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This evening's music features Kansas City blues piano player Jay McShann. Enjoy!

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

-- United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

News and Opinion

Assange gives evidence in Spanish case against security contractor

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was brought from Belmarsh Prison yesterday to appear in person at Westminster Magistrates Court and provide video-link witness testimony in the Spanish prosecution of David Morales, the founder of security firm UC Global. Morales, a former Spanish military officer, is accused of spying on Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy and was charged in October with privacy violation, bribery and money laundering. The hearing was held in private session. No members of the media or the public were allowed inside the courtroom to see or hear Assange, on the remarkable grounds that the Spanish prosecution of UC Global involves “matters of national security.” ...

The Morales case has major implications for the US extradition attempt. UC Global was contracted by the Ecuadorian government to provide security for its embassy in London, where Assange sought and was granted political asylum in June 2012. Instead of protecting Assange, Morales’s company is known to have illegally monitored and recorded every aspect of his personal life from 2015 until March 2018. Investigations published by Spanish newspaper El Pais and Italian newspaper La Repubblica have uncovered evidence that leaves little doubt the surveillance was carried out on behalf of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Among the numerous conversations that were illegally spied on were confidential discussions between Assange and his lawyers and doctors, meaning his fundamental legal right to privacy in these matters was violated.

Assange’s British lawyers made clear again yesterday that they intend to use the evidence arising from the UC Global case to argue that the extradition application should be rejected out-of-hand, as it further proves he will not receive a fair trial in the US. A major precedent was set in the 1970s, when the case against Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was quashed following the revelation that President Richard Nixon had overseen spying on consultations between Ellsberg and his doctors.

The importance of the UC Global case was underscored when British authorities initially refused to comply with the European Investigation Order (EIO) issued by Spanish Judge José de la Mata requesting that Assange be made available to provide witness testimony. His appearance yesterday only took place due to considerable media coverage of a formal complaint by de la Mata. El Pais observed that the backdown took place because Britain’s stance was “viewed as resistance to an investigation that could hinder Assange’s extradition to the US.” ...

Speaking with the New York Times, Amy Jeffress, a former Justice Department attaché at the American embassy in London, claimed that the illegality exposed in the UC Global case was not relevant to Assange’s extradition. According to the Times, she asserted that “the legal standard is whether extradition would comply with Britain’s Human Rights Act, which protects the right to privacy but balances it against considerations like national security and fighting crime.”

'They Did it on Purpose': Protester Crushed Between Police Jeeps Latest Victim of Months-Long Chilean Crackdown on Dissent

The ongoing protest movement in Chile has had success—the country's constitution is expected to be rewritten as a concession from President Sebastien Pinera to demonstrators—but still faces a harsh crackdown from government security forces, who in a series of assaults Friday fired projectiles at crowds and crushed one young man between two armored jeeps, causing him serious injury.

Twenty-year-old Oscar Ignacio Pérez Cortéz was pinned between two police jeeps—called by protesters zorrillos, or "skunks"—on Friday when one of the vehicles slammed the young man into the side of the other.

Footage from the attack shows outraged demonstrators attacking the zorrillos and tending to Pérez immediately after the assault.

Momento en que #Carabineros APLASTÓ con dos vehículos (zorrillos) a un manifestante en Plaza de la dignidad. Clase Navidad @sebastianpinera que le estas dando a #Chile, mientras @mbachelet y las organizaciones internacionales como @CIDH y @OEA_oficial tter.com/hasKO8j7nM

— Rosario Espinales (@SocorroAltami12) December 20, 2019

The zorillo attack came during clashes between heavily armed police and unarmed demonstrators.

Pérez escaped death but sustained serious injuries including four pelvic fractures, a split urethra, and other damage.

"The first thing he said to my mother was 'they did it on purpose,'" tweeted Pérez's sister Valeria. Pérez's mother Maria Cortéz told author Ignacio Vidaurrázaga Manríquez that the police attack on her son was indicative of the state reaction to the protest movement.

"My son Oscar was brutally, intentionally run over and crushed by two skunks," said Cortéz. "Miraculously is alive. This barbarism, endorsed by the minister of the interior and the state of Chile, must stop!"

Santiago Metropolitan Province police superintendent Felipe Guevara expressed on Twitter his "regret" for the Friday evening assault. The driver was reportedly arrested and arraigned on Saturday, but the public was not allowed into the courtroom during the alleged arraignment.

