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“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

-- Mahatma Gandhi

News and Opinion

Trump claims China 'caught red handed' transferring oil to North Korea

Donald Trump on Thursday said he was “very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea” and said such moves would prevent “a friendly solution” to the crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Earlier, China said there had been no sanction-breaking oil transfers between Chinese ships and North Korean vessels, of the kind described by a South Korea newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, which said spy satellites had detected 30 instances of such transfers since October.

That report was picked up by Fox News, commonly a source of information linked to Trump’s tweets. “Caught RED HANDED,” the president wrote, with a characteristic use of capitals. “Very disappointed that China is allowing oil to go into North Korea. There will never be a friendly solution to the North Korea problem if this continues to happen!” ...

China has repeatedly said it is fully enforcing all resolutions against North Korea, despite suspicion in Washington, Seoul and Tokyo that loopholes still exist. Asked at a regular briefing whether Chinese ships were illegally providing oil to North Korean ships, a Chinese defence ministry spokesman, Ren Guoqiang, reiterated that China, including the military, strictly enforced UN resolutions.

“The situation you have mentioned absolutely does not exist,” he said.

North Korea will not be accepted as a nuclear power by US or Russia, say Rex Tillerson and Sergei Lavrov

The US and Russia have insisted they will not accept North Korea as a “nuclear state”, amid a series of missile tests by the East Asian nation and increased rhetoric from both Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone on a myriad of issues, but both agreed on their stance regarding Pyongyang’s continued development of nuclear weapons despite United Nations sanctions.

State Department Heather Nauert said in a statement that “both sides agreed that they will continue to work towards a diplomatic solution to achieve a denuclearised Korean peninsula”.

However, on the same call on Tuesday, Mr Lavrov criticised President Donald Trump’s “aggressive rhetoric” towards North Korea, as many world leaders and the UN have before. ...

The phone call comes on the heels of Russia’s offer to be a mediator between Pyongyang and Washington, fostering dialogue rather than trading barbs as Mr Trump and Mr Kim have been doing for several months.

Anyone Of “Russian Descent” Now Targeted In Senate Investigation

The Senate committee probing alleged Russian interference in the U.S. political system has deemed anyone “of Russian nationality or Russian descent” relevant to its investigation, according to a document obtained by TYT. In an email dated December 19, 2017, April Doss—who serves as senior minority counsel on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)—defined the scope of the committee’s inquiry as anyone a subject “knows or has reason to believe [is] of Russian nationality or descent.” The senior majority counsel for the SSCI, Vanessa Le, was cc’d on the emails. ...

On July 27, 2017, Charles C. Johnson, a controversial right-wing media figure, received a letter from Sens. Burr and Warner requesting that he voluntarily provide materials in his possession that are “relevant” to the committee’s investigation. Relevant materials, the letter went on, would include any records of interactions Johnson had with “Russian persons” who were involved in some capacity in the 2016 U.S. elections.

The committee further requested materials related to “Russian persons” who were involved in some capacity in “activities that related in any way to the political election process in the U.S.” Materials may include “documents, emails, text messages, direct messages, calendar appointments, memoranda, [and] notes,” the letter outlined.

Doss’s statement was in response to a request made by Robert Barnes, an attorney for Johnson, for clarification as to the SSCI’s definition of a “Russian person.”

Iraq-Raping Neocons Are Suddenly Posing As Woke Progressives To Gain Support

The invasion of Iraq was unforgivable. It remains unforgivable. It will always be unforgivable. Its architects should be tried in The Hague and imprisoned, and nobody who helped inflict that unfathomable evil upon our world should ever be employed anywhere they could do any more damage or mislead anyone else. All behaviors of the mainstream media, US intelligence agencies and US defense agencies should be viewed through the lens of those unforgivable lies and murders forevermore, and nobody should ever take them at their word about anything ever again.

Instead what has actually happened is that nothing whatsoever has changed since the invasion, Americans still take it on faith that Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad and Kim Jong Un are world-threatening enemies in sore need of ousting, and bloodthirsty psychopaths like Max Boot who have been consistently wrong about everything are still hailed as experts worth listening to.

Oh yeah, and now they’re being adored as progressive heroes.

