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This evening's music features Chicago bluesman J.B. Lenoir. Enjoy!

“No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.”

-- Edward R. Murrow

News and Opinion

I hate to get your tinsel in a tangle, but Obama signed NDAA, allowing government to place propaganda while labeling anti-US news as such.

— Michael Salamone (@MichaelSalamone) December 24, 2016

Under Cover of Christmas, Obama Establishes Controversial Anti-Propaganda Agency

In the final hours before the Christmas holiday weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday quietly signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law—and buried within the $619 billion military budget (pdf) is a controversial provision that establishes a national anti-propaganda center that critics warn could be dangerous for press freedoms.

The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, introduced by Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, establishes the Global Engagement Center under the State Department which coordinates efforts to "recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United Sates national security interests."

Further, the law authorizes grants to non-governmental agencies to help "collect and store examples in print, online, and social media, disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda" directed at the U.S. and its allies, as well as "counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability" of the U.S. and allied nations.

The head of the center will be appointed by the president, which likely means the first director will be chosen by President-elect Donald Trump.

Fake news crusade? Facebook fact checkers have financial ties to Clinton donors

'Let it be an arms race': Donald Trump appears to double down on nuclear expansion

The president-elect Donald Trump has stunned nuclear weapons experts by appearing to call for a renewed arms race on his Twitter feed and in a TV interview.

“Let it be an arms race,” the president in waiting was reported to have told Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe programme, in an early phone call on Friday.

According to Brzezinski he went on to say: “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

The incendiary comment followed a tweet on Thursday in which Trump threatened to preside over a major ramping up of the US nuclear arsenal.

“The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes,” he wrote.

The volley of remarks had Trump aides scrambling into damage limitation mode, but their efforts were powerless to neutralise the shock waves of alarm and bewilderment provoked by the president-elect’s remarks.

"Absolutely Frightening": Greenpeace on Trump's Call for a New Nuclear Arms Race

Trump claims NBC 'purposely' misquoted nuclear comments

President-elect Donald Trump claimed Saturday that NBC News “purposely” misquoted his call for an expansion of the U.S. nuclear program earlier this week, despite reports to the contrary.

Trump on Thursday said the United States “must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." Saturday he accused NBC of intentionally leaving out the latter, more measured portion of his statements.

“.@NBCNews purposely left out this part of my nuclear qoute: "until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes." Dishonest!” the president-elect tweeted Saturday afternoon. ...

NBC News’ initial report covering Trump’s comments on nuclear expansion, however, cited his comments in full. And the Thursday broadcast of NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt” displayed his comments in their entirety.

As Trump Saber-Rattles, Most of World Vows to Push Total Nuke Ban in New Year

As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump continues to receive domestic and international rebuke for his comments on the subject, the General Assembly of the United Nations on Friday adopted a resolution which calls for negotiations to begin next year on an international treaty to completely ban the use of nuclear weapons.

The resolution was adopted by a large majority, with 113 UN member states voting in favour, 35 voting against and 13 abstaining. Support was strongest among the nations of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Unfortunately, yet predictably, the resolution was opposed by the major nuclear powers, including the United States, Britain, France and Russia.

A cross-regional group comprising Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa initiated the resolution and are expected to lead the negotiations, now slated to begin in March.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which backed the resolution, celebrated its passage and urged all nations to take part in the talks.

As Putin & Trump calls for a new nuclear arms race, we are leading the counter-movement. We're banning nukes in 2017, with or without them! pic.twitter.com/fWUJKxXdOp

— ICAN (@nuclearban) December 22, 2016

A longish, very interesting read. Here's a taste:

World War Three, by Mistake

Today, the odds of a nuclear war being started by mistake are low—and yet the risk is growing, as the United States and Russia drift toward a new cold war. The other day, Senator John McCain called Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, “a thug, a bully, and a murderer,” adding that anyone who “describes him as anything else is lying.” Other members of Congress have attacked Putin for trying to influence the Presidential election. On Thursday, Putin warned that Russia would “strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces,” and President-elect Donald Trump has responded with a vow to expand America’s nuclear arsenal. “Let it be an arms race,” Trump told one of the co-hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

