computers. The law will also permit intelligence agencies to sift through “bulk personal datasets” that contain millions of records about people’s phone calls, travel habits, internet activity, and financial transactions; and it will make it legal for British spies to carry out “foreign-focused” large-scale hacks of computers or phones in order to identify potential “targets of interest.”

“Every citizen will have their internet activity — the apps they use, the communications they send, and to who — logged for 12 months,” says Eric King, a privacy expert and former director of Don’t Spy On Us, a coalition of leading British human rights groups that campaigns against mass surveillance. “There is no other democracy in the world, possibly no other country in the world, doing this.”

Judge Puts Overtime Pay for Millions in Limbo as Republicans Rejoice

A federal judge on Tuesday halted an Obama administration rule that would have expanded overtime pay for millions of workers, a decision that was slammed by employees' rights advocates.

The U.S. Department of Labor rule, which was set to go into effect on December 1, would have made overtime pay available to full-time salaried employees making up to $47,476 a year. It was expected to touch every nearly every sector in the U.S. economy. The threshold for overtime pay was previously set at $23,660, and had been updated once in 40 years—meaning any full-time employees who earned more than $23,600 were not eligible for time-and-a-half when they worked more than 40 hours a week.

Tuesday's decision keeps the rule from being implemented while U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant considers opposing arguments by a number of business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and 21 states. Mazzant said the Labor Department had overstepped its authority by raising the threshold so significantly.

With the GOP set to control both chambers of Congress and the White House, the rule faces an uncertain future—but Republicans and corporate interests are already rejoicing.

The housing market has mostly recovered, homeowners haven’t

Housing has mostly recovered, homeowners haven’t. ...

Sales of existing homes in the U.S. — they’re the bulk of home sales, as opposed to newly built houses — rose 2 percent in October from the previous month, according to numbers just released from the National Association of Realtors. The rise in October brought home sales to an annual rate of 5.6 million, that’s the fastest pace since February 2007, before the housing bust hit. ...

On the other hand, thanks to the foreclosure crisis, relatively tight lending standards at banks in recent years and some remaining post-traumatic stress from the housing debacle and forcelosure crisis that’s made some people leery of buying, homeownership is now at low levels not seen since the 1960s. The U.S. homeownership rate was 63.5 percent during the third quarter of 2016. During the peak of the housing boom, it reached 69 percent.

That matters because as more people find it difficult to buy a home, it means a smaller share of Americans are benefitting from that appreciation of the housing market. And that could explain why the mood among many Americans is out of step with generally healthy looking data.

Hedge Fund Managers Expect a Return on Their Investment in Donald Trump

"The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country,” Donald Trump told “Face the Nation” in August 2015. “These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky.”

In fact, the paper-pushers got extremely lucky when Donald Trump was elected. Trump’s victory has facilitated one of the most audacious hedge fund plays in recent U.S. history — one poised to pay off in billions of dollars. Billionaire investors are buying worthless stocks in the hope of bullying the government into re-animating them. And now the government just might grant their wish.

The holdings in question are mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the government put into federal conservatorship in 2008. The Treasury Department in 2012 changed the terms of the deal, sweeping all of Fannie’s and Freddie’s profits into the government.

After these maneuvers, shareholders were thought to have been wiped out. But hedge funds continued to buy stock in the companies. They wanted to force the government to recapitalize Fannie and Freddie and release them back into the private sector. In that event, the stock price would shoot up (before the financial crisis, each traded at $60 a share), giving investors an astronomical return on their investment. Hedge funds don’t have to disclose their stakes in individual stocks, but reports indicate that just one, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital, has $475 million invested in the companies.

The hedge funds mounted pressure on several fronts to ensure they’d win their bet. They lobbied Congress to privatize the mortgage companies. They built advocacy groups to argue for their position. They fought Treasury’s profit sweep in a series of lawsuits. And this year, they embarked upon buying themselves a president. [See article for further details of the purchase of a president. - js]

Trump's tax plan: massive cuts for the 1% will usher 'era of dynastic wealth'

President Donald Trump is set to give America’s richest 1% an average annual tax cut of $214,000 when he takes office, while more than eight million families with children are expected to suffer financially under his proposed tax plan.

