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This evening's music features blues and rock musician Chuck Berry. Enjoy!

“A cure for War? Furiously spending the same daily amount of money toward making friends. Being an indispensable source of food, shelter, peace, and cultural support dedicatedly spending 9 billion dollars a month on helping people would be a formidable enemy of evil.”

-- Vanna Bonta

News and Opinion

Apparently, North Korea's ability to credibly threaten the continental U.S. (i.e. most of you reading this) with nuclear weapons is just what Darth Cheney and some very wealthy people wanted. An excellent read:

How Cheney and His Allies Created the North Korea Nuclear Missile Crisis

The Trump administration has been telling people for months that the crisis with North Korea is the result of North Korea's relentless pursuit of a nuclear threat to the US homeland and past North Korean cheating on diplomatic agreements. However, North Korea reached agreements with both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations that could have averted that threat, had they been completed.

Instead, a group of Bush administration officials led by then-Vice President Dick Cheney sabotaged both agreements, and Pyongyang went on to make rapid strides on both nuclear and missile development, leading ultimately to the successful late November 2017 North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test.

The record shows, moreover, that Cheney and his allies derailed diplomatic efforts to curb North Korean nuclear and missile development, not because they opposed "arms control" (after all, the agreements that were negotiated would have limited only North Korean arms), but because those agreements would have been a political obstacle to fielding the group's main interest: funding and fielding a national missile defense system as quickly as possible. The story of Cheney's maneuvering to kill two agreements shows how a real US national security interest was sacrificed to a massive military boondoggle that served only the interests of the powerful contractors behind it.

Code Pink Conference: The Arms Industry Hides Behind Euphemisms

South Korea seized a ship suspected of sneaking oil to North Korea

South Korea revealed it seized a Hong Kong-flagged ship last month that it claims secretly transferred oil to a North Korean vessel — a clear violation of international sanctions.

Authorities said Friday that the Lighthouse Winmore had transferred 600 tons of refined petroleum to a North Korean vessel in October in a ship-to-ship transfer in international waters in the East China Sea. They apprehended the boat and its crew when it arrived in the Yeosu port in the southern tip of South Korea on Nov. 24. The boat was officially seized on Dec. 22, according to AP. ...

U.N. sanctions implemented in September ban ship-to-ship trading with North Korea over the development of its nuclear program, while U.S. Treasury sanctions from November further restrict the kingdom’s shipping and trading networks.

US-Led Coalition Continues to Underreport Civilians Killed in Iraq, Syria Airstrikes

The US-led coalition has issued yet another report on the civilian death toll in their airstrikes against Iraq and Syria since 2014, and continues to dismiss the vast, vast majority of the civilian deaths as “not credible.”

Out of 27,500 coalition airstrikes in that period, 1,799 reports of civilian casualties have been issued, with thousands killed. The coalition, however, dismissed all but 208 of the reports, and put the figure at 817 dead.

US, Israel sign secret pact to tackle Iran nuclear and missile threat

Israel and the United States have secretly signed a far-reaching joint memorandum of understanding providing for full cooperation to deal with Iran’s nuclear drive, its missile programs and its other threatening activities, an Israeli TV report said. ...

At what the TV report described as a “secret” meeting at the White House, the US and Israel formulated and signed a joint agreement on strategy and policy regarding Iran. Specifically, they agreed to set up joint teams to handle various aspects of the Iranian threat.

One such joint team, the report said, will deal with Iranian activity in Syria and Tehran’s support for the Hezbollah terror organization. Another joint team will deal with both diplomatic and intelligence activities designed to grapple with Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

A third joint team, it was reportedly agreed, would grapple with Iran’s ballistic missile program and its efforts to build accurate missile systems in Syria and Lebanon. Finally, a fourth team would oversee preparation for any escalation by Iran and/or Hezbollah.

How Trump could kill the Iran nuclear deal in January

President Donald Trump allowed the Iran nuclear deal to survive through 2017, but the new year will offer him another chance to blow up the agreement — and critics and supporters alike believe he may take it.

