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This evening's music features doo-wop singer Frankie Lymon. Enjoy!

“The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.”

-- Émile Zola

News and Opinion

Ajamu Baraka on Faceboob says: "Unlike other powerful states that restrict access to the internet and control information, the U.S. doesn't need to revert to those forms of crude censorship when the corporations will do it for them, thus maintaining the illusion of a free society."

Eric Schmidt Says Google News Will 'Engineer' Russian Propaganda Out of the Feed

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chariman of Alphabet, says the company is working to ferret out Russian propaganda from Google News after facing criticism that Kremlin-owned media sites had been given plum placement on the search giant’s news and advertising platforms.

“We’re well aware of this one, and we’re working on detecting this kind of scenario you’re describing and deranking those kinds of sites,” Schmidt said, after being asked why the world’s largest search company continued to classify the Russian sites as news.

Schmidt, in an interview at the Halifax International Security Forum over the weekend, name-checked two state-owned enterprises. “It’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt added. “We’re well aware and we’re trying to engineer the systems to prevent it.” ...

On Saturday, however, Schmidt ruled out kicking the sites off his platform altogether. “We don’t want to ban the sites. That’s not how we operate,” Schmidt said. “I am strongly not in favour of censorship. I am very strongly in favour of ranking. It’s what we do."

Tech Giants Look to WTO to Entrench Their Monopoly Powers and Profits

In the early 1990s, transnational corporations (TNCs) in the agriculture, services, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing sectors each got agreements as part of the WTO to lock in rights for those companies to participate in markets under favorable conditions, while limiting the ability of governments to regulate and shape their economies. The topics corresponded to the corporate agenda at the time.

Today, the biggest corporations are also seeking to lock in rights and handcuff public interest regulation through trade agreements, including the WTO. But today, the five biggest corporations are all from one sector: technology; and are all from one country: the United States. Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft, with support from other companies and the governments of Japan, Canada, and the EU, are seeking to rewrite the rules of the digital economy of the future by obtaining within the WTO a mandate to negotiate binding rules under the guise of “e-commerce.”

However, the rules they are seeking go far beyond what most of us think of as “e-commerce.” Their top agenda is to ensure free ― for them ― access to the world’s most valuable resource ― the new oil, which is data. They want to be able to capture the billions of data points that we as digitally-connected humans produce on a daily basis, transfer the data wherever they want, and store them on servers in the United States. This would endanger privacy and data protections around the world, given the lack of legal protections on data in the US.

Then they can process data into intelligence, which can be packaged and sold to third parties for large profits, akin to monopoly rents. It is also the raw material for artificial intelligence, which is based on the massive accumulation of data in order to “train” algorithms to make decisions. In the economy of the future, whoever owns the data will dominate the market. These companies are already being widely criticized for their monopolistic and oligopolistic behaviors, which would be consolidated under these proposals.

Google has been tracking Android users even with location services turned off

Google has confirmed it has been able to track the location of Android users via the addresses of local mobile phone masts, even when location services were turned off and the sim cards removed to protect privacy. Revealed by a report by Quartz, Google’s Android system, which handles messaging services to ensure delivery of push notifications, began requesting the unique addresses of mobile phone masts (called Cell ID) at the beginning of 2017.

The information was captured by the phone and routinely sent to Google by any modern Android device, even when location services were turned off and the sim card was removed. As a result Google could in theory track the location of the Android device and therefore the user, despite a reasonable expectation of privacy. ...

Google said that the data was never stored and that Cell ID requests would stop by the end of November, after an update to the messaging system.

'Butcher of Bosnia' Ratko Mladic found guilty of genocide

Ratko Mladić convicted of war crimes and genocide at UN tribunal

The former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić, nicknamed the ‘butcher of Bosnia’, has been sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. More than 20 years after the Srebrenica massacre, Mladic was found guilty at the United Nations-backed international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague of 10 offences involving extermination, murder and persecution of civilian populations.