On the eve of the election, Trump promised to “massively cut taxes for the middle class, the forgotten people, the forgotten men and women of this country, who built our country”. But independent expert analyses of Trump’s tax plan show that America’s millionaire and billionaire class will win big at the expense of struggling low- and middle-income people, who turned out in large numbers to help the real estate billionaire win the election. ...

Single-parent families would suffer the most because Trump would lower the minimum of tax-free earnings to $15,000 per adult no matter how many children in the household. Under current law the threshold is $17,400 for single-parent families with one child and $24,750 for a couple with one child, and the threshold increases by $4,050 for each additional child.

Trump also plans to consolidate the current seven tax breaks into three: 12%, 25% and 33%. His plan would scrap the current 10% tax for earnings under $19,625 and replace it with 12%. Trump’s proposed childcare credits would not make up for the changes, according to Lily Batchelder, a law professor and tax expert at New York University. ...

While the poor will face tax increases, the Tax Policy Center research said the rich would received big tax cuts that get even bigger as you work up the income scale. The top 20% of earners would receive an average annual tax cut of $16,660 compared with an overall average cut of $2,940.

The richest 1% will collect 47% of all the tax cuts – an average saving of $214,000.

The 0.1% – the 117,000 households with incomes of more than $3.7m – would receive an average 2017 tax cut of $1.3m, a nearly 19% drop in tax they were due to pay in 2016. The tax savings of the super-rich will increase further in future, with the 0.1%’s estimated 2025 tax bill to fall by $1.5m.

Donald Trump’s Big Ethics Move Is to Replace Lobbyists With Former Lobbyists

Donald Trump, implementing what one news outlet called a “tough lobbying ban“, swept several registered lobbyists out of his transition team last week —  only to replace them on Monday with new officials heavily involved with lobbying for the same industry interests.

The junk food lobbyist overseeing the agency that is responsible for the federal school lunch program will be replaced — by a former junk food lobbyist.

The Koch Industries lobbyist who was overseeing transition efforts on energy and the environment will be replaced — by a former Koch Industries lobbyist who leads a think tank funded by Koch Industries.

The Trump transition-team ethics standards requires officials to deregister as lobbyists and agree to a five-year lobbying ban. But the rules do not preclude officials who have recently worked in the lobbying industry or currently work in the lobbying industry without having explicitly registered as lobbyists.

As Trump Disavows "Alt-Right" Support, Critics Question If He Will Still Normalize White Supremacy

"Alt-right" experiences buyers remorse. I suspect that they won't be the last of Trump's supporters to get that sinking feeling that they have been played.

Donald Trump's 'alt-right' supporters express dismay at disavowal

President-elect Donald Trump’s disavowal of Richard Spencer and his far-right thinktank the National Policy Institute, a day after video of Spencer’s supporters giving the Nazi salute at an event in Washington DC surfaced, has dismayed some of his supporters on the “alt-right”.

“This constant virtue signaling needs to finally end, otherwise our civilization will simply collapse,” a commenter wrote underneath the article of Trump’s disavowal on rightwing news site Breitbart.

People in the myriad “alt-right” communities that have flourished online in recent years are also expressing their displeasure that Trump appears to have abandoned the most extreme of his policies – at least for now – such as building a wall and prosecuting Hillary Clinton. ...

On /pol/, the political discussion board of the anonymous message-board 4chan, one poster wrote: “Already reneging on his word before he even takes office?! People will remember that.”

A post on Reddit’s r/altright board, one of the movement’s home bases, linked to Trump’s disavowal at the New York Times meeting and asked: “Anyone here feeling bamboozled by the Donald?” Dozens of commenters responded.