I once scoffed at claims of “white male privilege,” dismissing such criticisms as mere “political correctness.” But in the Trump era I have had my consciousness raised. Seriously. Me in @ForeignPolicy: https://t.co/OpgCFew2cF

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) December 27, 2017

Boot, who is a PNAC signatory and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, published an article yesterday in Foreign Affairs which perfectly matches the newfound love of progressivism in his neocon soulmate Bill Kristol. The article, titled “2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege”, details in halting, equivocation-laden prose the months-long journey into awakening that this lying warmonger claims to have experienced during the Trump administration.

This spectacularly evil man, who wrote an essay titled “The Case for American Empire” just weeks after 9/11 in which he called in plain English for America to “unambiguously to embrace its imperial role,” is now seeing his latest essay shared eagerly by Democrats everywhere enthusiastically exclaiming “Look! See? This conservative gets it!”

It's not so accurate to say that, in 2017, Bill Kristol became a Democrat. It's more accurate to say that in 2017, Democrats became Bill Kristol.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 26, 2017

Russia accuses U.S. of training former Islamic State fighters in Syria

The chief of the Russian General Staff has accused the United States of training former Islamic State fighters in Syria to try to destabilize the country. General Valery Gerasimov’s allegations, made in a newspaper interview, center on a U.S. military base at Tanf, a strategic Syrian highway border crossing with Iraq in the south of the country.

Russia says the U.S. base is illegal and that it and the area around it have become “a black hole” where militants operate unhindered. ... The United States says the Tanf facility is a temporary base used to train partner forces to fight Islamic State. It has rejected similar Russian allegations in the past, saying Washington remains committed to killing off Islamic State and denying it safe havens.

But Gerasimov told the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper on Wednesday that the United States was training up fighters who were former Islamic State militants but who now call themselves the New Syrian Army or use other names. He said Russia satellites and drones had spotted militant brigades at the U.S. base.

Ahed Tamimi's Father: Israeli Occupation Won't Break Us

Iran votes to declare Jerusalem 'capital of Palestine'

Iran declared Jerusalem the "capital of Palestine" on Wednesday following a parliamentary vote, according to the country's semi-official Fars news agency.

Iran's announcement to recognize the holy city as the “Palestinian capital forever” comes in direct response to President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“It comes in response to the recent U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in hopes of dealing a blow to Muslims,” said Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, according to Turkey's Anadolu news agency.

More than 350 million Latin American voters to elect new leaders in 2018

The anti-establishment tide that has swept much of the world is set to break over Latin America in 2018. Some 350 million voters are due to head to the polls in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Paraguay to elect new presidents – and in several cases, potentially slam a defibrillator into their ailing political systems. “Attempting to understand or interpret the elections for what they mean in a left-right swing would be a mistake,” said Christopher Sabatini, a Latin America expert at Columbia University. “What we are more likely to see is more popular reaction against corruption.”

Seizing the headlines in July will be Mexico, where Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the perennial candidate of the left, will face off against José Antonio Meade, the technocratic successor to Enrique Peña Nieto. Few will miss the incumbent, whose term of office has been stained by a failure to rein in the country’s soaring murder rate, and pervasive corruption – in which the presidential couple themselves have been implicated.

While López Obrador, 64, a former mayor of Mexico City, is not as radical as his detractors claim, his promises to tackle graft and poverty have won him a 5% to 15% poll lead over his rivals. Yet López Obrador’s own missteps – such as suggesting an amnesty for criminals – and fear of change may see voters plump for business as usual.

Brazil’s Michel Temer, meanwhile, probably views even Peña Nieto’s meagre ratings with envy. Temer – a rightwing 77-year-old career politician who helped remove Dilma Rousseff in last year’s controversial impeachment – has seen his approval ratings drop as low as 3% amid widespread allegations of corruption, which have at times seemed to implicate Brazil’s entire political class. ...

Across Latin America, voters will be led not by ideology but issues – such as the demand for cleaner government [and] rejection of entrenched political groups.

Matt Stoller: “Monopoly is a Form of Lawlessness”

Donald Trump's golf course in Scotland loses tax breaks

Donald Trump‘s Scottish golf resort will no longer qualify for a controversial tax break, after a change in the rules by the country’s government.

The Trump Turnberry complex in South Ayrshire was able to claw back around £110,000 in business rates relief after the Scottish National Party altered measures in February to help the hospitality sector. ... However, a change in the Scottish Government’s recent budget will rule out Trump Turnberry from the rates relief, the Sunday Herald reported.