As he entered the courtroom, Mladić gave a broad smile and thumbs up to the cameras – a gesture that infuriated relatives of the victims. His defiance shifted into detachment as the judgment began: Mladić played with his fingers and nodded occasionally, looking initially relaxed. The verdict was disrupted for more than half an hour when he asked the judges for a bathroom break. After he returned, defence lawyers requested that proceedings be halted or shortened because of his high blood pressure. The judges denied the request. Mladić then stood up shouting “this is all lies” and “I’ll fuck your mother”. He was forcibly removed from the courtroom. The verdicts were read in his absence.

Mladić, 74, was chief of staff of Bosnian Serb forces from 1992 until 1996, during the ferocious civil wars and ethnic cleansing that followed the break-up of the Yugoslav state. The one-time fugitive from international justice faced 11 charges, two of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and four of violations of the laws or customs of war. He was cleared of one count of genocide, but found guilty of all other charges. The separate counts related to “ethnic cleansing” operations in Bosnia, sniping and shelling attacks on besieged civilians in Sarajevo, the massacre of Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and taking UN personnel hostage in an attempt to deter Nato airstrikes.

Putin brings Iran and Turkey together in bold Syria peace plan

A peace settlement to end the six-year Syrian civil war will require compromise by all sides, including the Assad government, Vladimir Putin has said as the presidents of Iran and Turkey arrived in the Black Sea resort of Sochi amid some of the most audacious Russian diplomatic activity in decades. The summit between the three powers, all deeply involved in the conflict, is designed to pave the way for a settlement likely to leave Syria’s Russian- and Iranian-backed president, Bashar al-Assad, in power within a reformed Syrian constitution. ...

“The militants in Syria have sustained a decisive blow and now there is a realistic chance to end the multi-year civil war,” Putin declared as he hosted Iran’s Hassan Rouhani and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi. ... Putin urged Iran and Turkey to start a discussion with him on the reconstruction of Syria. “Given the colossal scale of the destruction it would be possible to think together about the development of a comprehensive program for Syria,” he said. He claimed military de-escalation zones had reduced the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of refugees were returning home.

But in a sign of the difficulties ahead, Erdoğan is insisting Syrian Kurds are excluded from the congress on the grounds that the Kurds are linked with Turkish Kurdish groups that Turkey says are terrorists. Syrian Kurds have been instrumental in the defeat of Isis as part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. ... Rouhani said the grounds for a political settlement had been laid but he argued it was “unacceptable” for foreign troops not invited into Syria by the government to remain in the country – a reference to US troops in the north-east of the country. Separately, Israel is demanding that the Iranian military presence inside Syria is reined back, especially near the occupied Golan Heights. ...

The flurry of diplomatic activity underlines the degree to which the US and the EU have been sidelined from the process.

Anand Gopal: As US Continues Strikes in Afghanistan & Syria, Where is Coverage of Civilian Deaths?

Trump’s Secret War? U.S. Military’s Presence In Middle East Has Grown 33 Percent In Past Four Months

President Donald Trump has increased the number of U.S. troops and civilians working for the Department of Defense in the Middle East to 54,180 from 40,517 in the past four months, representing a 33-percent rise.

This number doesn't even account for the big rise in troops stationed in Afghanistan since Trump announced his new strategy for the fight against the Taliban in late August.

These figures, first pointed out on Twitter by Dr. Micah Zenko, a foreign policy expert, come from the Pentagon's quarterly reports on personnel. In other words, these numbers are no secret, which raises concerns about the apparent lack of discourse over the expansion of the U.S. military in a region in which it already has a long, complicated history. ...

The Trump administration has been quite vocal about the recent increase in troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has made major gains over the past year or so. Currently, there are roughly 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But the rise in the presence of the U.S. military elsewhere in the Middle East has been relatively under the radar.

Saad Hariri returns to Lebanon weeks after resignation

Lebanese television showed live footage of Saad Hariri returning to the country late on Tuesday, with the prime minister's plane landing in Beirut and the leader leaving amid tight security. Hariri left without addressing journalists gathered at the airport. He then visited the grave of his father, Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister who was assassinated in a 2005 bombing. Hariri later headed to his home in central Beirut.