Valeria Pérez told reporters outside of the courtroom that the family would not be satisfied with only the guilt of the driver of the vehicle. "As a family we want it to be known, this is the guilt of the state," said Valeria Pérez.

Despite the police rhetoric after the attack on Perez, clashes on Saturday saw security forces continuing to use excessive force on protesters.

ICC to Probe Alleged War Crimes in Palestine

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced Friday her intention to launch an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in Israeli-occupied Palestine.

"I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine," Bensouda said in a statement. "In brief, I am satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip," said Bensouda, adding that "there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice."

Bensouda called on the court's pre-Trial chamber to swiftly confirm that court's jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry welcomed the announcement, which it called "a long overdue step to move the process forward towards an investigation, after nearly five long and difficult years of preliminary examination."

Authorities in Israel were up in arms.

"We utterly reject the prosecutor's decision," Israel's Foreign Ministry said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also blasted the decision on social media, deeming it "absurd." Netanyahu's office added that the prime minister fired off letters to other world leaders in response.

'Deeply Disturbing': Indian Minister to Cancel Meeting With US Lawmakers Over Rep. Jayapal's Kashmir Criticism

India's minister of External Affairs on Thursday canceled a meeting with U.S. lawmakers, reportedly because the delegation from the House Foreign Affairs Committee included Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat who has been criticial of the Indian assault on the Kashmir region.

"I have no interest in meeting her," Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told Indian news agency ANI of Jayapal.

Jayapal told The Washington Post's John Hudson, who broke the story, that she was disappointed in the decision.

An unwillingness on the part of Indian authorities to hear other views, said Jayapal, speaks to a broader problem in the way the country's government treats opposing views at a time when the world's most populous democracy is riven by internal conflict over a number of hardline policies, including a controversial citizenship bill targeted at Muslims.

"This only furthers the idea that the Indian government isn't willing to listen to any dissent at all," said Jayapal. "The seriousness of this moment should've been a reason for a conversation, not dictating who's in the meeting, which seems very petty." ...

At issue was Jayapal's sponsorship of a resolution that would lift the four month-long communications blockade on Jammu and Kashmir that followed India's crackdown on the region in August and calls for the release of hundreds of political prisoners. Jaishankar's team asked Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) to remove Jayapal from the group meeting the minister, but Engel refused.

"What are they hiding in Kashmir?" wondered Rutgers assistant professor of South Asian history Audrey Truschke.

France transport strikes threaten to sow chaos during holiday travel season

Macron waives presidential pension amid Christmas strike chaos

Emmanuel Macron is to give up his own generous presidential pension in an attempt to calm anger over politicians’ privileges, as French transport strikes caused chaos for Christmas travellers.

With rail strikes continuing into their third week and travellers scrambling to get to home for the holidays, Macron, who turned 42 this weekend, made the symbolic move to become the first president in more than 50 years to give up the automatic pension of more than €6,000 a month that all French leaders receive after leaving office, regardless of age or wealth. Macron’s office added that he would not take his seat in France’s constitutional court, where former presidents are members for life and receive a monthly allowance of €13,500. “This is about being exemplary and coherent,” an Élysée official said.

The pro-business Macron is aware that the strikes over his planned pensions changes have increasingly focused on him personally, with caricatures and banners at street demonstrations depicting him as king. Just as the gilets jaunes anti-government protesters earlier this year complained about Macron building a swimming pool at a presidential summer retreat, and expensively upgrading Élysée carpets and crockery, banners at pensions protests mocked him and and other former presidents for their luxury lifestyles and generous settlements once they leave office. ...

The left criticised it as a PR stunt, with the Communists saying Macron, a former investment banker, had made millions in the private sector, so had a rare luxury of being able to give up his presidential pension. ...

The very essence of Macron’s political identity is at stake. He has always said he preferred to make structural changes to the French model amid unpopularity than back down in the face of street protests. Failure to deliver the reforms would dent Macron’s firm support base of about 25%, which is crucial for any re-election bid in 2022. However, further negotiations with unions will be needed to agree any changes.

EU stays loyal to Russian pipeline despite new American sanctions

Germans Aim to Kneecap U.S. Sanctions on Russia

Late on Friday, President Donald Trump is set to sign legislation sanctioning a gas pipeline project that would run from Russia to Germany. The Ukrainian government has worked to stop the project. The German government, meanwhile, opposes the sanctions. In a final series of meetings aiming to stave them off, Berlin officials made statements that frustrated both Ukrainian and U.S. officials, according to five sources with knowledge of the talks.