Mr Trump bought the property in 2014. Shortly before he was inaugurated as US President last January, he transferred control of the companies which own the resort to his sons Eric and Donald Jr. His other Scottish golf course, located in Aberdeenshire, did not qualify for relief because it is defined as a golf course instead of a hotel.

“Bussed Out”: How Cities Are Giving Thousands of Homeless People One-Way Bus Tickets to Leave Town

Private prison investors set for giant windfall from Trump tax bill

Individual investors in US private prisons are poised to collect their most lucrative earnings ever thanks to changes in the tax code signed by Donald Trump, continuing what has been a banner year for the industry since the 2016 election. “It’s going to be great for the investors, banks and hedge funds that own shares in private prisons, and are dependent on increased incarceration and criminalization,” said Jamie Trinkle, campaign and research coordinator with the racial and economic justice coalition Enlace.

Under the new GOP law, investments in so-called “real estate investment trusts” (reits) will see a 25% reduction in tax, from 39.6% down to 29.6%.

Corecivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and the Geo Group, which together own more than 80% of private prison beds in the US, both restructured as reits in 2013 after a private letter ruling by the Obama Administration IRS green-lit the change. “This tax act is of unprecedented benefit for reit investors,” said David Miller, a tax partner at Proskauer Rose. “I think reits will explode in popularity as a result of this act.”

With dividends of more than $430m paid out by the two major private prison companies in 2017, in theory, prison investors could see an additional $50m in dividend earnings next year, thanks to the GOP legislation. The actual figure will be lower than that, however, as some proportion of those shares are owned by institutional investors which are taxed differently from individuals. The exact breakdown between the two is not available in public filings.

Keiser Report: Taxphoria

CEO-Worker Income Gap Higher in U.S. Than Anywhere Else

As corporations and wealthy individuals across the United States are slated to benefit from massive tax breaks thanks to the GOP's latest tax legislation, a Bloomberg analysis published Thursday found that chief executives of American companies already make 265 times the amount of money an average worker is paid—the largest CEO-worker income gap in the world.

"CEOs of the biggest publicly traded U.S. companies averaged $14.3 million in annual pay, more than double that of their Canadian counterparts and 10 times greater than those in India," according to Bloomberg. While India ranked second on Bloomberg's CEO pay-to-average income ratio, Indian chief executives made about a tenth of their American counterparts' incomes, averaging $1.46 million annually. ...

Last year's CEO-to-worker compensation ratio, calculated by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), was 271-to-1, with the chief executives of American companies seeing an average of $15.6 million in annual compensation. The EPI report, which was published in July, notes that "regardless of how it's measured, CEO pay continues to be very, very high and has grown far faster in recent decades than typical worker pay," and "exorbitant CEO pay means that the fruits of economic growth are not going to ordinary workers."

EPI president Lawrence Mischel and research assistant Jessica Schieder found that CEO compensation rose "by 807 or 937 percent (depending on how it is measured—using stock options granted or stock options realized, respectively) from 1978 to 2016." They argue that "exorbitant CEO compensation...has fueled the growth of the top 1 percent incomes" at the expense of "the vast majority of workers."

"Simply put, money that goes to the executive class is money that does not go to other people. Rising executive pay is not connected to overall growth in the economic pie," Mishel explained, as Common Dreams previously reported. "We could curtail the explosive growth in CEO pay without doing any harm to the economy."

Dreamers don’t trust Democrats to fix DACA in 2018

For Dreamers and the undocumented youth movement, 2017 ended as it began: badly.

As recently as this month, Democratic leaders promised activists that they would push Congress to a solution on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals before the end of the year. President Trump had, in September, canceled the Obama administration program, which gave work permits and protection from deportation to close to a million undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children, and Dreamers were hopeful that Democrats would make it a priority to come up with a replacement. Last week, Democrats reneged on their promise, declining to fight for a DACA replacement in a year-end spending bill to avert a government shutdown — the only real opportunity they had to force the Republicans’ hand on the matter.

“Nancy Pelosi looked me in the face and said, ‘We are going to get this done by the end of the year,’” said Adrian Reyna, an advocate with United We Dream, the most prominent advocacy group for Dreamers in the country. “We can’t be living our lives on false promises. We don’t have the luxury to do that.”