The harsh rhetoric on both sides increases the danger of miscalculations and mistakes, as do other factors. Close encounters between the military aircraft of the United States and Russia have become routine, creating the potential for an unintended conflict. Many of the nuclear-weapon systems on both sides are aging and obsolete. The personnel who operate those systems often suffer from poor morale and poor training. None of their senior officers has firsthand experience making decisions during an actual nuclear crisis. And today’s command-and-control systems must contend with threats that barely existed during the Cold War: malware, spyware, worms, bugs, viruses, corrupted firmware, logic bombs, Trojan horses, and all the other modern tools of cyber warfare. The greatest danger is posed not by any technological innovation but by a dilemma that has haunted nuclear strategy since the first detonation of an atomic bomb: How do you prevent a nuclear attack while preserving the ability to launch one? ...

Every technology embodies the values of the age in which it was created. When the atomic bomb was being developed in the mid-nineteen-forties, the destruction of cities and the deliberate targeting of civilians was just another military tactic. It was championed as a means to victory. The Geneva Conventions later classified those practices as war crimes—and yet nuclear weapons have no other real use. They threaten and endanger noncombatants for the sake of deterrence. Conventional weapons can now be employed to destroy every kind of military target, and twenty-first-century warfare puts an emphasis on precision strikes, cyberweapons, and minimizing civilian casualties. As a technology, nuclear weapons have become obsolete. What worries me most isn’t the possibility of a cyberattack, a technical glitch, or a misunderstanding starting a nuclear war sometime next week. My greatest concern is the lack of public awareness about this existential threat, the absence of a vigorous public debate about the nuclear-war plans of Russia and the United States, the silent consent to the roughly fifteen thousand nuclear weapons in the world. These machines have been carefully and ingeniously designed to kill us. Complacency increases the odds that, some day, they will. The “Titanic Effect” is a term used by software designers to explain how things can quietly go wrong in a complex technological system: the safer you assume the system to be, the more dangerous it is becoming.

Afghanistan funds abusive militias as US military 'ignores' situation, officials say

The US military and the CIA are turning a blind eye as Afghanistan’s spy agency spends foreign donor money on militias which are committing human rights abuses that help destabilise the fragile country, according to local and western officials.

The Afghan national directorate of security (NDS) arms strongmen ostensibly to fight the Taliban and other militants. But some militia leaders use their new power to fight local turf wars, including against elected government officials, rather than insurgents.

One such commander, Perim Qul, in the northern province of Takhar, has received about $85,000 (£70,000) to arm 500 men. However, he allegedly spends part of that money on a private prison where he beats and extorts local people. His men have even ambushed and killed a local politician. ...

The People’s Uprising program is reminiscent of a controversial local police scheme, ALP, initially introduced by the US military to build village-level resistance to the Taliban and help foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan. However, the ALP has been widely criticised for employing child soldiers, abusive behaviour, and creating fertile ground for armed opposition such as the Taliban.

While the US does not directly support People’s Uprising groups, the militias are bankrolled by the National Directorate of Security – and the bulk of NDS funding is believed to come from the CIA.

In the past, the CIA has run paramilitary Afghan units responsible for killing civilians. More recently, the Washington Post has reported that the CIA also funds and operates alongside ruthless militias in the Afghan east.

Displaced Syrians Eagerly Return to Aleppo, Hopeful Fighting Is Over

With the fighting over the Syrian city of Aleppo declared finished on Thursday, civilians displaced over the last four-plus years of fighting began returning to bombed out districts en masse, hoping to find their homes intact, or at least comparatively so, and hoping to reclaim their lives in a now calm city.