By mid-January, the president will face new legal deadlines to choose whether to slap U.S. sanctions back on Tehran. Senior lawmakers and some of Trump's top national security officials are trying to preserve the agreement. But the deal's backers fear Trump has grown more willing to reject the counsel of his foreign policy team, as he did with his recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The decision represents an opportunity for Trump to deliver on a campaign promise to rip up the Iran deal, one he has repeatedly deferred at the urging of senior officials.

When Trump last publicly addressed the status of the Iran agreement, in mid-October, he indicated his patience had worn thin with what he has called “the worst deal ever,” and demanded that Congress and European countries take action to address what he considers the deal’s weakness. “[I]n the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” Trump said in an Oct. 13 speech. The three months since then have shown little progress toward such a solution.

In an effort to save the deal, members of Congress are discussing legislation that would give Trump political cover to extend the deal. But it’s not clear whether Republicans and Democrats can agree on even a symbolic measure in time.

Palestinian teenager who slapped Israeli soldier to face charges

A 16-year-old Palestinian girl who slapped an Israeli officer two weeks ago will face assault charges in an Israeli military court, prosecutors said on Thursday.

The Dec. 15 incident in the occupied West Bank was captured on video and posted on the Internet, drawing attention on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

Palestinians hailed the teenager, Ahed Tamimi, as a hero. Israelis debated whether the officer, who along with another soldier was also kicked by her, had done the right thing by opting not to strike back. ...

The military said in a statement that the officer “acted professionally” but right-wing Israeli politicians described his behaviour as humiliating.

Capital shift: US proposes 12,000-dweller village as capital of Palestine

Thousands of Palestinians Take to Streets for Fourth Consecutive Friday to Denounce Trump's Jerusalem Move

For the fourth consecutive Friday, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets of the occupied territories to protest U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

An estimated 4,000 Palestinians took part in marches across the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and according to AFP, more than 50 were wounded by Israeli gunfire.

The protests came just two weeks after Ibrahim Abu Thraya, a 29-year-old paraplegic, was shot in the head during a demonstration along the Israeli border.

"Palestinians say Abu Thraya was shot deliberately by an Israeli sniper—a claim the military denies," the Associated Press reported on Thursday. "The medical records, which include a hospital report and a death certificate, say that Abu Thraya...was struck by a bullet above his left eye and died from bleeding in the brain. The same findings were detailed in a report by the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service."

Friday's mass demonstration—termed a "day of rage"—was just one of many that have kicked off worldwide in the wake of Trump's Jerusalem decision, which provoked sharp condemnation from Middle Eastern and European leaders.

As Trump Attacks Media with “Fake News” Claims, a Record 262 Reporters Are Jailed, 46 Killed in 2017

Big Tech: The New Predatory Capitalism

“We’re making the world a better place.”

The phrase is thrown around so often in the tech world that it became a punch line on the HBO satire Silicon Valley. Executives controlling the largest tech titans—Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft—might even believe it. But in a searing presentation at Business Insider’s IGNITION conference in November, New York University professor Scott Galloway explained that technology and progress have stopped traveling together since the days of the Apollo Project, even as scientists and engineers developed the most sophisticated tools known to mankind.

“What has the greatest collection of humanity and IQ and financial capital been brought together to accomplish?” Galloway asked the crowd. “To save world [from] hunger? To create greater comity of man? I don’t think so. … Their singular mission, simply put, it’s to sell another fucking Nissan.”

Today’s technologists work at for-profit businesses, doing what for-profit businesses do in America—maximizing shareholder profits by acquiring functional control of markets, as well as intimate details of our lives. Big Tech makes aspects of daily life more convenient (if more fraught), but that’s not the same as making the world a better place. Mainly, the goal has become making more money, via more monopoly. And their success over the past decade has been so unprecedented and damaging that Galloway—a self-described “full-throated capitalist”—sees no choice but to break these companies up. ...

