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This evening's music features soul singer Laura Lee. Enjoy!

"Every so often, the American societal-political veil lifts, and what was clear to George Carlin and other cynical nonvoters is difficult to deny even for voters skilled at denial. In the 2016 presidential selection/election process, the veil lifted, making it difficult even for previously trusting Americans to continue to believe that they lived in a democracy that provides them with a choice and a say, and made it difficult to continue to believe in the legitimacy of mainstream media. Even for those skilled in denial, it has become difficult to believe in the American exceptionalism that their nation is immune from what other nations are not immune from: a con man taking power by exploiting a sense of victimization—a reality that is now difficult to deny even for a growing number of betrayed Trump voters."

-- Bruce E. Levine

News and Opinion

Israeli officials back shoot-to-kill policy of Palestinian suspects, says Human Rights Watch

Leading Israeli officials have been encouraging soldiers and police officers to kill Palestinians suspected of attacks regardless of whether lethal force is necessary, according to a new report by a leading human rights organisation.

Human Rights Watch has compiled numerous statements by senior members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration and the country’s police force, which appear to endorse using lethal force against suspects, irrespective of whether anyone is in danger. ...

“It’s not just about potentially rogue soldiers, but also about senior Israeli officials who publicly tell security forces to unlawfully shoot to kill,” said Sari Bashi, Israel advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. ...

The organisation condemned statements made by defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, who as an opposition member of the Knesset in 2015 wrote on his Facebook page that the government should adopt a policy that “no attacker, male or female, should make it out of any attack alive”.

Human Rights Watch also cited statements by Jerusalem Police District Commander Moshe Edri, who after the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Palestinian suspected of injuring civilians, said all those who are violent towards Jewish people should be killed.

Bolton: US Should Cut Aid to Everyone Who Voted for Israel Resolution at UN

Picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be a key figure in the US State Department John Bolton is calling on the US to impose harsh cuts in US aid to “retaliate” against all 14 nations which voted in favor of the UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel’s settlement expansion.

Bolton suggested this as leverage to push a second UN vote to “repeal” the initial vote, saying it would represent a “last chance” for nations to placate the Trump Administration by voting against the resolution, and then “we’re going to take steps to show our unhappiness.”

Trump ‘Aggressively Courting’ Benjamin Netanyahu To Attend Inauguration

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team leaders have been “aggressively courting” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to the Jan. 20 inauguration, the New York Post reported.

The newspaper cited an unnamed source “close to the transition” in its report Saturday.

The transition officials, led by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, want Netanyahu to attend the inauguration or meet just before it, according to the newspaper.

Nuclear Experts Warn Trump: Do Not Torpedo Successful Iran Deal

President-elect Donald Trump has said that his "number one priority is to dismantle" the Iran nuclear accord, but dozens of the nation's preeminent scientists and nuclear experts sent the incoming leader a strongly-worded letter (pdf) on Monday urging him not to do so, saying that the deal "has dramatically reduced the risk" of nuclear weapons in Iran.

In turn, the scientists note, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is formally known, "has lowered the pressure felt by Iran's neighbors to develop their own nuclear weapons options and none has announced a new dual-use nuclear program of its own," referring to possible military use of civilian nuclear power technology. ...

Trump—who declared in a March speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that "his number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran"—is now seen as a threat to that security. What's more, the president-elect has surrounded himself with a number of outspoken critics of the deal, including Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), his appointee to lead the CIA.

US military burnishes its credentials as a source of ludicrously false reporting:

U.S. Reports 188 Civilian Deaths in U.S.-Led Operation Against ISIS in Iraq and Syria

At least 188 civilians have been killed in U.S.-led strikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria since the operation began in 2014, the U.S. military said in a statement on Monday. ...

The military's overall estimate was far below those of other outside groups, such as Air Wars, which monitors civilian deaths from international air strikes in the region. The group has estimated about 2,100 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Syria since the coalition's campaign started.

Syria: "Assad, Iran and the militias are looking for military strategy, a military solution"

Russia Launches Airstrikes Backing Turkey’s Advance on ISIS-Held City

Today, while Turkish warplanes and artillery were attacking ISIS targets, the Russian military also carried out airstrikes against ISIS targets to the southwest of the city. Between the two nations, they reported some 22 ISIS fighters killed in the attacks. ...