Lebanon's President Michel Aoun has yet to accept Hariri's shock resignation, which has fueled tensions across the Middle East. Hariri is expected to attend Lebanon's Independence Day army parade in Beirut on Wednesday, before meeting with Aoun and giving a public statement on the crisis.

Hariri, who is also a Saudi citizen, announced he was stepping down during a trip to Saudi Arabia on November 4. In a video message, he decried Iran's influence in Lebanon and hinted at an assassination plot against him. Many officials in Lebanon, however, have claimed Hariri was forced to step down as part of a larger power play against Iran. Political power in Lebanon is divided among Christian, Shiite and Sunni factions, with Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia and Shiite Tehran backing different groups.

Palestinians freeze communications with Trump administration

The Palestinian leadership has frozen communications with the Trump administration following the White House's threat to close the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Washington.

Ashraf Khatib, a spokesman for the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, confirmed the move to CNN on Tuesday.

The decision comes after the Trump administration threatened to shut down the PLO office last week, citing a rarely invoked 2015 law saying that if the Palestinians move against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the US can close the PLO's base in the US capital.

The US believes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ran afoul of the law in September when he called on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israel for alleged war crimes against the Palestinians.

FCC Moves to Gut Net Neutrality, Ignoring Public Support & Laws Upholding Equal Internet Access

FCC Under Fire for Ignoring 'Massive Scheme to Corrupt' Net Neutrality Comment Process

In an open letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman slammed the agency for ignoring "a massive scheme to corrupt" the mandatory public comment process for Pai's plan to dismantle net neutrality protections with new rules officially unveiled on Tuesday.

While open internet advocates have for months campaigned against Pai's plan to turn over the web to corporate control, which often included form letters for the public comment process, Schneiderman launched an investigation after submissions started appearing from supposed supporters of the plan with personal information of people who said they had not submitted any comments.

"For six months my office has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC's notice and comment process through the misuse of enormous numbers of real New Yorkers' and other Americans' identities," Schneiderman writes on Medium. "Such conduct likely violates state law — yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed."

Good morning! Yesterday the FCC announced a plan to kill #NetNeutrality on December 14. Please call your members of Congress before it's too late. https://t.co/edAOIrEi2R #SaveNetNeutrality

— ACLU (@ACLU) November 22, 2017

There’s a Hitch in Trump’s Plan to Stick Mick Mulvaney on the CFPB: It’s Illegal

As soon as Richard Cordray, the current director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, officially resigns — which could happen as soon as this week — we are told President Donald Trump will choose Mick Mulvaney, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, to run the CFPB on a temporary basis. It would be a GOP dream come true. Mulvaney, who once called CFPB a “sad, sick joke,” would then be able to carry out the long-desired conservative wish to dismantle the agency that safeguards consumers from the deceptions of banks and credit card companies. ...

There’s only one problem: it’s not Trump’s pick to make. ...

Adam Levitin, Georgetown Law professor and former CFPB adviser, was the first to point this out. The statute that created the CFPB is pretty clear: In the event of the absence of a director for the agency, the deputy director serves that role. The director appoints the deputy director; it doesn’t require Senate confirmation.

This would mean David Silberman, acting deputy director of CFPB, would get the reins when Cordray leaves office. Silberman is a former AFL-CIO deputy general counsel and a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall who has worked at the CFPB since 2011. The legal argument that Silberman would become interim director would be greatly improved if Cordray officially named him deputy director; he’s been serving in an acting capacity since January 2016.

The effort to install an outside director further brings into focus a growing strategy by the Trump White House to get around the Senate confirmation process by installing loyalists to fill vacancies, instead of the traditional process of allowing deputies from inside the agencies to serve temporarily. Keith Noreika, a former bank lawyer, stepped into the job of acting Comptroller of the Currency, a key bank regulator, and served for six months before the Senate confirmed his replacement last week. David Kautter, an ex-executive with Ernst & Young, became IRS commissioner last month; the Trump administration has not named a nominee to fill the role permanently.