US - President-elect Donald Trump backtracks on climate, threat to jail Clinton

Nikki Haley chosen as US ambassador to United Nations

Donald Trump has chosen South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as US ambassador to the United Nations, the first woman tapped for a top-level administration post during his White House transition so far.

In a statement, the president-elect said that Haley is “a proven dealmaker and we look forward to making plenty of deals”, adding that the South Carolina governor “will be a great leader representing us on the world stage”.

An outspoken Trump critic throughout much of the presidential race, Haley would become Trump’s first female – and first non-white – cabinet-level official if the appointment is confirmed by the Senate.

Two sources familiar with the decision told the Associated Press the ambassadorship would be a cabinet-level position, which is at the discretion of the president.

Hillary Clinton urged to call for election vote recount in battleground states

A growing number of academics and activists are calling for US authorities to fully audit or recount the 2016 presidential election vote in key battleground states, in case the results could have been skewed by foreign hackers.

The loose coalition, which is urging Hillary Clinton’s campaign to join its fight, is preparing to deliver a report detailing its concerns to congressional committee chairs and federal authorities early next week, according to two people involved. ...

Curiosity about Wisconsin has centred on apparently disproportionate wins that were racked up by Trump in counties using electronic voting compared with those that used only paper ballots. The apparent disparities were first widely publicised earlier this month by David Greenwald, a journalist for the Oregonian.

However, Nate Silver, the polling expert and founder of FiveThirtyEight, cast significant doubt over this theory on Tuesday evening, stating that the difference disappeared after race and education levels, which most closely tracked voting shifts nationwide, were controlled for.

Silver and several other election analysts have dismissed suggestions that the swing state vote counts give cause for concern about the integrity of the results.

Still, dozens of professors specialising in cybersecurity, defense, and elections have in the past two days signed an open letter to congressional leaders stating that they are “deeply troubled” by previous reports of foreign interference, and requesting swift action by lawmakers.

New York magazine reported that a conference call has taken place between the activists and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Democratic presidential electors revolt against Trump

At least a half-dozen Democratic electors have signed onto an attempt to block Donald Trump from winning an Electoral College majority, an effort designed not only to deny Trump the presidency but also to undermine the legitimacy of the institution.

The presidential electors, mostly former Bernie Sanders supporters who hail from Washington state and Colorado, are now lobbying their Republican counterparts in other states to reject their oaths — and in some cases, state law — to vote against Trump when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 19.

Even the most optimistic among the Democratic electors acknowledges they're unlikely to persuade the necessary 37 Republican electors to reject Trump — the number they'd likely need to deny him the presidency and send the final decision to the House of Representatives. And even if they do, the Republican-run House might simply elect Trump anyway.

But the Democratic electors are convinced that even in defeat, their efforts would erode confidence in the Electoral College and fuel efforts to eliminate it, ending the body’s 228-year run as the only official constitutional process for electing the president. With that goal in mind, the group is also contemplating encouraging Democratic electors to oppose Hillary Clinton and partner with Republicans in support of a consensus pick like Mitt Romney or John Kasich.

Buying Silence: Why So Many Democrats are Mute About Standing Rock

After weeks of calling for the United States Government to provide the efforts of water protectors at Standing Rock to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, Bernie Sanders finally has some company in the United States Senate joining him in that call. In a November 21 letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) called on the Department of Justice to protect the Dakota Access Pipeline water protectors. ...

The response from the Department of Justice and Obama Administration to what has been occurring at Standing Rock has left a stain on the end of President Obama’s second presidential term. Despite visiting the Standing Rock reservation in 2014 and affirming his commitment to Native American rights, his administration has remained neutral amid reports for weeks of abuses towards the water protectors. ...

Most politicians have remained silent or neutral on the Dakota Access Pipeline. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who has claimed to be Cherokee, said she opposes the pipeline when questioned by a supporter, but has avoided making any public comments on the issue. Hillary Clinton issued a neutral, meaningless statement after protesters sat in her campaign headquarters demanding action. Since her defeat to Donald Trump, she has refrained from devoting any effort to addressing the Dakota Access Pipeline. Democratic Party leaders in the Senate, including Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, have ignored the issue.