Not everyone has been lucky, as some of the returnees reported that their homes were more or less entirely destroyed, and with the Syrian Army’s bulldozers feverishly removing rubble, some are finding empty lots where their homes once stood. One local quoted by AFP insisted that “houses can be rebuilt” and that she was still glad to be back in the city.

Syria Targets Rebels in Idlib, Rural Aleppo

With the multi-year fight over the major city of Aleppo over, there are calls from Russian officials for a ceasefire. In the meantime, however, fighting has moved into the area immediately surrounding Aleppo, with additional airstrikes reported by Syrian and Russian planes over idlib Province.

There is a lot of speculation that Idlib, the de facto capital of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, and by the extension the capital of much of the non-ISIS rebellion, could be the next target. Yet with so many rebels evacuated from metro Damascus and Aleppo into Idlib, it’s also an increasingly tall order, and one which could be a huge, complicated battle.

In the near-term, the fighting is likely to focus on rural areas in Aleppo Province, around the city, as the military aims to get enough control over the area around Aleppo that the city itself is no longer in range of artillery strikes, if nothing else. Some such strikes were already reported Friday, with a handful of civilians killed.

Obama Allows Toothless UN Resolution Against Israeli Settlements to Pass

The Obama administration on Friday finally allowed the UN Security Council to call on Israel to halt its settlement expansion. ... The U.S. did not support the resolution, but it did not utilize its veto power either.

The resolution is toothless — it does not, for example, authorize any form of sanctions to compel Israel to respect international law. Yet prior to its passage, a long list of both Democrats and Republicans called on the administration to veto it, including President-elect Donald Trump, New York’s Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and Wisconsin-based House Speaker Paul Ryan. ...

This was the only Security Council resolution calling on Israel to respect international law that Obama ever refused to veto. Under George W. Bush, six similar resolutions were allowed through. Under H.W. Bush, nine resolutions critical of Israel were allowed through.

At the same time, Obama awarded Israel with its largest military aid package ever — signing a memorandum of understanding in September that would give it $38 billion over 10 years.

The pressure to veto a toothless resolution shows how constricted U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine has become in recent years, even though the American public appears to favor tougher UN action on the issue. A recent Brookings poll finds that nearly two-thirds of Americans favor UN resolutions demanding a halt to settlements and that a majority of self-identified Democrats support some form of sanctions towards Israel to bring about peace.

Israeli Journalist: The 'Real Landlords' of Israel Are the Settlers

Israel Summons Ambassadors, Threatens to Cut UN Ties over Anti-Settlements Vote

Israeli officials have summoned 14 different ambassadors since the Thursday vote at the UN Security Council,. including the United States Ambassador and 10 of the 14 who voted in favor of the resolution condemning Israel’s ongoing construction of settlements in the occupied territories.

The message, as ever, is that Israel is “outraged,” and they’re looking to take it out on whoever they can, with a particular eye toward spiting the Palestinians to prove that they aren’t going to be pushed into a peace deal by the UN. Israel is also looking to retaliate against the UN, according to officials. ...

A lot of the Israeli rage appears to be centered on the US, the only nation at the Security Council that didn’t vote for the resolution, but who also didn’t veto it. ... Netanyahu also described a testy phone call with Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday, during which he warned Kerry that “friends don’t take friends to the Security Council.”

Israel Cuts Civilian Ties With Palestinians Over UN Vote

On the orders of Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Israel has formally severed all civil and diplomatic contacts with the Palestinian Authority, describing the move as “retaliation” for a UN Security Council resolution critical of Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.

Defense officials say Israel’s security cooperation will remain unchanged. The Palestinians did not get to vote on the UN resolution, but praised it, saying it at the very least provided a clear denunciation of the occupation policies of Israel.

Palestinian Authority officials also downplayed Lieberman’s announced “retaliation” against them, saying they hadn’t noticed any difference in coordination with the Israeli occupation forces since the announcement. It hasn’t been clear what the differences might be so far, as there were no significant talks ongoing which would be halted by the withdrawal of diplomats.