The Germans have intimated that the U.S. will have a harder time holding together Western sanctions on Russia if it blocks the Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipeline, according to three of those sources, and they suggest the American action could endanger crucial gas transit talks among Germany, Ukraine, and Russia.

Berlin also says success of those talks is vital to American national security, and that this justifies shielding the project from the sanctions designed to stop it. One U.S. government official said the Germans “are threatening Ukraine and jeopardizing transatlantic security by holding out the possibility of a gas transit deal in order to extort us into allowing a malign Russian project to continue.” ...

The private conversations between German and U.S. officials have covered a maze of often byzantine topics: pipeline construction, gas transit negotiations, and sanctions enforcement. But at the heart of it all is a simple question: What kind of relationship will Western Europe have with Russia? For Ukraine, it’s existential; Kyiv views completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as an urgent national security threat. Meanwhile, German government officials have pounded the halls of Congress lobbying members to withhold their opposition.

According to two people present for meetings and a third briefed on them, German officials indicated that the new sanctions could constrain their ability to help the U.S. hold together its current sanctions on Russia. The U.S. rolled out those sanctions after Russian military intervention in Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. The Germans indicated that they are already struggling to hold together the European Union consensus in support of those sanctions, according to one source who was present for a meeting between American and German officials. They intimated they may not be able to continue to do so if the U.S. blocks the pipeline project.

Former NSA Director Is Cooperating With Probe of Trump-Russia Investigation

Retired Adm. Michael Rogers, former director of the National Security Agency, has been cooperating with the Justice Department’s probe into the origins of the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump presidential campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, according to four people familiar with Rogers’s participation. Rogers has met the prosecutor leading the probe, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, on multiple occasions, according to two people familiar with Rogers’s cooperation. While the substance of those meetings is not clear, Rogers has cooperated voluntarily, several people with knowledge of the matter said. Rogers, who retired in May 2018, did not respond to requests for comment.

The inquiry has been a pillar of Attorney General William Barr’s tenure. He appointed Durham to lead the inquiry last spring, directing him to determine whether the FBI was justified in opening a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and alleged links between Russia and the Trump campaign, among other matters. What began as a broad review has turned into a criminal investigation, according to the New York Times. Barr has described the use of undercover FBI agents to investigate members of the campaign as “spying.”

Last week, a separate, nonpartisan review of the investigation by the Justice Department inspector general concluded that while the FBI and Justice Department committed serious errors in their applications to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, the investigation was opened properly and without political bias. Barr and Durham took the unusual step of publicly disagreeing with some of the inspector general’s conclusions, with Barr describing the FBI’s justification for the inquiry as “very flimsy.”

Rogers’s voluntary participation, which has not been previously reported, makes him the first former intelligence director known to have been interviewed for the probe. ... Politico and NBC News have previously reported that Durham intends to interview both former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. It is unclear if that has happened. Brennan and the Justice Department declined to comment. Clapper could not be reached for comment.

The Times reported on Thursday that Durham is examining Brennan’s congressional testimony and communications with a focus on what the former CIA director may have told other officials about his views on the so-called Steele dossier, a set of unverified allegations about links between Russia, Trump, and his campaign compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

FISA court investigating FBI warrant applications

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court (FISA) that approved FBI surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page is now investigating other applications it’s received from one of the agency's attorneys accused of making an inappropriate change to the Page application.

The review, which was announced in an order released Friday, hints at a comprehensive effort by the secretive court to reevaluate surveillance after the Justice Department inspector general's report found errors in the Page application process.

In the order, written on Dec. 5 and declassified Friday, the court requested that the executive branch identify "all other matters currently or previously before this Court" that involved FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. The court also requested explanations of how the Justice Department and FBI are ensuring that Clinesmith’s submissions were accurate.

Impeachment Helps Trump & Dems Don’t Care

Amid Impeachment Furor, GOP 'Hijacking' of Courts Continues as McConnell Rams Through 12 More Lifetime Trump Judges with the help of Democrats

The right-wing takeover of the U.S. courts continued apace Thursday as the Republican-controlled Senate, with the help of some Democrats, quietly confirmed a dozen more of President Donald Trump's lifetime judicial nominees hours before leaving for Christmas recess.