This is likely because the Dakota Access Pipeline is being funded by some of the most prolific donors to the Democratic Party. Sunoco Logistics Partners is set to acquire Energy Transfer Partners, the company constructing the pipeline, while Sunoco will oversee its operation. The owners of the company primarily consist of Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs.

Phillips 66, who have financed 25% of the Dakota Access Pipeline project, is primarily owned by billionaire Warren Buffett’s holding company. Buffett actively campaigned for Hillary Clinton this past presidential election, and has made large donations to Clinton, Obama, and other Democrats over the past several years.

Call for DOJ Observers in North Dakota as DAPL Activists Face Severe Injuries, Arrests

Water protectors battling the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline are grappling with terrible injuries and even more arrests in the wake of Sunday's police onslaught, in which law enforcement bombarded the peaceful activists with concussion grenades, rubber bullets, mace, and water cannons in sub-zero temperatures.

The attack from the Morton County Sheriff's Department and its aftermath has prompted supporters and politicians to call on the U.S. Department of Justice to send observers to the scene, to defend the activists' First Amendment right to safely protest:

I urge @TheJusticeDept to send observers to defend the water protectors' right to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. https://t.co/YDCGofUIlL

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 22, 2016

Amnesty International echoed such calls in a letter sent Monday to the Morton County Sheriff's Department. "[T]he use of those water cannons against the protesters themselves risks potential injury and hypothermia for the protesters who were sprayed with water in below freezing temperatures," wrote Amnesty International USA executive director Margaret Huang
, according to Indian Country Today. "Also alarming are videos of the use of tear gas, and reports of rubber bullets used to disperse the crowd of protesters."

Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’

Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said.

Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.

This would mean the elimination of Nasa’s world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena. Nasa’s network of satellites provide a wealth of information on climate change, with the Earth science division’s budget set to grow to $2bn next year. By comparison, space exploration has been scaled back somewhat, with a proposed budget of $2.8bn in 2017.

Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”.

Trump's "Open Mind" on Climate Denounced as Nothing but "Empty Rhetoric"

President-elect Donald Trump's claim to be keeping an "open mind" about the Paris climate change accord is nothing but "a bunch of empty rhetoric" when viewed alongside his policy proposals and personnel choices, environmental group 350.org charged on Tuesday.

Of the international climate agreement, which Trump repeatedly vowed to withdraw from on the campaign trail, he told New York Times editors and reporters on Tuesday: "I'm looking at it very closely. I have an open mind to it."

Trump—who previously described man-made global warming as a "hoax"—also reportedly acknowledged "some connectivity" between human activity and climate change.

But in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, 350.org executive director May Boeve scoffed at the president-elect's alleged change of heart.

"Actions speak louder than words," Boeve declared. "As long as Trump has a climate change denier like Myron Ebell running his transition team, you know this is all a bunch of empty rhetoric," she added, referring to the climate change denier heading Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Childhood Immigrants Once Protected by Obama’s Program Now Face Betrayal and Deportation

What Is an Emolument? Donald Trump Has People Talking About This Part of the Constitution

Showdown at Standing Rock Is Not Just About the Dakota Access Pipeline

Network at 40: the flawed satire that predicted Trump and cable 'news porn

A Little Night Music

Phillip Walker - Laughing And Clowning

Phillip Walker - Louisiana Walk

Phillip Walker - Strange Things Happening

Phillip Walker & Long John Hunter - Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Percy Mayfield & Phillip Walker - Two Years Of Torture & My Jug And I

Phillip Walker - I Can't Lose (With The Stuff I Use) & Tin Pan Alley

Phillip Walker - Special Built Woman

Philip Walker - Beatrice Beatrice

Phillip Walker Band - Live At Pit Inn 1979