Frexit: Le Pen promises to take France out of EU & NATO

British Local authorities used Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to follow people, including dog walkers, over five years

Councils were given permission to carry out more than 55,000 days of covert surveillance over five years, including spying on people walking dogs, feeding pigeons and fly-tipping, the Guardian can reveal.

A mass freedom of information request has found 186 local authorities – two-thirds of the 283 that responded – used the government’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to gather evidence via secret listening devices, cameras and private detectives.

Among the detailed examples provided were Midlothian council using the powers to monitor dog barking and Allerdale borough council gathering evidence about who was guilty of feeding pigeons.

Wolverhampton used covert surveillance to check on the sale of dangerous toys and car clocking; Slough to aid an investigation into an illegal puppy farm; and Westminster to crack down on the selling of fireworks to children.

Meanwhile, Lancaster city council used the act, in 2012, for “targeted dog fouling enforcement” in two hotspots over 11 days.

A spokeswoman pointed out that the law had since changed and Ripa could only now be used if criminal activity was suspected. The permissions for tens of thousands of days were revealed in a huge freedom of information exercise, carried out by the Liberal Democrats. It found that councils then launched 2,800 separate surveillance operations lasting up to 90 days each. ...

Brian Paddick, the Lib Dem peer who represents the party on home affairs, said: “It is absurd that local authorities are using measures primarily intended for combating terrorism for issues as trivial as a dog barking or the sale of theatre tickets. Spying on the public should be a last resort not an everyday tool.”

Newly Declassified House Intel Report on Snowden Is “Rifled With Obvious Falsehoods”

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday unveiled its full 37-page report on its three-year investigation into Edward Snowden, drawing even more criticism for conclusions that have been called biased by supporters of the former NSA contractor.

The report, released just days before a holiday weekend, is an extended version of a highly acerbic — and disputed — unclassified summary the committee published in September, describing the former NSA contractor as a “serial exaggerator and fabricator.” ...

Snowden quickly derided the report, which delves into his personal and professional life, often citing seemingly petty workplace grievances. He tweeted to his more than 2.5 million followers that the document is “rifled with obvious falsehoods” — citing reporting by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Barton Gellman, who has also criticized the report.

The extended report, according to U.S. News & World Report, actually addresses some factual concerns critics had about the summary published in September. The original report argued Snowden overstated his injuries and lied about his education, while the full investigation includes contrary evidence.

‘Revealing such a secret takes your life away’ – UBS whistleblower

DOJ Bestows 'Early Christmas Present' to Financial Giant Deutsche Bank

German lender Deutsche Bank "got off easy" on Friday, having reached a $7.2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) over sales of mortgage-backed securities that fueled the financial crisis.

Of the $7.2 billion, just $3.1 billion is a cash penalty—the remaining $4.1 billion, economist Yves Smith explained at Naked Capitalism, is "promised 'consumer relief' as in 'stuff maybe we'll do in the future.'" Regardless, the amount is far less than the $14 billion originally requested by DOJ investigators. 

"For Deutsche it was certainly quite positive" because the hit to capital is "modest," Kyle Kloc, a portfolio manager at Fisch Asset Management in Zurich who holds Deutsche Bank bonds, told Bloomberg. Supporting that assessment was the news that the bank's shares rose on Friday following the announcement. 

Indeed, investigative journalist Nomi Prins described the settlement as an "early Christmas present" for the bank, while reporter and author David Dayen—who has written extensively on the mortgage crisis—blasted the deal in a series of tweets.

Among other things, Dayen criticized a spineless DOJ, pointing out that "this is the same crappy settlement they've done w/every bank." The "DOJ has changed norms," he said, "by turning these dumb settlements into a substitute for accountability."

Looks like another weak settlement by the Department of Justice. Some folks are going to prison, right? Oh wait, that's just in the movies. https://t.co/BIvxcbOH8X

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) December 23, 2016

Largest US police union asks Amazon to pull 'offensive' Black Lives Matter shirt

The biggest US police union is pressing Amazon to follow Walmart and remove from third-party sale a shirt that seeks profit in relation to the Black Lives Matter protest movement.