That leaves the Dreamers, as recipients of DACA protection are known, facing a bleak and uncertain 2018, newly aware that the Democratic Party is willing to go only so far in its fight for them. Some moderate Republicans have expressed a desire to legalize the Dreamers, too, but revisiting DACA is far from a priority for the GOP at large, and any bipartisan solution will involve exacting negotiations over ramped-up immigration enforcement.

Think positive thoughts:

Erica Garner 'Showing Her Fighting Spirit' as Family Holds Onto Hope for Recovery

Early Thursday, the New York Daily News reported that Erica Garner—the 27-year-old civil rights activist and daughter of Eric Garner—had been declared "brain dead" by doctors. But later in the day, the Daily News updated their report as new information emerged.

Erica "is close to death but still showing her fighting spirit after a massive heart attack," the Daily News now reports.

Erica remains on life support, according to her mother, Esaw Snipes. As the Daily News notes, "family members were being called early Thursday to Woodhull Hospital to say final goodbyes."

However, Snipes told the Daily News Thursday evening that she "got the wrong information" and that the family is still holding onto "a glimpse of hope."

"She's still here with us," Snipes said.

The news comes just hours after Erica's official Twitter account—operated by one of her co-workers—announced that a CAT scan revealed that Erica had "suffered major brain damage from a lack of oxygen while in cardiac arrest."

"Is This Your Punishment??" Tucker Questions Jill Stein About Her Russia Probe

A jailed Russian hacker claims he can prove he broke into the DNC server

A jailed Russian hacker claims he can prove he broke into the computers of the Democratic National Committee on behalf of Russian intelligence — because he left a secret calling card inside the system. In an interview Wednesday with Russia’s independent TV Rain, Konstantin Kozlovsky said he inserted a .dat file imprinted with his passport number and the number of the visa he got for a trip to the Caribbean island of St. Martin.

“If the Americans made snapshots, you can check it out,” he said in a written exchange with the outlet from his Russian jail cell. “Or the file should be on backups for September 2015. That’s the main proof I can provide from inside this dungeon.”

After the intrusions allegedly took place, from summer 2015 to early 2016, Kozlovsky was imprisoned on charges of being part of a hacking plot to steal millions from Russian banks. This month, reports began to circulate in Russian media that Kozlovsky had confessed in Russian court in August to being part of an operation run by the country’s intelligence service, the FSB, against the DNC.

‘Subversive political machine’: Facebook boasts it helped SNP win general election

MSM Uses Russiagate To Punch Left

The Daily Beast, whose corporate owner has Chelsea Clinton on its board of directors, recently published a report titled “Kremlin Troll Wrote for Far-Left U.S. Sites”, which it then promoted with great success on Twitter using incendiary taglines like “Those Hillary-hating hot takes you read on leftie sites during the election? Some of ’em were written in Moscow.”

The short, low-energy Daily Beast blurb went viral by reporting on another arm-flailing Russiagate “bombshell” by the Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor and dangerous oligarch. WaPo’s article revolves around a pseudonymous writer with alleged ties to the Kremlin who succeeded in getting published by numerous alternative media outlets, most notably in CounterPunch.

I’ve got no love for CounterPunch’s elitist editors, who spent July of this year orchestrating a deceitful smear campaign against me, nor for their humorless gray-ponytailed sausage fest of a publication. But this story, like all Russiagate “bombshells”, falls apart under the slightest amount of scrutiny. Contrary to the viral proclamations of the Daily Beast, none of the articles in question had anything to do with Hillary Clinton, and only one of them was published prior to the election. As CounterPunch editor-in-chief Jeffrey St. Clair and managing editor Joshua Frank wrote in their almost-readable account of the ordeal, the amount of online traction that the pseudonymous writer Alice Donovan was able to accrue with these articles was so small that they had a mere 49 Twitter followers at the time this story broke.

And yet empire loyalists everywhere, from bloodthirsty neocon Eli Lake to psychotic tweakers Eric Garland and Louise Mensch, are parading about this inconsequential accident as though it means something.

Vanity Fair under fire for urging Hillary Clinton to quit politics and knit instead

Vanity Fair became embroiled in a social media storm over a video in which Hillary Clinton was urged to quit politics for knitting – an attempted joke that backfired even before it drew a bizarre tweet from Donald Trump.

