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This evening's music features blues guitarist Scrapper Blackwell. Enjoy!

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power.”

-- Malcolm X

News and Opinion

Labelling Dissenting Media As ‘Fake News’ Is The Same As Telling Us That Our Grievances Are Imaginary

A bill was quietly passed with a veto-proof majority in both the House and the Senate the other day, locked in by the Senate on the eighth of this month. Called the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act. ... As Zero Hedge noted after the Propaganda Act passed in the House at the end of last month, “It is easy to see how this law, if passed by the Senate and signed by the president, could be used to target, threaten, or eliminate so-called ‘fake news’ websites, a list which has been used to arbitrarily define any website, or blog, that does not share the mainstream media's proclivity to serve as the Public Relations arm of a given administration.” ...

We can get an idea of how we can expect the government’s definition of “propaganda” to be used by looking to the Washington Post, which is owned by the fifth wealthiest plutocrat in the world and which has served as the neoliberal establishment’s most unabashedly vocal advocate this election cycle. AlterNet correctly identifies it as “essentially an arm of the American deep state,” so we can learn a lot from what it’s saying. WaPo recently ran a very serious article wherein a McCarthyite blacklist of hundreds of alternative media outlets, many of them highly respected, was held up as evidence compiled by “experts” that Russian propaganda pervades all levels of all media that runs counter to the Approved Story. The evidence for being added to this blacklist was never revealed by the extremely shady organization cited, but was described as “behavioral”, meaning that a site was added to the blacklist if the organization decided that it appeared to behave in a way that benefitted the Russian government. ...

This is nothing other than textbook gaslighting. The near-monopolized mainstream media is refusing to tell dissenting stories and look at dissenting points of view, and when other outlets try to tell those stories they get attacked, marginalized and silenced for being “fake”. Don’t like what the president is doing? That’s fake. Nervous about the implications behind something you read in WikiLeaks? Fake. Want more transparency in government? Scared of the warmongering against a nuclear superpower? Don’t like the Democratic party’s rampant corporate cronyism and aggressive suppression of progressive voices and candidates? Fake, fake, and double fake. Your concerns are fake, your grievances are fake, your stories are fake. You believe a fake thing. It’s only in your head. You’re crazy.

Well I’m not crazy, and neither are you. Our concerns are valid, and we’re getting better and better at sharing information about them and telling the stories that we want to tell. It is urgent that we refuse to be gaslighted into silence and keep speaking our truth loud and proud.

Tucker Carlson SHREDS Adam Schiff On Russian Election Hack

Intel panel nixes briefing on alleged Russian interference in US election after agencies refuse to appear

The House Intelligence Committee abruptly canceled a briefing set for Thursday on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, after the CIA declined to provide a briefer for the session, Fox News is told.

Amid concerns about reports that conflict with details previously provided to the committee, Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had requested a closed, classified briefing Thursday for committee Republican and Democratic members from the FBI, CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Agency.

But Fox News is told the CIA declined citing its focus on the full review requested by President Obama, and the other agencies did not respond to the committee’s request, which is unusual given the panel is the most-senior committee with jurisdiction.

"It is unacceptable that the Intelligence Community directors would not fulfill the House Intelligence Committee’s request to be briefed tomorrow on the cyber-attacks that occurred during the presidential campaign," Nunes said in a statement. "The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes."

Nunes also had given the agencies until Friday to address conflicts in the record.

Heh, it looks to me like the CIA leadership may be the worst enemy of the CIA, having seriously damaged the agency's credibility.

Donald Trump risks damaging intelligence agencies, warns former CIA chief

Donald Trump’s public disparagement of US intelligence agencies would have a discouraging effort on the country’s spies and undermine the moral authority of their leaders to send them “into harm’s way”, a former CIA director said on Wednesday

Michael Hayden, who served as director of the NSA and then the CIA during the George W Bush administration, entered the growing controversy over the president-elect’s attitude towards the US intelligence community. Trump has questioned its conclusion that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee and the CIA’s reported finding that Moscow had meddled in the presidential election in Trump’s favour.

It also emerged that Trump had only met intelligence officials to receive what is normally a daily briefing, four times since the election. “I get it when I need it,” he said. An aide said on Wednesday that he would from now on receive a presidential daily brief three times a week instead of just once.

NBC news makes an entry into the anonymous, evidence-free news sweepstakes.

Vladimir Putin 'personally involved' in US hack, NBC News claims

US intelligence officials believe that Vladimir Putin was personally involved in hacking during the American election campaign as part of a vendetta against Hillary Clinton, NBC News has claimed.