The shirt, which carries the words “Bulletproof: Black Lives Matter”, was removed from online sale by Walmart on Thursday, after the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) said it was “offensive”.

In an open letter, FOP president Chuck Canterbury appealed to Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos to support the FOP in “increasing the bonds of trust between the men and women of law enforcement and the communities they serve”.

The shirt was still available for sale via Amazon.com on Friday. Amazon declined to comment.

When police in Massachusetts stopped arresting drug users, treatment rates quadrupled

For the past 18 months, police in Gloucester, Massachusetts, have taken a novel approach to America’s opioid epidemic: Rather than arresting and locking up heroin addicts, the cops are helping them get treatment.

And there’s evidence the tactic is working extraordinarily well.

From June 2015 through May 2016, the first year of Gloucester’s “Angel initiative,” 376 people approached police on 429 occasions and asked for help with their drug problems, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. In 94.5 percent of those cases, authorities were able to place the person directly into rehab. ...

The report’s authors, a team from the Boston Medical Center and Boston University’s School of Public Health, note that nationwide, only 21 percent of people who are addicted to opioids receive any type of immediate treatment. That means Gloucester’s program has effectively quadrupled the rate at which addicts who need help receive it.

“The astounding fact is that people came to the police station for help, and they got it,” David Rosenbloom, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health and co-author of the report, said in a statement. “In our follow-up calls, participants told us that the police station was the first place they had ever sought help without being judged and stigmatized.”

Progressive causes see 'unprecedented' upswing in donations after US election

From smaller local organizations to household names such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, nonprofit organizations across the US reported fundraising tallies many magnitudes higher than in previous years as they approached their end-of-year donation drives.

“This is always our big time of year, but this year it’s huge,” said Loretta Prescott, development director for the Immigration Legal Advocacy Project in Maine. “Instead of giving gifts, people are making donations to causes they believe in.”

Progressive causes in the US saw a spike in donations immediately after the election on 8 November from voters dismayed, outraged or even frightened by the outcome. In the weeks since, this wave of strategic giving has compounded.

Planned Parenthood has received more than 300,000 donations in the six weeks since the election, 40 times its normal rate. Around half the donors were millennials and 70% had never given to the family planning organization before, a spokesman told the Guardian. ...

The ACLU donations webpage crashed the day after the election as visitors increased by 7,000%, and in the next five days it raised more than $7m from 120,000 donors. Now it says it has raised almost $23m from more than 300,000 individual gifts in just online donations.

“The Apprentice” Employees Feared Professional Reprisal Over Leaks

After the infamous “grab her by the pussy” Access Hollywood tape, many expected footage of Donald Trump’s hundreds of hours in “The Apprentice” boardroom to yield something just as incendiary. But outtakes from the show were never leaked. One of the plausible reasons why this footage hasn’t seen the light of day is that, simply put, many of the employees with access to the footage feared the end of their careers.

It’s a concern that highlights the dangers of working in an industry without job security or union representation. ...

Unscripted television blossomed in part as a union-busting device. During and after the 1988 television writers’ strike, networks developed shows like Cops and Unsolved Mysteries to maintain programming in the event of another walkout. ... Those producers, editors, and writers who transform thousands of hours of footage into something coherent, if not watchable, are typically contract employees who move from job to job, none lasting more than a few months (this makes union organizing extremely difficult). ... Perhaps most important, your future career depends on good working relationships with production companies and supervisors. If Mark Burnett threatens to prevent you from working again if you cross him, that’s a credible threat, since employees find their next jobs through recommendations and repeat business.

Threats that “you’ll never work in this town again” should not have been an impediment to anonymous leaking of material on Trump that someone may have considered in the public interest. The fact that it was, that people didn’t think their identities would remain hidden and that their career would end, speaks to the climate of fear that grips the unscripted TV industry. And it increasingly characterizes the U.S. workforce, where the boss has disproportionate power and control.