Al-Bab, just east of Aleppo, is ISIS’ last significant city in Aleppo Province, with Turkey’s invasion having seized the rest of the ISIS territory therein. Turkey says their offensive will go further east, into the city of Manbij, after Bab falls, though Bab has taken a lot longer than most reports would’ve indicated.

Turkey urges Trump administration to turn back on Syrian Kurdish forces

Turkey has set out its terms for cooperation with Donald Trump, saying it expects the new US administration to halt the supply of weapons to Syrian Kurdish forces – which Washington has denied it is doing.

“The United States should not allow this strategic partnership [with Turkey] to be overshadowed by a terrorist organisation,” Binali Yıldırım, the Turkish prime minister, said in a speech in parliament.

Washington sees the Kurdish YPG militia, the largest element of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as one of the most effective partners in the fight against Islamic State in Syria.

The US president-elect has yet to set out his position on how best to defeat Isis and whether he considers the Kurds an ally.

US officials confirmed in September that they were supplying light weapons to the SDF, but said they were only going to its Arab contingent. This week Washington again insisted it had not supplied weapons to the YPG.

But Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said his government had documents to prove the supply, adding: “Everyone in the world knows it.”

Oil, Arms and Militant Wahhabism is the Basis of US-Saudi Relationship

Donald Trump denies North Korea's nuclear capability claims

President-elect Donald Trump has slapped down North Korea’s claim that they are close to testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). On Sunday, the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un gave a televised address in which he said that the country was almost ready to test out the weapon – which has the capacity to reach the U.S.

On Monday Trump was quick to reply via his normal channel of communication – Twitter:

North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017

North Korea has conducted five nuclear tests since 2006, including two in 2016 alone. The most recent explosives trial, in September of last year, was said to have been the biggest yet.

The War Against Alternative Information

The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now have the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, setting aside $160 million to combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s version of reality.

The new law mandates the U.S. Secretary of State to collaborate with the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and other federal agencies to create a Global Engagement Center “to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” The law directs the Center to be formed in 180 days and to share expertise among agencies and to “coordinate with allied nations.” ...

The new law is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthyism about purported dissemination of Russian “propaganda” on the Internet with a new Orwellianism by creating a kind of Ministry of Truth – or Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from “foreign propaganda and disinformation.”

As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives, the law authorizes the Center to: “Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices.” (This section is an apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet sites as purveyors of “Russian propaganda” or “fake news.”)

Justifying this new bureaucracy, the bill’s sponsors argued that the existing agencies for “strategic communications” and “public diplomacy” were not enough, that the information threat required “a whole-of-government approach leveraging all elements of national power.” ...

In other words, we are about to see an escalation of the information war.

An excerpt from a thought-provoking piece:

Humanity Is Transforming In The Age Of Assange

It’s not a coincidence that the most powerful political body on the planet has been ratcheting up media consolidation and expanding laws allowing surveillance and propaganda as the human species gets exponentially better at networking and sharing information. It’s not a coincidence that as information becomes more anarchic and democratized, the people in power have worked to bring virtually all media under the control of five massive corporations, which were seen colluding extensively with the Clinton campaign time and time again in WikiLeaks documents. It’s not a coincidence that a 1948 law forbidding the U.S. government from conducting psy-ops on its citizens was revoked in 2012 or that a “counter-propaganda bill” was signed last month allotting a portion of America’s defense budget to countering alternative media outlets that are critical of the U.S. government at the same time alternative media has begun presenting a very real threat to the official narrative. It’s not a coincidence that the board responsible for keeping government surveillance in check was killed the same year humanity’s newfound ability to share information changed the outcome of a presidential election.

America’s power structures are entirely dependent upon giving Americans the illusion of freedom while tightly controlling the information that they have access to. Before the internet, this was easy. The modern American schooling system was instituted by plutocrat John D. Rockefeller, who is generally considered the wealthiest individual in modern history. Around the turn of the last century, he founded the General Education Board, which was openly dedicated to producing predictable, obedient citizens to turn the gears of America’s booming industry. Critical thinking was completely deemphasized and rote memorization and obedience became paramount. Millions and millions of dollars were poured into teaching impressionable minds the established narrative about their country, and their place within that country. Combine that propaganda mill with the fact that corporatism means corporate media giants will become entrenched in the political establishment, and you’ve got a highly effective means of controlling the national narrative.