The row began just before Christmas, when the magazine posted a series of videos in which editors and writers held up glasses of champagne and suggested satirical New Year’s resolutions for Clinton, Trump, the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, and economic adviser Gary Cohn.

The clip aimed at Clinton urged, among other things, that she should stop blaming others for her loss in the 2016 presidential race; that she should teach yoga breathing classes; and that she should embrace knitting over any political ambition. “Take up a new hobby in the New Year: volunteer work, knitting, improv comedy – literally anything that will keep you from running again,” the writer Maya Kosoff suggested.

Former Clinton aides, writers and celebrities were among those who tweeted their outrage, even after Vanity Fair put out a statement of regret, four days after the item was published.

How to succeed in business:

Banned From the Banking Industry for Life, a Scott Pruitt Friend Finds a New Home at the EPA

The Environmental Protection Agency has tasked a banker who was banned from the banking industry for life with oversight of the nation’s Superfund program. In May, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation fined Oklahoma banker Albert Kelly $125,000. According to a consent order, which The Intercept obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the FDIC had “reason to believe that [Kelly] violated a law or regulation, by entering into an agreement pertaining to a loan by the Bank without FDIC approval.”

Two weeks later, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt appointed Kelly to lead an effort to streamline the Superfund program. In July, the FDIC went further, banning Kelly from banking for life. The “order of prohibition from further participation” explained that the FDIC had determined Kelly’s “unfitness to serve as a director, officer, person participating in the conduct of the affairs or as an institution-affiliated party of the Bank, any other insured depository institution.”

But Pruitt, who had received loans from Kelly’s bank, apparently didn’t find Kelly’s unfitness to serve in the financial industry as disqualifying his longtime friend from serving as a top official at the EPA. Since May, Kelly, or Kell as he was known in Oklahoma, has led the effort to streamline the Superfund program — which oversees remediation of some of the country’s most toxic sites.

Pruitt earned only $38,400 as an Oklahoma state senator. Even with a $35,000 profit from selling his previous home, that was not enough on its own to buy a house in the Lakes at Indian Springs community in Broken Arrow, the suburb of Tulsa that Pruitt represented in the legislature. Yet in 2004, Pruitt purchased a sprawling ranch house in the upscale gated community for $605,000. ... To help pay for it, Pruitt turned to SpiritBank — a community bank that Kelly’s family had run since the 1930s. SpiritBank gave Pruitt and his wife three mortgage loans: one for $81,000, another for $359,000, and a third for $533,000. His wife, Marlyn Pruitt, has reported no assets or income. The year before, SpiritBank had also loaned Pruitt money to help buy a share of the Oklahoma City RedHawks, a minor league baseball team.

On May 22, Pruitt returned the favor to the Oklahoma banker with his announcement that he would be creating the Superfund task force — and appointing Kelly to head it. The appointment was notable in that Kelly would become a senior adviser in the federal environmental agency despite having no previous experience with environmental issues. A business major with a law degree and a 200-head cattle ranch, Kelly listed motivational speaking and political activity among the core competencies on his resume. The descendant of a long line of bankers and Republicans, Kelly had worked at his family’s bank for the previous 33 years.

Also of Interest

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

Clean Break II: Iran Hawks Decide to Burn It All Down

A Palestinian Teen Puts His Hand in His Pocket. His Punishment: A Bullet in the Face

How the Interrogation of Reality Winner Reveals the Deceptive Tactics of “Exceedingly Friendly” FBI Agents

A Leftist Economist Steps Aside As the Debate Shifts His Way

A Little Night Music

Sugar Pie Desanto - Soulful Dress

Sugar Pie De Santo - In The Basement

Sugarpie DeSanto - Slip In Mules

Sugarpie Desanto - - Mama Didn't Raise No Fool

Sugarpie Desanto - Going Back Where I Belong

Sugar Pie DeSanto - A Little Taste Of Soul

Sugar Pie DeSanto - One-Two, Let's Rock

Sugar Pie Desanto - Good Timin'

Sugarpie Desanto - I Cry Alone

Sugarpie Desanto - Maybe You'll Be There

Sugar Pie DeSanto - I Still Care

Sugar Pie DeSanto - The One That Loves You