The Russian president personally instructed how material hacked from US Democrats was leaked and otherwise used, the US television network said, quoting two senior officials with access to this information.

The officials said they have a “high level of confidence” in this new assessment, NBC reported. ...

Putin has reportedly never forgiven Clinton – then secretary of state – for publicly questioning the integrity of parliamentary elections in 2011 in Russia, and accused her of encouraging street protests.

The intelligence officials told NBC that Putin’s goals in the alleged hacking began as revenge against Clinton. ...

In preparation for possible retaliation, US intelligence agencies have intensified their investigations into Putin’s personal wealth, NBC said, citing US officials.

[Ooooh! Ooooh! International mudfight! Invest in popcorn futures now! - js]

Ex-British ambassador who is now a WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Clinton emails - they were handed over to him at a D.C. park by an intermediary for 'disgusted' Democratic whistleblowers

• Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Julian Assange, told the Dailymail.com he flew to Washington, D.C. for emails
• He claims he had a clandestine hand-off in a wooded area near American University with one of the email sources
• The leakers' motivation was 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the 'tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders'
• Murray says: 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks'
• 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,' Murray insists

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September.

His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.

Murray is a controversial figure who was removed from his post as a British ambassador amid allegations of misconduct. He was cleared of those but left the diplomatic service in acrimony.

Trump renews questions about U.S. hacking tied to Russia

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday raised more questions about Russia's reported role in cyber attacks on U.S. political parties and individuals as well as the timing of the White House's response under President Barack Obama.

If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016

NBC News reported late Thursday that U.S. intelligence officials have "a high level of confidence" that Putin was personally involved in the Russian cyber campaign against the United States.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lvarov told state TV channel Rossiya-24 that he was "dumbstruck" by the NBC report.

"I think this is just silly, and the futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious," he said.

David Brock continues the post-election anti-Russian propaganda campaign. Looks like the Democrats have reinvented themselves as the new party of Joe McCarthy.

Super PAC starts 2018 spending attacking GOP over Tillerson

American Bridge, the super PAC founded by Democratic strategist David Brock, is launching its first 2018 campaign with an ad targeting several GOP senators over Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson.

The effort includes promoted Facebook posts specifically targeting Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in major metropolitan areas within each state.

The separate posts ask if the individual senators will “bow down to Russia.” ...

“American Bridge is launching these ads to highlight the alarmingly close ties between Tillerson and Vladimir Putin and the grave threat a pro-Putin State Department would pose to our nation’s security,” said American Bridge President Jessica Mackler.

Journalist Iona Craig: The U.S. Could Stop Refueling Saudis & End Devastating War in Yemen Tomorrow

Perhaps someone should ask the "humanitarian bombing" coalition (Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power and Susan Rice) if the starvation of half a million children in Yemen is "worth it," as it was in Iraq according to the ghoulish Clintonite, Madelaine Albright.

Nearly half a million children in Yemen risk starvation, according to UNICEF report

The war still raging in Yemen has pushed the country closer to collapse and on the brink of famine . Now, new figures released by children’s charity UNICEF show that more than 462,000 children are coping with severe acute malnutrition and are at risk of starvation — a staggering 200 percent increase since 2014 — and 2.2. million children require urgent care.

“Malnutrition in Yemen is at an all-time high and increasing,” said Dr Meritxell Relano, a UNICEF representative in Yemen. “The state of health of children in the Middle East’s poorest country has never been as catastrophic as it is today.”

A child dies in the country every 10 minutes as a result of malnutrition and associated conditions like diarrhea and infections, the international organization said.

The latest figures point to an increasingly dire humanitarian situation in Yemen. The United Nations reported in July that nearly half of the country’s population is “food insecure,” with at least seven million facing emergency levels of food insecurity.

[See also Medea Benjamin's essay: Starving Yemeni Children, Bloated US Weapons Makers - js]

‘You haven’t succeeded once’: Reporter grills US State Dept over failures in Syria

Syria: ambulances on the move as Aleppo evacuation operation begins

Ambulances and buses have transported wounded people out of besieged districts of east Aleppo to a rebel-held rural area, and are returning to the city to pick up a second group, as a long-awaited evacuation operation got underway.

Thirteen ambulances and 20 buses were involved in the first wave of evacuations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told the Guardian. Footage of a long convoy of ambulances and green buses driving out of the city was broadcast on Syrian state TV.

The vehicles had arrived in rebel-held areas of the city earlier on Thursday, almost five hours after the evacuation was due to begin, when medical teams waited amid reports of gunfire.