Austerity Mode: Protesters dump foodbank donations outside UK PM residence

Candid Wall Street barons worry that GOP tax plan will lead to literal euthanasia of the rentier

[T]he Republican Party is pushing for a tax-plan that rewards literal idle wealth, windfalls to fund share buybacks and other nonproductive financial engineering, millions for the children of the richest 0.2% of Americans, while making it impossible for all but the wealthiest to go to grad school, cutting funds for rural people suffering from opiod addiction, cutting health-care for 9,000,000 poor American children; raising tax on the dwindling middle class, raising tax on home-ownership, cuts funding for health care for the poorest Americans across the board, cuts benefits for veterans, adds 1.5 trillion to the debt.

Candid Republican lawmakers have admitted that they feel they must transfer trillions to the richest Americans or face the end of their political careers as their campaign contributions dry up.
But as wave after wave of revelations come about the impunity with which the super-rich dodge taxes and cram the American worker, the euthanasia of the rentier is gaining traction.

A senior Wall Street exec -- anonymous, for obvious reasons -- told Vanity Fair's William Cohan that they feared that passage of the GOP's tax plan would be the final straw that collapsed the whole Reagonomic, neoliberal consensus and triggered a new growth industry for guillotines. In part, that's because the plan is so economically incompetent that it will inevitably usher in a horrific recession that will batter the Americans who are still trying to recover from the last finance-industry-triggered econopocalypse, with a new housing crisis, a tax disaster in populous "blue" states like New York and California, a collapse in consumer confidence and spending, and worse.

Life in the tunnels beneath Las Vegas

When Unpaid Student Loan Bills Mean You Can No Longer Work

Fall behind on your student loan payments, lose your job.

Few people realize that the loans they take out to pay for their education could eventually derail their careers. But in 19 states, government agencies can seize state-issued professional licenses from residents who default on their educational debts. Another state, South Dakota, suspends driver’s licenses, making it nearly impossible for people to get to work.

As debt levels rise, creditors are taking increasingly tough actions to chase people who fall behind on student loans. Going after professional licenses stands out as especially punitive.

Firefighters, nurses, teachers, lawyers, massage therapists, barbers, psychologists and real estate brokers have all had their credentials suspended or revoked.

Determining the number of people who have lost their licenses is impossible because many state agencies and licensing boards don’t track the information. Public records requests by The New York Times identified at least 8,700 cases in which licenses were taken away or put at risk of suspension in recent years, although that tally almost certainly understates the true number.

Many Americans Think It's Worse to Vote for a Democrat (or Republican) Than for a Child Molester

In 2017, the whole world is watching a different bizarre political spectacle in the American South, as the Republican Party just can’t quit Roy Moore, its Senate candidate in a critical special election next month. This even as allegations pile up that, as a 30-something prosecutor, Moore trolled for young and sometimes underage teen girls at the mall, the YMCA and even dance recitals, and did some horrible things the times he caught up to them. ...

Alabana’s governor, Kay Ivey, said that while she believes the multiple women making lurid allegations against Moore, she plans to vote for him anyway.  She told the Alabama newspapers that “we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions. So that’s what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”

The next day, a top adviser to President Trump, Kellyanne Conway, made it more explicit: If electing a sexual predator to the U.S. Senate is what it takes to repeal the estate tax and let billionaires pass all their wealth to their trust-fund babies, so be it. “I’m telling you that we want the votes in the Senate to get this tax bill through,” said Conway — who’d been sharply critical of Moore a few days early, when it was not yet clear that the GOP is stuck with him. Trump himself then spiked that football on Tuesday night, offering a full-throated endorsement of Moore because “we don’t need a liberal person in there, a Democrat,” while claiming that Jones, a former U.S. attorney who famously prosecuted the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four girls, is “soft on crime.” As for Moore, the president said: “He denies it, and by the way, he totally denies it.” ...

This is where we’ve sunk to — high-level leaders arguing it’s worse to vote for someone from an opposing political party than for a man you’ve acknowledged appears to have been a sexual predator of girls as young as 14.