The confirmations received little media attention amid Trump's impeachment and the 2020 Democratic debate, but progressives warned the consequences could reverberate for generations.

"While all eyes were understandably on impeachment, Mitch McConnell's conveyor belt churned out a shocking number of judges this week in what remains the most underrated story of the Trump era," Christopher Kang, chief counsel for advocacy group Demand Justice, said in a statement.

"Trump's hijacking of our judiciary will be his most enduring legacy," added Kang, "and it will continue to threaten everything progressives care about long after he leaves office."

The Senate has now confirmed 187 of Trump's disproportionately young and ultra-conservative judicial picks, putting them in a position to reshape U.S. law on reproductive rights, climate, and other areas for decades to come.

These are the 100 fortune 500 companies that paid nothing in taxes

I guess these idiot Democrats figure that only their donors johns are watching.

Schumer Revealed as Key Industry Ally in Defeat of Effort to Curb Surprise Billing

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer worked behind the scenes through December in the Senate to defeat a bipartisan initiative to curb suprise medical billing, according to a new report Friday which details the lobbying victories won by the for-profit healthcare industry in 2019.

Reporting Friday by the Washington Post's Jeff Stein and Yasmeen Abutaleb points to Schumer, a New York Democrat, as a consequential figure in stopping the surprise billing measure from being included in an end-of-year spending bill.

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, effectively killed the bill last week by introducing a competing measure and pushing off the legislation until 2020.

According to the Post:

On Dec. 6, two days before a bipartisan group of lawmakers announced an agreement to their efforts, Schumer called a key player in the negotiations—Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate health committee—to express his disapproval of the measure, which negotiators had been crafting since the spring, according to three people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

Several people close to the negotiations said it was widely believed that Schumer was acting on behalf of powerful New York hospital groups, who have donated at least $1 million this year to the Senate Democratic fundraising arm.

In a statement to the Post, Schumer's team denied that donations had anything to do with the senator's intercession in the process and that the New York Democrat was not affected in the decision-making process by political donations.

‘It is beyond cruel’: Ice refuses to reunite girl with the only family she has left

For more than nine months, María, 23, has been waiting in an immigration detention center in Arizona hoping to reunite with the six-year-old niece she raised as a daughter. When the two asked for asylum at the border last March because they feared for their lives in Guatemala, border officials detained María in the Eloy detention center and sent the girl to foster care in New York, 2400 miles away.

The Guardian first reported on the ongoing separation of this family in October. As the story spread, lawmakers and more than 200 clergy asked US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to grant María parole so she can leave detention and reunite with the girl. A woman in New York volunteered to house them both while María awaits a decision on her appeal for asylum. But despite that public support, Ice denied María’s application for parole in mid-December.

Parole was once the norm for arriving asylum seekers, but in recent years approvals have become increasingly rare. On a standardized form, Ice officers indicated María failed to prove she was “not a flight risk” or that her “continued detention was not in the public interest”. María said the denial was “depressing” because it prolongs her separation from the child. She has regular phone calls with her niece, who says she doesn’t want to be apart any more. “But I tell her she has to be patient, wait a little bit longer. Just like I’m doing it myself from here,” María said in Spanish during a phone call from detention on Thursday.

“Why does Ice get to say what the public interest is?” said Suzannah Maclay, one of María’s pro bono attorneys. “It’s very clear what the public is interested in here. It’s helping these people and getting them back together.”

Six years ago, a gang in rural Guatemala murdered María’s last living relatives except her niece, who was a baby. María raised the child and is the only mother the girl has known. They fled toward the United States last Christmas after the gang murdered María’s partner and tried to shoot her. María’s case stands out because of the dozens of people who have tried to help.

A Homeless Man Got Himself Arrested Just So He'd Have a Warm Place to Sleep

A homeless man in Natchez, Mississippi, pleaded with officers to let him sleep in a county jail so he could escape the cold early Thursday morning.

And when the Adams County Sheriff’s Office turned him down for liability reasons — only people charged with a crime can be held in a cell — he smashed the glass of the local courthouse window in an effort to get arrested, according to the Natchez Democrat. The man also busted several windows at the sheriff’s office with his elbow, according to the paper. Temperatures were as low as 25 degrees that morning. The man was arrested and is now in jail without bond, according to WLBT, a local NBC affiliate.