About 1,000 people had left in the first convoy, a World Health Organisation official in Syria told Associated Press. The evacuation is being overseen by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and ICRC, which said it would include the wounded and all civilians.

The UN humanitarian adviser for Syria, Jan Egeland, said the operation was three pronged, involving the evacuation of the sick and wounded, vulnerable civilians, and fighters. “Thousands of people are in need of evacuation, but the first and most urgent thing is wounded, sick and children, including orphans,” he said.

Separately, Russia’s Tass news agency, citing the Russian defence ministry, said Russia had begun the evacuation of 5,000 Syrian rebels and their family members along a 20km humanitarian corridor.

War Manual Revised, Now Limits US Attacks on Human Shields

The US “Law of War Manual” has undergone a substantial change from its 2015 version, aiming to avoid at least some of the loudest condemnations from lawyers and human rights groups about the manual’s advice on US military personnel attacking innocent civilians in war zones, which is supposed to be the whole purpose of the guide in the first place.

The 2015 version of the manual suggested a broad collection of civilians could simply be killed with impunity, and that their deaths could safely be ignored when deciding if an attack was “proportional” under international law. This included civilians being forced into being human shields, along with civilians working at a facility whose continued operation “helps the enemy.” ...

The new book insists that “unvoluntary” human shields now must be given full protection under the laws of war, though the manual continued to insist that people who voluntarily remain in an area where they are shielding something the US wants to bomb are not afforded such protection.

Rep. Honda, Survivor of Japanese Internment Camp, Decries Trump Proposal for Muslim Registry

Facebook Finally Says It Will Not Help Build Muslim Registry

At the beginning of December, The Intercept reported on eight major American technology firms unwilling to state on the record that they would not help the Trump administration create a national Muslim registry. Since then, 22 different advocacy groups petitioned those companies to respond —today, Facebook breaks its silence.

The following statement was issued to The Intercept by a Facebook spokesperson:

“No one has asked us to build a Muslim registry, and of course we would not do so.”

Trump and a bunch of Silicon Valley CEOs sat at a table and pretended to like each other

Silicon Valley was very loud during the election cycle about the dangers that a President Donald Trump could pose to the United States. But now that the billionaire businessman has been elected, many prominent tech leaders are softening their tone, meeting with the president-elect, and some are even joining his team of advisers.

The meeting centered on job creation, trade, and the economy; cameras in the room and limited time didn’t allow for a deep dive into tech industry concerns on issues like user privacy or immigration.

The thinking in Silicon Valley is that on policy, Trump is malleable. One Republican operative who advises a tech company with a CEO in the meeting (the operative was not authorized to speak on the record) told VICE News that “every CEO here is feeling like there’s an opportunity to inform the president-elect’s views on the issues at stake.” ...

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick are set to join Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a collection of business community leaders who will advise and meet regularly with Trump.

Security experts: 'No one should have faith in Yahoo at this point'

Experts have attacked Yahoo’s weak security after the revelation it suffered a hack in 2013, which exposed the personal data of 1 billion users, just months after revealing a 500-million-user data breach from 2014.

The hack saw the potential theft of login details, personal details and any confidential or sensitive information contained within email correspondences. Yahoo provided the email services for BT and Sky customers, as well as other services.

Bruce Schneier, a cryptologist and one of the world’s most respected security experts, said: “Yahoo badly screwed up. They weren’t taking security seriously and that’s now very clear. I would have trouble trusting Yahoo going forward.”

Not only did Yahoo fail to prevent the breach, it also failed to detect the breach when it happened in 2013, only realising the intrusion and data theft after recently being notified by a third party. That left users unknowingly compromised for at least three years, vulnerable to identify theft among many other potential criminal uses of their personal data and passwords.

Keiser Report: Healthcare Monster

Trump Receives Right-Wing Wish List to Gut Rules on Climate, Nutrition, Wages

A wish list from the conservative House Freedom Caucus delivered to President-elect Donald Trump recommends dismantling a whopping 232 Obama administration rules and regulations that govern everything from school lunches and ceiling fans to net neutrality and the minimum wage for federal contract workers.

It would overturn restrictions on oil exploration and coal extraction on federally owned land, repeal the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate, and end executive actions protecting undocumented immigrants who arrived to the U.S. as children. It would "cancel U.S. commitments to the Paris Agreement," move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and ax recent guidelines from the Office of Civil Rights related to transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

It also proposes eliminating the Office of Global Climate Change; the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights; and the Special Envoy for Climate Change, all within the State Department—which is set to be headed by ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.