This is no longer the case, and it never will be again. The ability to quickly transmit and access large amounts of data from anywhere in the world means that even though you’ve got all the talking heads on television telling you who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are in Syria, people are going to access information that goes directly against that narrative, and use their critical thinking skills to decide what seems to be happening. The organization founded by a man trapped in an Ecuadorian embassy can share the secret manipulations and lies of the political establishment for the whole world to see, and people will share and discuss what they find there. A 74 year-old democratic socialist can give the political establishment the fight of its life carried by nothing but public enthusiasm despite a thorough blackout by the mainstream media, forcing them to pull out all every dirty trick in the book until they got caught.

The ruling elites are losing control of the narrative, and it will only get worse for them.

UK ambassador to EU quits amid Brexit row

Britain’s ambassador to the EU has quit his post less than a month after it was revealed that he said a post-Brexit trade deal with the bloc could take up to a decade to achieve.

Government sources confirmed that Sir Ivan Rogers, one of the UK’s most experienced EU diplomats, told staff on Tuesday that he was stepping down early from his role, just a few months before Britain begins its formal exit negotiations with the EU. ...

The Daily Mail claimed the knives were out for Rogers, saying there were “demands for Sir Ivan to be replaced with a diplomat who is more energetically pro-Brexit, amid speculation that his comments were deliberately leaked to undermine his position”. ...

The former Labour shadow foreign secretary and chairman of the EEU committee, Hilary Benn, told the BBC the resignation was “not a good thing” and the government would be under pressure to get a replacement up to speed to meet Theresa May’s timetable of triggering article 50 before the end of March.

“I think that it means that the government will have to get its skates on to make sure there is a replacement in place so he or she can work with Sir Ivan in the transition, the handover,” he said. “But the hard work is going to start very soon, because if article 50 is triggered, as the government says it wishes to, by the end of March, then negotiations will probably begin shortly thereafter. And having a handover in the middle of that, depending on when exactly he goes, is not ideal.”

There might be a significant silver lining to Brexit for the longsuffering people of the UK - they could rid themselves of 100,000 bankers who might then be encouraged to go on to perform socially useful work rather than eating the UK out from the inside.

Brexit: banks consider whether to start moving business out of UK

Brexit could have an impact on the City in the coming months as banks decide whether to implement contingency plans to ensure they retain access to the remaining 27 EU member states by moving business out of the UK. ...

Andrew Gray, head of Brexit at the consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which is advising several financial services institutions, said announcements could start in late February, when banks publish their preliminary results.

“A number of big banks are finalising plans for announcements they will make [this] year,” he said.

A report for the lobby group CityUK by PwC, calculated that there could be 100,000 fewer jobs by 2020.

U.S. Quietly Drops Bombshell: Wall Street Banks Have $2 Trillion European Exposure

Just 17 days from today, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45^th President and deliver his inaugural address. Trump is expected to announce priorities in the areas of education, infrastructure, border security, the economy and curtailing the outsourcing of jobs. But Trump’s agenda will be derailed on all fronts if the big Wall Street banks blow up again as they did in 2008, dragging the U.S. economy into the ditch and requiring another massive taxpayer bailout from a nation already deeply in debt from the last banking crisis. According to a report quietly released by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research less than two weeks before Christmas, another financial implosion on Wall Street can’t be ruled out. ...

At a time when international business headlines are filled with reports of a massive banking bailout in Italy and the potential for systemic risks from Germany’s struggling giant, Deutsche Bank, the Office of Financial Research (OFR) report delivers this chilling statement:

“U.S. global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) have more than $2 trillion in total exposures to Europe. Roughly half of those exposures are off-balance-sheet…U.S. G-SIBs have sold more than $800 billion notional in credit derivatives referencing entities domiciled in the EU.”