Adams County, a small county of about 31,000 in southern Mississippi, lacks a homeless shelter. Yet nearly 30% of its residents live in poverty, according to government data, compared to a national poverty rate of 11.8%. “It shows the need for some kind of shelter for the homeless,” the county sheriff, Travis Patten, told the Natchez Democrat. “If there was a shelter, he would not have to have committed a crime to have been able to get out of the cold and could have also had a hot meal.”

Can Biden hold on?

Debate Exposes Pete Buttigieg’s Electability Problem: He Was Crushed in His One Statewide Race

Challenged at Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate for his lack of experience, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg reached for an argument he’s been making throughout the campaign: His success in the Midwest, which Democrats need to win back in order to reclaim the White House, shows that he is able to win a general election. “If you want to talk about the capacity to win, try putting together a coalition to bring you back to office with 80 percent of the vote as a gay dude in Mike Pence’s Indiana,” Buttigieg told fellow Midwesterner Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

While Buttigieg, who was elected mayor in 2011 and is closing out his second term, has made this argument on the campaign trail, it went largely unchallenged until last night, when Klobuchar went for Buttigieg’s electability Achilles’ heel: his 2010 bid for Indiana state treasurer.

“Mayor, if you had won in Indiana that would be one thing,” Klobuchar pushed back. “You tried and you lost by 20 points.” Klobuchar didn’t go into detail, not naming the race or the year, but an examination of Buttigieg’s 2010 statewide run — which he actually lost by 25 percentage points — is damaging to his key claim that he can win in “Mike Pence’s Indiana.” ...

Buttigieg’s loss was one of the worst in the entire country, adjusting for partisan lean, according to an analysis from the progressive think tank Data for Progress and provided to The Intercept. While Buttigieg lost by 25 points, the four other statewide Democrats were beaten by margins of 14.6 to 21.3 percentage points. In other words, a significant number of voters went to the ballot box and cast votes for every Democrat statewide except Buttigieg.

The think tank looked at 51 competitive Indiana statewide elections since 1996 and found that of those 51 races, Buttigieg did worse than all but David Johnson in 2000, who was wiped out by the famously well-regarded (at the time) Richard Lugar for Senate. The median margin Democrats lost by was 11 percent. Buttigieg also fared poorly in comparison to Democrats in the rest of the country too. In 2010, there were 21 races for state treasurer with both a Democrat and Republican. He did worse than all but four.

AOC Slammed Pete Buttigieg for Big Dollar Donors: ‘It’s Called Having Values’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez struck out at Pete Buttigieg on Saturday, telling attendees at a beachside rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign that the South Bend mayor is beholden to big-dollar donors. “For anyone who accuses us for instituting purity tests, it's called having values. It's called, giving a damn,” the freshman Congresswoman told the crowd. “It's called having standards for your conduct, to not be funded by billionaires but to be funded by the people, which is different.”

The comments continue a fight that played out on the debate stage just miles from here on Thursday night. Sen. Elizabeth Warren took Buttigieg to task for a fundraiser he held in a Napa Valley wine cave last week, but Buttigieg responded he rejects purity tests and is happy to take money and campaign help from whoever offers.

Ocasio-Cortez told the more than 14,000-strong crowd assembled in a beachfront park, however, that in her short time in Congress, she’s seen firsthand the difference between a candidate funded by wealthy donors and one funded by small dollar donations. “I go into work all the time and I hear people saying, 'What will my donors think?'” she said. “I see that billionaires get members of Congress on speed dial and waitresses don't, okay? There's a difference.” ...

She got a raucous hero’s welcome as she walked down an aisle of palm trees to the stage and has helped him turn out massive crowds from New York to California. But she was far from the only celeb in attendance. Actor Tim Robbins spoke, endorsing Sanders. Danny DeVito milled around backstage. Members of the Russian protest band Pussy Riot attended too.

Tim Black: breaks down difference between Bernie and Warren on Internet for All

'Pretty Brazen Stuff': Email Shows Top Buttigieg Fundraiser Offering Campaign Influence in Exchange for Donations

An email exchange reviewed by Axios showed a top fundraiser for Pete Buttigieg offering a rich prospective donor access to the South Bend, Indiana mayor's presidential campaign in return for donations, an overture critics described as a particularly blatant example of how big money corrupts the American political system.

H.K. Park—who, according to Buttigieg's website, has raised at least $25,000 for the campaign—told a potential donor in a recent email that "[i]f you want to get on the campaign's radar now before he is flooded with donations after winning Iowa and New Hampshire, you can use the link below for donations."