The 21-page list, posted Wednesday by caucus chair and Trump supporter Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), seeks to "undo Obama's harmful regulatory regime," according to a tweet from the caucus. This is in keeping with Trump's campaign promises.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, caucus members "advise several measures for allowing lower wages, including waiving the Davis-Bacon Act, ending the Obama administration's overtime rule (currently tied up in court), and ending tougher classification of contractors in part because it 'disproportionately hurts independent contractors like Uber and Lyft.' Republicans also suggest ending paid sick leave for federal contractors."

Lesson unlearned - America looks ready to embrace the kinds of policies that prevailed before the Great Recession

Exotic mortgages are receiving triple-A ratings. Former Goldman Sachs bankers are swarming the nexus of government and economics. Share prices for bank stocks are surging. Markets are pricing in a series of interest rate hikes. Stock valuations are nosebleed high. Drill, baby, drill. Is it late 2016 or early 2008? ...

Trump is expected to loosen the rules governing fossil fuel production, offshore drilling, and exploration on federal lands and the Arctic. Relaxing EPA fuel efficiency regulations would boost gasoline sales over time. The agglomeration of oil and gas industry titans in Trump’s cabinet – most notably Trump’s pick for secretary of state, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, and for energy secretary, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry – has energy shares screaming higher (the recent rebound of oil prices has also helped push those stocks up).

Shares of financial institutions are rising on expectations that Trump will fulfill campaign promises to “dismantle” the sweeping 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which overhauled regulation of a U.S. financial system that had essentially melted down.

Regulation adds costs, at the margin, which have made it less profitable to run giant oil companies and banks in recent years. But lack of regulation also has costs. And when bankers run amok, those costs are almost always borne by the public, at least at first.

[There were 6 to 14 trillion dollars in damages done to the economy as a result of the recession according to the Dallas Fed bankers. - js]

Georgia asks Trump to investigate 'failed cyberattacks'

The state of Georgia is asking President-elect Donald Trump to investigate what it described as "failed cyberattacks" on its secretary of state's network that it traced to the U.S. Homeland Security Department.

In a letter Tuesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp said his staff has uncovered nine more instances this year in which computers they traced back to the Homeland Security Department apparently attempted to infiltrate the state's network between Feb. 2 and Nov. 8. His letter followed earlier complaints that his office had detected what it called "a large attack on our system" one week after the presidential election. Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kemp said the additional scanning activity from Washington didn't raise major red flags because it was considered less intrusive, but he said the timing was concerning because it corresponded to dates and times he spoke critically about the department's plan to designate elections systems as "critical infrastructure."

The dates include the date Kemp testified against the agency's plan before the House Oversight Committee, the day of a conference call discussing the designation a critical infrastructure designation with Georgia officials and Election Day, he said.

Colorado Republican Threatens State Electors With Felony Charges If They Fail to Cast Votes as Instructed

In an interview with Politico,  Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State said he will administer an oath to electors prior to  Monday’s official meeting of the Electoral College and ask for felony perjury charges to be filed  against them should they change their vote or abstain from voting.

In a phone interview with Secretary of State Wayne Williams, the lawmaker said that he is attempting to keep Clinton delegates from not voting for the Democratic nominee as part of a national strategy to tie up the Electoral College and block the election of Republican Donald Trump.

According to Williams, the electors who violate their oath and are hit with perjury charges could face up to six years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Prosecutors could also choose to file a misdemeanor perjury charge, carrying a maximum of 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Trump’s Carbon-Obsessed Energy Policy and the Planetary Nightmare to Come

Scroll through Donald Trump’s campaign promises or listen to his speeches and you could easily conclude that his energy policy consists of little more than a wish list drawn up by the major fossil fuel companies: lift environmental restrictions on oil and natural gas extraction, build the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, open more federal lands to drilling, withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan, revive the coal mining industry, and so on and so forth ad infinitum.  In fact, many of his proposals have simply been lifted straight from the talking points of top energy industry officials and their lavishly financed allies in Congress.

If, however, you take a closer look at this morass of pro-carbon proposals, an obvious, if as yet unnoted, contradiction quickly becomes apparent. Were all Trump’s policies to be enacted -- and the appointment of the climate-change denier and industry-friendly attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggests the attempt will be made -- not all segments of the energy industry will flourish.  Instead, many fossil fuel companies will be annihilated, thanks to the rock-bottom fuel prices produced by a colossal oversupply of oil, coal, and natural gas. ...