When a Wall Street bank buys a credit derivative, it is buying protection against a default on its debts by the referenced entity like a European bank or European corporation. But when a Wall Street bank sells credit derivative protection, it is on the hook for the losses if the referenced entity defaults. Regulators will not release to the public the specifics on which Wall Street banks are selling protection on which European banks but just the idea that regulators would allow this buildup of systemic risk in banks holding trillions of dollars in insured deposits after the cataclysmic results of similar hubris in 2008 shows just how little has been accomplished in terms of meaningful U.S. financial reform.

Don't bankrupt labor department's mission, wages chief tells Trump nominee

David Weil, the chief enforcer of the nation’s wage and hour laws, is worried that the fast food executive Donald Trump has nominated to be labor secretary will undermine efforts to crack down on widespread wage violations.

“I obviously am concerned about things I hear,” Weil said, voicing apprehension that labor secretary nominee Andy Puzder, chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants – the company that runs the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr fast-food chains – might be far from zealous in enforcing the nation’s minimum wage and overtime laws.

“I would hope, I would expect as a base that any incoming secretary of labor understands there are certain principles about what this department does that are really sacrosanct – the notion of fairness embedded in our agency, paying people for the work they do, is something we support,” Weil said.

He added: “If they do things that are attempts to just undermine the department’s mission, I think that is something they should be called on.”

For years Puzder, whose fast food company has occasionally been ordered to pay back wages because of labor violations, has been a fierce critic of government regulations and proposals to raise the minimum wage.

"Strange Fruit:" History of Anti-Lynching Song Rebecca Ferguson Has Demanded to Sing at Inauguration

Outcry after Republicans vote to dismantle independent ethics body

House Republicans have gutted an independent ethics watchdog, putting it under their own control, in a secret ballot hours before the new Congress convened for the first time.

The unheralded vote severely weakens the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), which was set up after a lobbying scandal in 2008 to investigate corruption allegations against members of Congress. The move, led by the head of the House judiciary committee, defied the Republican congressional leadership and was reportedly supported by several legislators currently under OCE scrutiny.

The amendment was voted through by the House Republican conference over the New Year’s holiday with no prior notice or debate and inserted in a broad rules package the House will vote for on Tuesday. It turns the formerly independent OCE into the Office of Congressional Complaint Review, a subordinate body to the House Ethics Committee, which is currently run by the Republican majority and has a long history of overlooking charges of malfeasance by lawmakers.

The new body will not be able to receive anonymous tips from members of Congress or make its findings public.

The vote comes at a time when the Republicans control all three branches of government and are seeking to remove some of the residual constraints on their powers. The rules package to be voted through on Tuesday, for example, will limit the ability of the Democratic minority to block legislation like the repeal of Obama’s Affordable Care Act by staging a filibuster.

Rebecca Ferguson says she will play Trump inauguration if she can sing Strange Fruit

Singer Rebecca Ferguson has said she would accept an invitation to perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration on 20 January on one condition: she be allowed to sing Strange Fruit.

First recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939 and covered by Nina Simone in 1965, Strange Fruit is one of the nation’s most famous songs about racism. The lyrics by Abel Meeropol graphically describe the lynchings of African-Americans:

Southern trees bear strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Ferguson – a British singer who became well-known after appearing on 2010’s X Factor in the UK, memorably performing Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem A Change is Gonna Come – called Strange Fruit “a song that speaks to all the disregarded and down trodden black people in the United States” in a Twitter statement introduced with the words “inauguration ceremony” explaining that she would appear at Trump’s inauguration only if she could sing that song:

I’ve been asked and this is my answer. If you allow me to sing Strange Fruit, a song that has huge historical importance, a song that was blacklisted in the United States for being too controversial. A song that speaks to all the disregarded and downtrodden black people in the United States. A song that is a reminder of how love is the only thing that will conquer all the hatred in this world, then I will graciously accept your invitation and see you in Washington. Best Rebecca X

Indian firm makes carbon capture breakthrough

A breakthrough in the race to make useful products out of planet-heating CO2 emissions has been made in southern India.

A plant at the industrial port of Tuticorin is capturing CO2 from its own coal-powered boiler and using it to make soda ash – aka baking powder.