As Axios reported late Sunday, Park's offer "was unusually blunt—even by modern pay-to-play standards."

"Pretty brazen stuff," tweeted The Intercept's Mehdi Hasan.

Big scoop from @axios: Pete bundler HK Park, from the defense consulting firm Cohen Group where Buttigieg worked, used the promise of increased influence to lure big donors, according to email https://t.co/wvAaZSyhHL

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) December 23, 2019

For campaign finance watchdogs and reform advocates, the email is indicative of the way in which wealthy donors buy access to and influence over presidential candidates—in this case, before a single vote has been cast.

Brendan Fischer, federal reform program director at the the Campaign Legal Center, told Axios that Park's email "is an example of a campaign offering potential donors an opportunity to buy influence."

"It's rare that the public has an opportunity to see it in writing," said Fischer, "but this is not the only campaign that's offering big donors the opportunity to get on the radar of the candidate in exchange for large contributions."

Even the prospective donor, who Axios did not name, expressed alarm about Park's offer.

"It's very telling and concerning that one of the campaign's major bundlers would talk like that," the individual told Axios. "What would this suggest about the way he's going to interact with Silicon Valley if the implication is pay-for-play? If that's the way he's operating, it's in the public interest for people to know what's being said."

Docs Show Canadian Mounties Wanted Snipers Ready to Shoot Indigenous Land Defenders Blockading Pipeline

In an exclusive report Friday that outraged human rights advocates worldwide, The Guardian revealed that Canadian police wanted snipers on standby for a January 2019 crackdown on Indigenous land defenders who were blocking construction of a natural gas pipeline through unceded Wet'suwet'en territory.

The Guardian reported on official records—documents as well as audio and video content—reviewed by the newspaper related to the police "invasion" that led to 14 arrests:

Notes from a strategy session for a militarized raid on ancestral lands of the Wet'suwet'en nation show that commanders of Canada's national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), argued that "lethal overwatch is req'd"—a term for deploying snipers.

The RCMP commanders also instructed officers to "use as much violence toward the gate as you want" ahead of the operation to remove a roadblock which had been erected by Wet'suwet'en people to control access to their territories and stop construction of the proposed 670km (416-mile Coastal GasLink pipeline (CGL).

Indigenous land defenders established the Gidimt'en checkpoint—where the police operation took place—as part of a broader battle against pipeline builder TC Energy, formerly known as TransCanada. The RCMP action was an attempt to enforce a court injunction that came in response to the Unist'ot'en camp established on Wet'suwet'en territory in opposition to the pipeline. ...

No fable of reconciliation can gloss over a machinery of dispossession that will always resort ultimately to uniformed men with guns, taking land by force, on its colonial frontiers.https://t.co/UyqIZjwoaV

— Martin Lukacs (@Martin_Lukacs) December 20, 2019

Unist'ot'en spokesperson Freda Huson (Howilhkat) connected the RCMP's militarized approach to the early 2019 operation to a lengthy record of colonial violence.

"In our experience, since first contact, RCMP have been created by the federal government to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands," Huson told The Guardian. "They have proven [that] through their harassment of my people to support Coastal GasLink in invading our territories." ...

The Guardian noted that its report came as the Wet'suwet'en camps are preparing for a court ruling on an injunction sought by TC Energy that would permanently restrict the Indigenous land protectors from blockading pipeline sites.

Dutch Supreme Court Issues Landmark Ruling Mandating Climate Action

Advocates for climate action celebrated Friday after the Supreme Court of the Netherlands upheld a landmark ruling that found the Dutch government is obligated under international human rights law to more ambitiously reduce greenhouse gas emissions that drive global heating.

The case was initially launched in 2013 by the nonprofit Urgenda Foundation on behalf of hundreds of Dutch citizens and has been repeatedly appealed.

"Today, at a moment when people around the world are in need of real hope that governments will act with urgency to address the climate crisis, the Dutch Supreme Court has delivered a groundbreaking decision that confirms that individual governments must do their fair share to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," an Urgenda spokesperson said after the ruling.

The court ruled that the Dutch government must cut emissions by at least 25% compared with 1990 levels by the end of 2020 "because of the risk of a dangerous climate change that can also seriously affect the residents of the Netherlands in their right to life and well-being," according to a translation from BuzzFeed News.