Too right it's Black Friday: our relentless consumption is trashing the planet

Everyone wants everything – how is that going to work? The promise of economic growth is that the poor can live like the rich and the rich can live like the oligarchs. But already we are bursting through the physical limits of the planet that sustains us. Climate breakdown, soil loss, the collapse of habitats and species, the sea of plastic, insectageddon: all are driven by rising consumption. The promise of private luxury for everyone cannot be met: neither the physical nor the ecological space exists.

But growth must go on: this is everywhere the political imperative. And we must adjust our tastes accordingly. In the name of autonomy and choice, marketing uses the latest findings in neuroscience to break down our defences. Those who seek to resist must, like the Simple Lifers in Brave New World, be silenced – in this case by the media.

With every generation, the baseline of normalised consumption shifts. Thirty years ago, it was ridiculous to buy bottled water, where tap water is clean and abundant. Today, worldwide, we use a million plastic bottles a minute.

Every Friday is a Black Friday, every Christmas a more garish festival of destruction. Among the snow saunas, portable watermelon coolers and smartphones for dogs with which we are urged to fill our lives, my #extremecivilisation prize now goes to the PancakeBot: a 3D batter printer that allows you to eat the Mona Lisa, the Taj Mahal, or your dog’s bottom every morning. In practice, it will clog up your kitchen for a week until you decide you don’t have room for it. For junk like this, we’re trashing the living planet, and our own prospects of survival. Everything must go.

Standing Rock Water Protectors Deliver Petition to Drop Remaining NoDAPL Charges

On November 20, members of the Lakota Law Project delivered a petition of 55,000 signatures to the Morton County State Attorney’s office to have the remaining charges against water protectors against the Dakota Access Pipeline dropped. The petition was delivered on the one year anniversary of a violent attack by police on water protectors at the Standing Rock camp, during which 21 year old Sofia Wilansky nearly lost her arm she was hit with the explosion from a concussion grenade.

“We have been in the front line for ten years fighting off pipelines that have come through treaty territory,” said Phyllis Young, a Standing Rock Sioux elder, former Standing Rock Sioux Council member, and coordinator/organizer for Central Oceti Sakowin Camp, the main camp of Water Protectors at Standing Rock, at the petition delivery. “This petition is representative of what happened a year ago, the most violent confrontation that occurred by TigerSwan in cooperation with every law enforcement, local, regional, and national. The crimes and acts of war that occurred a year ago today is why we are commemorating today and putting forth the petition for dismissal of the additional charges that people are facing in the court system.”

The water protectors working to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline that went into full operation in June 2017 were vindicated by the Keystone Pipeline spill last week of 210,000 gallons, though reports have noted the spill could have been much larger than that. The spill debunks claims from oil companies that pipelines are safe and don’t leak, yet the evidence from oil pipelines have proven otherwise.

According to the Lakota People’s Project, 409 cases have been acquitted, dismissed or deferred so far, while 323 cases are outstanding and an additional 99 cases with outstanding warrants have not been activated. The water protectors still facing charges are either without representation still or are defended by the Water Protectors Legal Collective. Among the outstanding cases still pending include those of Chase Iron Eyes and HolyElk Lafferty, who intend to use a rare “necessity” defense, arguing that they had no choice but to protest the pipeline due to its potential to harm their communities and the environment.

Also of Interest

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

Anti-Trump protesters risk 60 years in jail. Is dissent a crime?

Translated Doc Debunks Narrative of Al Qaeda-Iran ‘Alliance’

Syria, ‘Experts,’ and George Monbiot

America is about to kill the open internet – and towns like this will pay the price

Will the Prison Rape Epidemic Ever Have Its Weinstein Moment?

A Little Night Music

Frankie Lymon - Little Bitty Pretty One

Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers - The ABC's of Love

Frankie Lymon - Goody Goody

Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers - Baby Baby

Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers - I'm Not A Juvenille Delinquent

Frankie Lymon - Love Put me Out of My Head

Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers - Paper Castles

Frankie Lymon - I Put The Bomp

Frankie Lymon - My Girl

Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers - I Want You To Be My Girl