As Trump imagines the situation, that “war on coal” is a White House-orchestrated drive to suppress its production and consumption through excessive regulation, especially the Clean Power Plan. But while that plan, if ever fully put into operation, would result in the accelerated decommissioning of existing coal plants, the real war against coal is being conducted by the very frackers Trump seeks to unleash. By encouraging the unrestrained production of natural gas, he will ensure continued low gas prices and so a depressed market for coal. ...

As president [Trump] will undoubtedly be able to make enough of his energy program happen to achieve both short term and long term energy mayhem. He won’t actually be able to reverse the global shift to renewable energy now under way or leverage increased American fossil fuel production to achieve significant foreign policy advantages.  What his efforts are, however, likely to ensure is the surrender of American technological leadership in green energy to countries like China and Germany, already racing ahead in the development of renewable systems.  And in the process, he will also guarantee that all of us are going to experience yet more extreme climate events.  He will never recreate the dreamy America of his memory or return us to the steamy economic cauldron of the post-World War II period, but he may succeed in restoring the smoggy skies and poisoned rivers that so characterized that era and, as an added bonus, bring planetary climate disaster in his wake.

Trump transition says request for names of climate scientists was ‘not authorized’

The Trump transition team appeared to back away from a controversial questionnaire sent to the Energy Department last week that asked for the names of department staffers who had worked on several climate-change initiatives under President Obama.

“The questionnaire was not authorized or part of our standard protocol,” Trump’s transition team said in a statement to The Washington Post. “The person who sent it has been properly counseled.”

The disavowal marked one of the earliest apparent instances of the Trump transition team changing course and seeming to acknowledge a mistake, although even that is unclear. Also Wednesday, Trump transition adviser Anthony Scaramucci had appeared to defend the inquiry on CNN’s “New Day” with Chris Cuomo, saying, “This is an intellectual-curiosity expedition.”

The issue of the potential political interference with science has risen quickly to the top of many minds, with scientists demonstrating in the streets of San Francisco outside a major scientific meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and some beginning to download publicly available government data for fear the new administration will make it difficult to access or will wipe some of it clean.

Chorus of Groups and Citizens Demand 100% Percent Renewable Energy by 2050

More than 450 organizations and individuals on Wednesday delivered a letter (pdf) calling on U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would work toward a 100 percent renewable energy economy by 2050.

The twin bills—known as H.Res. 540, introduced in the House by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and S.Res. 632, introduced in the Senate by Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)—would set the goal of meeting the country's energy needs with 100 percent renewable energy and ensuring that all people, especially those in frontline communities, have access to clean resources.

"We need to transform the way we power the country, and we still have a long way to go. That is why we are calling for swift action to transition to 100 percent renewable energy and to ensure that the transition to clean energy helps lift up low-income and minority communities that have suffered some of the worst impacts of pollution," the letter reads. ...

The letter and the legislation come as a new poll conducted by Yale University and George Mason University finds that fully seven in 10 Americans believe that the U.S. should cut down on greenhouse gases and pursue renewable energy goals. The survey, which polled more than 1,200 people nationally, found that the respondents supported limiting C02 emissions from coal-powered plants even if that meant raising the cost of electricity.

Also of Interest

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

"These Are Fake Parties" — Or, Here’s Who Gets to Vote for DNC Chair

'Fake News' Just Got Real -- My Second Brush With Internet Censorship

NBC Evening News in Denver Defames Naked Capitalism

Here’s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC – It’s Not Enough

James Clapper Has a Classified Blog. It’s Called “Intercept.”

The Democratic Party Allies with the CIA

Scoundrel Time: Lessons in Patriotism and Journalism From a Master

Senate Specifics on Why Goldman Sachs’ Gary Cohn Should Not Have a Role in the U.S. Government

Trump’s Coming Confrontation with Yellen and the Federal Reserve

Greece and Creditors in Showdown Again

Blood and Land: The Story of Native America by JCH King – review

Justin Trudeau: 'Globalisation isn't working for ordinary people'

Hat tip divineorder:

The Great A.I. Awakening

Austrian politicians pass law to seize house where Hitler was born

Travel Photographer of the Year 2016: the winners – in pictures

A Little Night Music

Scrapper Blackwell - Shady Lane Blues

Scrapper Blackwell - E Blues

Scrapper Blackwell - Blues Before Sunrise

Leroy Carr And Scrapper Blackwell - I Believe I'll Make A Change

Scrapper Blackwell - My Dream Blues

Scrapper Blackwell - Hard Time Blues

Scrapper Blackwell - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out

Scrapper Blackwell - Little Boy Blue

Leroy Carr And Scrapper Blackwell - Papa Wants A Cookie