My god pic.twitter.com/hfmqN7eL2Z

— Saffron Howden (@saffronhowden) December 21, 2019

Fires the size of Kansas... (picture taken Thursday on Sydney Harbour) pic.twitter.com/57U4TDUL2G

— Josh (@jgrclarke) December 21, 2019

NSW devastation laid bare as 72 homes destroyed in SA bushfires

The devastation from Australia’s bushfire crisis became clearer on Sunday, as the South Australian premier said 72 homes had been destroyed and his New South Wales counterpart revealed there was “not much left” of the town of Balmoral, south-west of Sydney. It is feared the figures for homes lost may get much worse as authorities continue to assess the damage from Saturday, and with dozens of fires still active.

Conditions eased in NSW, Victoria and South Australia on Sunday, allowing fire-threatened areas some respite. But the NSW Rural Fire Service commissioner, Shane Fitzsimmons, said an estimated 100 buildings could have been lost in Balmoral, where Gladys Berejiklian said there was “not much left”. “The toll is significant,” Fitzsimmons said. ...

Fitzsimmons said the “relentless nature” of this fire season was taking a toll on firefighters. Despite the easing conditions, Fitzsimmons warned that didn’t mean the situation would improve considerably without substantial rainfall. “We’ve got to keep in mind that we’re not expecting any rainfall to make any meaningful difference to these fires until January [or] February,” he said. “That’s still a way to go. We’re still talking four to six weeks at best before we start to see a meaningful reprieve in the weather.” ...

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, returned to Australia from his holiday in Hawaii on Saturday night. ... The prime minister acknowledging that climate change was having an impact on weather events, but indicated there would be no change to government policy, including Australia’s controversial policy of using carryover credits for meeting targets in the Paris agreement.

Delta smelt: the tiny fish caught in California's war with Trump

On a warm November morning, John Durand squints over the stern of a small research boat, and gestures toward gray-blue water, and the chaotic tangles of tube-like tule reeds. “Cache Slough right here had been known as a hotspot for delta smelt,” he says. But it’s been four years since Durand and his team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, have found the finger-length fish that gleam golden and “smell kind of like cucumber” in the brackish streams and sloughs of northern California’s bay delta. ...

For conservationists and ecologists like Durand, the delta smelt are harbingers, their diminishing numbers a signal that the delta’s ecosystem is dangerously close to collapse. For California farmers with thousands of acres to irrigate and millions of dollars on the lines, the smelt are in the way – the state listed the species as endangered in 2009, and in effect constrained how much water can be pulled from the delta.

Now, the creatures caught in the crossfire of the state’s water wars have all but disappeared, and biologists worry that newly empowered forces within the Trump administration could usher them into oblivion. ... Soon after UC Davis researchers first began sampling in the delta, nearly 40 years ago, the delta smelt populations suffered a huge blow: their numbers had suddenly declined by more than 80%. Their numbers dipped even lower after a period of extended drought in the late 80s and early 90s, then lower still during California’s most recent drought, which lasted from 2012 through 2016. During these dry spells, California’s cities and farms needed to pump more and more delta water – leaving these fish without enough fresh, cold water to survive.

Because most Delta smelt live for just one year, even temporary environmental changes can decimate the population. It’s not just the overpumping, but the pumps themselves that have strained the smelt. The smelt are poor swimmers, and they’re drawn to cloudy, turbid patches of water, where they like to hide and feed. The trouble is, the behemoth pumps run by the state and federal government, which can draw up to 10,000 and 5,500 cubic feet of water per second, respectively, can cause rivers to run backward, sucking smelt and other fish into their system. ...

Even Donald Trump has an opinion on the Delta smelt. At a March 2016 campaign rally in Fresno, California – in the state’s agricultural heartland – then presidential candidate Trump mocked the environmentalists who were desperate “to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish”. ... That night, Trump promised the farmers more water. Ever since then, his administration has been making moves to make good on that pledge. Last fall, Trump signed a memorandum directing federal agencies to review and roll back environmental standards slowing down the flow of water to farms in the central valley. ... If the Delta smelt go, California may be able to pump some more. But then their cousins, the longfin smelt, could disappear next, and then the steelhead trout, and then the various populations of Chinook salmon. “Where do we draw the line?” Durand says. “I don’t know how much more stress the system can take.”

Also of Interest

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

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Jimmy Dore: Trump NOT Legally Impeached Says Dems Own Lawyer

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