Google has near-total dominance of the search market. Facebook welcomes two billion monthly users and manages six of the top ten social media apps globally. Amazon controls nearly half of e-commerce and over two-thirds of the emerging voice-activated digital assistant market. Apple and Google share control of the operating systems for mobile phones and tablet gadgets; add Microsoft and Amazon and you’ve covered virtually all electronic computing devices. Facebook and Google dominate digital advertising. Amazon is increasingly the only player for cloud services. Heck, I’m writing this story on an Apple MacBook, finding links through Google, and resisting the temptation to use the Amazon Echo in the next room. And the imminent end of net neutrality will give AT&T and Verizon new power to determine winners and losers—and the Big Tech monopolists will be the winners. ...

We already know these firms have crippled entrepreneurship, by either buying out competitors or copying their features and using overwhelming market share to destroy them—tactics that would be familiar to the authors of the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts. We already know they’ve concentrated economic gains in a few small enclaves, leaving large swathes of the country behind. We already know they religiously avoid taxes and cut special deals with intimidated public officials, burdening the rest of society. We already know their surveillance capabilities rival any in history, handing over a comprehensive profile of your every waking moment for advertisers and behaviorists to exploit. We already know the addictive qualities of their products have undermined social relationships, expanded divisiveness, and transformed what it means to be human. We already know their drive for profits ignores how their platforms can be weaponized, scarring millions and undermining democracy.

Facebook and Twitter threatened with sanctions in UK 'fake news' inquiry

Facebook and Twitter could face sanctions if they continue to stonewall parliament over Russian interference in the EU referendum, the chair of a Commons inquiry has said. Damian Collins, chair of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee, which is looking into so-called “fake news”, has given the companies until 18 January to correct their failure to hand over information he requested about Russian misinformation campaigns on their platforms.

“There has to be a way of scrutinising the procedures that companies like Facebook put in place to help them identify known sources of disinformation, particularly when it’s politically motivated and coming from another country,” Collins said. “They need to be able to tell us what they can do about it. And what we need to be able to do is say to the companies: we recognise that you are best placed to monitor what is going on your own site and to get the balance right in taking action against it but also safeguarding the privacy of users.

“But what there has to be then is some mechanism of saying: if you fail to do that, if you ignore requests to act, if you fail to police the site effectively and deal with highly problematic content, then there has to be some sort of sanction against you.”

Collins’s intervention, the first concrete warning that sanctions could follow any failure to provide the information required, is likely to cause concern for the social media firms. Previously he had signalled his dissatisfaction in letters to the two companies without specifying the consequences of noncompliance.

Facebook stops putting "Disputed Flags" on fake news because it doesn't work

Facebook announced that it will no longer use "Disputed Flags" — red flags next to fake news articles — to identify fake news for users. Instead it will use related articles to give people more context about a story.

The tech giant is doing this in response to academic research it conducted that shows the flags don't work, and they often have the reverse effect of making people want to click even more. Related articles give people more context about what's fake or not, according to Facebook.

Thousands march in Lima in protest over pardon for former Peru president

Thousands of Peruvians have marched through Lima to vent their outrage over a pardon for the jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, in the biggest protest since the decision was announced.

The public opprobrium was directed at Peru’s president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who granted the pardon on health grounds on Christmas Eve to lift the 25-year sentence, Fujimori, 79, had been serving for corruption and authorising death squad killings.

Public indignation threatens to push Kuczynski’s beleaguered government into a political crisis as he reshuffles his cabinet and seeks to forge a new alliance with the majority opposition party led by Fujimori’s daughter Keiko.

“The president has lost all legitimacy,” said Maria Isabel Cedano, a feminist campaigner who supported Kuczynski, known as PPK, in Peru’s 2016 presidential runoff to prevent a victory for Keiko Fujimori. “He has betrayed us. He should resign and convene new elections.”

Interesting stuff, lots more detail than can be fairly excerpted. Here's a teaser:

With more to come, new JFK documents offer fresh leads 54 years later

Half-a-dozen 2017 releases of long-secret documents about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have given plenty of new leads to those who don’t believe alleged gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. ...