New Study 'Sounds Alarm' on Another Climate Feedback Loop

The loss of Arctic sea ice has already been shown to be part of a positive feedback loop driving climate change, and a recent study published in the journal Nature puts the spotlight on what appears to be another of these feedback loops.

It has to do with soil, currently one of Earth's carbon sinks. But warming may lead to soils releasing, rather than sequestering, carbon.

As study co-author John Blair, university distinguished professor of biology at Kansas State University, explained, "Globally, soils hold more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, so even a relatively small increase in release of carbon from the Earth's soils can have a large impact on atmospheric greenhouse gases and future warming."

For the study, the researchers took data from over four dozen sites across the globe representing a variety of ecosystems and heated them approximately one degree Celsius.

They found that the samples from lower latitude grassland soils showed little change, but the soil samples from the colder, higher latitude ecosystems—which hold more carbon—released large amounts of carbon with the temperature increase.

The total amount of carbon lost by 2050 from these higher latitude soils could end up being the equivalent of as much as 17 percent of the expected human-caused emissions over this period, the results suggested.

Climate Scientist Wins Important Legal Battle in Conservative War on Science

Amid fears over a pending war on science under incoming President Donald Trump, scientist Michael Mann won an important legal victory on Thursday against conservative writers who attempted to defame Mann for his work on global warming.

A three-judge panel with the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that Mann can proceed with his defamation claims against Mark Steyn with the conservative National Review and Rand Simberg, who penned a July 2012 blog post for the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) think tank. Both articles likened the renowned climate scientist to Jerry Sandusky, the scandalized Penn State football coach convicted with child molestation. 

In the 111-page ruling (pdf), Senior Judge Vanessa Ruiz argued that the validity of the defendants' claims are questionable, particularly given that they were made in the context of an ideological debate against humanity's impact on the climate.

The defendants' statement that Mann "has engaged in misconduct has been so definitively discredited, a reasonable jury could, if it so chooses, doubt the veracity of appellants' claimed honest belief in that very notion," Ruiz wrote.

"Tarnishing the personal integrity and reputation of a scientist important to one side may be a tactic to gain advantage in a no-holds-barred debate over global warming," she continued. "That the challenged statements were made as part of such debate provides important context and requires careful parsing in light of constitutional standards. But if the statements assert or imply false facts that defame the individual, they do not find shelter under the First Amendment simply because they are embedded in a larger policy debate."

Hank Reichman with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) called the ruling a "victory for both academic freedom and science."

Also of Interest

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

A Seminole Christmas Gift of Freedom

Signs of Hope in Desperate Times

Chris Hedges: In the Time of Trump, All We Have Is Each Other

Virtual Reality Allows the Most Detailed, Intimate Digital Surveillance Yet

Belatedly, a Defense of a Whistleblower

Kissinger, a longtime Putin confidant, sidles up to Trump

Do the Tragedies of Syria Signal the End of Arab Revolutions?

Obama’s passing shot at Netanyahu is a futile gesture

Julian Assange gives guarded praise of Trump and blasts Clinton in interview

Declassify the Evidence of Russian Hacking!

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

“The Narrative,” Neoliberalism, and Identity Politics

Satire won’t rid us of Trump, but it will make us feel better

A Little Night Music

J B Lenoir - How Much More

J.B. Lenoir - Tax Paying Blues

J.B. Lenoir - I Feel So Good

J.B. Lenoir - The Mountain

JB Lenoir - JB's Harp-rack Blues

J. B. Lenoir - People Are Meddling In Our Affairs

J.B Lenoir - Do What I Say

J B Lenoir - Back Door

J.B Lenoir - Let Me Die With The One I Love

J. B. Lenoir - Big Change

J. B. Lenoir - The Mojo Hand

J. B. Lenoir - Fine Girls