Crucially, the technology is running without subsidy, which is a major advance for carbon capture technology as for decades it has languished under high costs and lukewarm government support.

The firm behind the Tuticorin process says its chemicals will lock up 60,000 tonnes of CO2 a year and the technology is attracting interest from around the world.

Debate over carbon capture has mostly focused until now on carbon capture and storage (CCS), in which emissions are forced into underground rocks at great cost and no economic benefit. The Tuticorin plant is said to be the first industrial scale example of carbon capture and utilisation (CCU).

There is already a global market for CO2 as a chemical raw material. It comes mainly from industries such as brewing where it is cheap and easy to capture.

Until now it has been too expensive without subsidy to strip out CO2 from the relatively low concentrations in which it appears in flue gas. The Indian plant has overcome the problem by using a new CO2-stripping chemical.

Global Economic Realities Confirm, the 'Future is Not in Fossil Fuels'

Underscoring the need for a global shift to a low-carbon economy, a new report finds a record number of U.K. fossil fuel companies went bust in 2016 due to falling oil and gas prices.

The Independent reported the analysis from accounting firm Moore Stephens which found "16 oil and gas companies went insolvent last year, compared to none at all in 2012." And the trend was not unique to the U.K.—a year-end bankruptcy report from Texas-based Haynes and Boone LLP showed there have been 232 bankruptcy filings in the U.S. and Canadian energy sector since the beginning of 2015.

"As the warnings from climate science get stronger, now is the time to realize...that the future is not in fossil fuels," Dr. Doug Parr of Greenpeace U.K. told The Independent. "It's also time for government to recognize that we should not leave the workers stranded, but provide opportunities in the new industries of the 21st century."

Those opportunities are likely to come in the renewable energy sector, as the World Economic Forum (WEF) announced (pdf) in December that solar and wind power are now the same price or cheaper than new fossil fuel capacity in more than 30 countries.

"Renewable energy has reached a tipping point," Michael Drexler, who leads infrastructure and development investing at the WEF, said in a statement at the time. "It is not only a commercially viable option, but an outright compelling investment opportunity with long-term, stable, inflation-protected returns."

Here’s Why Oil Prices Are Hitting an 18-Month High

Crude oil prices hit 18-month highs on Tuesday, the first trading day of 2017, buoyed by hopes that a deal between most of the world's biggest producer countries to cut output, which kicked in on Sunday, will drain a global supply glut. ...

Jan. 1 marked the official start of a deal agreed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other exporters such as Russia to reduce output by almost 1.8 million barrels a day. ...

Data from oilfields services company Baker Hughes last week showed that the number of active drilling rigs in the U.S. hit 525 in the last week of 2016 – its highest level in a year.

That is still only one-third of the record level of 1,609 rigs at work in October 2014, but U.S. oil output has fallen by less than 1 million barrels a day from its 2015 peak. Analysts say that that suggests that the shale oil industry, which was the main target of the Saudi Arabia-led price war of the last two years, has broadly weathered the storm and greatly improved its efficiency as prices have fallen.

Also of Interest

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

Stripped of False Realities: Americans’ Political “Psychotic Break”

Establishment Dems Have Finally Stopped Pretending They’re Different From The Neocons

Does the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” apply to American Independent or Alternative Media?

Danger in Democrats Demonizing Putin

Fantasies About Russia Could Doom Opposition to Trump

Fisk: Why We Don’t Dwell on Turkish Deaths in the West

Israel’s Above-the-Law Behavior

I know a website where these folks ought to advertize:

Guilt relief in a box

WPost’s New ‘Fake News’ on Russian ‘Hack’

Wall Street, America’s New Landlord, Kicks Tenants to the Curb

A Little Night Music

Laura Lee - Crumbs Off The Table

Laura Lee - Wanted Lover, No Experience Necessary

Laura Lee - Her Picture Matches Mine

Laura Lee - As Long As I Got You

Laura Lee - Rip Off

Laura Lee - Hang It Up

Laura Lee - Need To Belong

Laura Lee - Thats How It Is

Laura Lee - It Ain't What You Do (But How You Do It)

Laura Lee - If You Can Beat Me Rockin' (You Can Have My Chair)

Laura Lee - Wedlock Is A Padlock