One particular document from the August release has created much buzz. It that shows that Earle Cabell, mayor of Dallas at the time of the Nov. 22, 1963, shooting, became a CIA asset in late 1956. The CIA had withheld the information on grounds that it was not considered relevant. No related documents have been released, but even alone it is important. Cabell’s brother Charles was deputy director of the CIA until he was fired by Kennedy in January 1962. ...

Another revelatory JFK document released in full on Dec. 15 was the transcript of a 1978 interview by the House Select Committee on Assassinations with Orest Pena. According to Pena, a bar owner in New Orleans, Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. government agent or informant. How did he know? Because Pena himself was an informant, he said. He had given details to the Warren Commission in July 1964 but, as the new document shows, later revealed much more detail about Warren de Brueys, an FBI agent in New Orleans to whom Pena said he reported.

Oswald, he claimed, frequented a breakfast place regularly not only with de Brueys but with agents from U.S. Customs and Immigration in New Orleans. Pena believed Oswald had an office in the same government complex. Pena also testified to the House panel that de Brueys had threatened him if he shared with investigators details of their meetings and training of anti-Castro instigators, and that his FBI handler had transferred to Dallas before the assassination. Pena’s testimony, however, was largely discounted by two government commissions.

People in Houston 'at risk of being arrested just because they are homeless'

People in Houston are “at risk of being arrested just because they are homeless”, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union said, after a federal judge cleared the city to enforce an ordinance that prohibits the setting up of tents and temporary living quarters in public places.

US district judge Kenneth Hoyt, who had blocked the law while a civil lawsuit is pending in his court, lifted his temporary restraining order on Thursday and denied a request for a preliminary injunction.

“While this court is indeed sympathetic to the impact that enforcement of the encampment ordinance on unsheltered homeless individuals poses,” Hoyt wrote, “the court recognizes the city’s police powers to enact and enforce reasonable legislation that promotes the health, safety and general welfare of all Houston residents.”

The ACLU of Texas is suing the city on behalf of four homeless people, contending the ordinance violates the constitutional protections of homeless people and makes homelessness a crime.

Hoyt disagreed, saying the ordinance “prohibits obstructions that hinder the city from preserving public property for its intended purpose”. City officials argue the tent cities and encampments, primarily under freeway overpasses, are hazardous to public health and safety.

Trump warns: no deal to protect Dreamers without cash for border wall

Donald Trump demanded on Friday that any deal to resolve the fate of young undocumented migrants must be paired with funding for a wall along the southern US border. It was not immediately clear if Trump’s intervention would derail attempts to find a compromise on the issue, or negotiations over government funding.

Spokespeople for Democratic leaders said they looked forward to resuming “a serious negotiation” on immigration when Congress returns next week. ...

There are about 700,000 so-called Dreamers, undocumented migrants brought to the US as children. In September. Trump announced that he was rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or Daca, a policy implemented by Barack Obama in 2012 that allowed Dreamers to come out of the shadows to study and work legally in the US.

Trump placed the fate of the young immigrants squarely in the hands of Congress, giving lawmakers until 5 March to find a legislative solution.

John Nichols adapts Dickens for our times, but exhibits a naive faith that in these times "liberals" would champion a more charitable, decent approach to distributing the wealth of men and nations.

A Scrooge Walks Among Us

Charles Dickens, if he were writing today, would have no trouble crafting a contemporary character every bit as ominous and unsettling as Ebenezer Scrooge.

An astute social commentator who in 1843 wrote with an eye toward exposing the cruel disregard for humanity that infected the powerful men of his times, Dickens could simply update his protagonist: make the miser younger and more conniving, put him in a crisp suit, give him better hair, perhaps make him the Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

This year, Speaker Paul Ryan and his compatriots abandoned any impulse to address the human condition with charity and compassion as they rushed to enact a tax “reform” that robs from working Americans, and from the future, in order redistribute wealth upward. The greed of contemporary conservatism have proven to be so cruel in its character, so rigid in its application, that its practitioners have willingly set the stage for the impoverishment of future generations with massive debt that even they admit will tear at the safety net of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Ryan’s cabal simply does not care what damage is done, so long as their own comforts—and those of their wealthy patrons — are maintained.

Charles Dickens anticipated the morally bankrupt calculations of today’s Republicans more than a century and a half ago, with his imagining of a visit by two gentlemen, “liberals” we will call them, to a certain conservative businessman.

Hat tip, DonMidwest:

War at Home

The United States has built the most powerful military in the world. That strength has come at a largely unknown cost. The testing and disposal of the nation's weapons here in the U.S. have poisoned drinking water supplies, rendered millions of acres of land unsafe or unusable, and jeopardized the health of often unwitting Americans. ...

The Pentagon has catalogued more than 40,000 contaminated sites across U.S. states and territories, and it has so far spent more than $40 billion attempting to clean them up. We have found no other single entity — corporation, government agency or individual — responsible for so much environmental degradation. The total amount of land contaminated by the military is larger than the state of Florida. Thousands of sites remain dangerously polluted and fenced off, awaiting the government's attention. Thousands of others have already been returned to public use — for parks, housing and schools — in some instances without thorough cleanups.

Faced with these liabilities, the Pentagon has routinely sought to minimize its responsibility for fixing its environmental problems. It burns hazardous waste and explosives because it's the cheapest way to dispose of them, even though the burning process has been outlawed for most American industries since the 1980s. It employs contractors to dispose of hazardous waste and clean up toxic sites, then claims it is not responsible when some of those contractors commit fraud, improperly handle toxic material, or cut corners on cleanups. It has in some cases explicitly refused to cooperate with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and let dangerous sites linger unaddressed.

But perhaps nothing better exemplifies the Pentagon's approach to its pollution problem than the story of RDX, one of the world's most powerful conventional explosives. RDX was developed by the U.S. military during World War II. It is now believed by many to cause cancer, and is increasingly turning up in drinking water supplies near military sites across the country. As the human health and environmental dangers of RDX have become known, ProPublica's investigation found that the Pentagon has resisted scientific evidence that it causes cancer, interfered with federal and state efforts to clean up RDX-contaminated lands, and even pressed Congress to re-write American environmental laws so as to not apply to RDX contamination.

Corrupt Banker Now Heads Superfund Cleanup At EPA

Trump's call for some 'good old global warming' ridiculed by climate experts

On holiday in Florida on Thursday, Trump wondered if global warming might not be such a problem after all. As severe cold and record amounts of snow swept across the US east coast, Trump wrote on Twitter that his people “could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against”.

“Bundle up!” he added.

The president was reheating two favourite tropes: the conflation of weather with climate to pour scepticism on global warming, and the supposed cost to the American taxpayer of the Paris climate accord, from which he has confirmed the US will withdraw.

Climate scientists, however, have long warned against using individual weather events to ponder the existence or otherwise of global warming. Weather, they point out, refers to atmospheric conditions during a short period; climate relates to longer-term weather patterns.

1) There is a difference between #weather and #climate.
2) Short-term #cold snaps will continue to occur in a warming climate.
3) 2017 will likely be a top three warmest year on record for the globe.
(Graphic: Univ. of Maine - Climate Change Institute) https://t.co/kzuugeXi80 pic.twitter.com/gueOsp4yvu

— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) December 29, 2017

Also of Interest

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

We Need A Moral Movement

War Without a Rationale

If The Democratic Establishment Were A Husband

New NY Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger Has an Unusual Admirer: Wisconsin’s Far-Right Governor Scott Walker

It’s Official: Government Report Says Market Risks are “High and Rising”

Detroit’s housing crisis is the work of its own government

A Little Night Music

Chuck Berry - Memphis Tennessee

Chuck Berry and Johnnie Johnson - House of Blue Lights

Chuck Berry - Rip It Up

Chuck Berry - School Days

Chuck Berry - Around And Around

Chuck Berry - Roll Over Beethoven

Chuck Berry - Maybellene

Chuck Berry - You Can't Catch Me

Chuck Berry - Little Queenie