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This evening's music features Doo Wop singers Otis Williams and the Charms. Enjoy!

“Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. The purchase of a book or pamphlet today may result in a subpoena tomorrow. Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. When the light of publicity may reach any student, any teacher, inquiry will be discouraged. The books and pamphlets that are critical of the administration, that preach an unpopular policy in domestic or foreign affairs, that are in disrepute in the orthodox school of thought will be suspect and subject to investigation. The press and its readers will pay a heavy price in harassment. But that will be minor in comparison with the menace of the shadow which government will cast over literature that does not follow the dominant party line. If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes of the land. Through the harassment of hearings, investigations, reports, and subpoenas government will hold a club over speech and over the press."

-- William O. Douglas

News and Opinion

Julian Assange's health in 'dangerous' condition, say doctors

Julian Assange’s long stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London is having a “dangerous” impact on his physical and mental health, according to clinicians who carried out the most recent assessments of him.

The pair renewed calls for the WikiLeaks publisher to be granted safe passage to a London hospital.

Sondra Crosby, a doctor and associate professor at the Boston University’s school of medicine and public health, and Brock Chisholm, a London-based consultant clinical psychologist, examined Assange for 20 hours over three days in October.

In an article for the Guardian, they wrote: “While the results of the evaluation are protected by doctor-patient confidentiality, it is our professional opinion that his continued confinement is dangerous physically and mentally to him and a clear infringement of his human right to healthcare.”

Although the two did not go into details, Assange’s health appears to be deteriorating significantly after more than five years holed up in the embassy.

Mevlut Cavusoglu on Afrin offensive: "The US made a lot of promises and they haven't delivered"

U.S.-backed Syria force denies Islamic State in area targeted by Turkey

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) rejected a Turkish army statement that Islamic State was present in the Afrin region of northwestern Syria, where Ankara launched an offensive four days ago which has raised international concern.

The Turkish military said late on Tuesday it had killed at least 260 Syrian Kurdish fighters and Islamic State militants in its offensive into the Kurdish-dominated Afrin region of northwest Syria.

Turkey’s air and ground operation has opened a new front in Syria’s multi-sided civil war and could threaten U.S. plans to stabilize and rebuild a large area of northeast Syria - beyond President Bashar al-Assad’s control - where Washington helped the SDF to drive out Islamic State militants.

“The whole world knows Daesh (Islamic State) is not present in Afrin,” Redur Xelil, a senior SDF official, told Reuters. He said the Turkish military had greatly exaggerated SDF casualties, though he declined to say how many had been killed.

CIA chief Mike Pompeo interviewed in Mueller's Russia investigation

CIA director Mike Pompeo has been questioned by the special counsel’s office investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion with Donald Trump’s campaign, NBC News reported on Wednesday.

The report comes one day after the DoJ said Robert Mueller’s office questioned attorney general Jeff Sessions last week, a significant step in an inquiry that has overshadowed Trump’s first year in office. ...

NBC, citing people familiar with the inquiry, did not say when the interview with Pompeo occurred but said one person familiar with the inquiry called him a “peripheral witnesses” to Comey’s firing.

Representatives for the CIA said the US intelligence agency had no comment on NBC’s report.

NBC also reported that former senior campaign aide and White House strategist Steve Bannon is expected to meet with Mueller’s team by the end of January. Bannon had earlier reached an agreement to be interviewed by Mueller’s investigators instead of appearing before a grand jury.

NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” From Core Values

The National Security Agency maintains a page on its website that outlines its mission statement. Earlier this month, the agency made a discreet change: It removed “honesty” as its top priority. Since at least May 2016, the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four “core values” listed on NSA.gov, alongside “respect for the law,” “integrity,” and “transparency.” The agency vowed on the site to “be truthful with each other.”

On January 12, however, the NSA removed the mission statement page – which can still be viewed through the Internet Archive – and replaced it with a new version. Now, the parts about honesty and the pledge to be truthful have been deleted. The agency’s new top value is “commitment to service,” which it says means “excellence in the pursuit of our critical mission.”

Those are not the only striking alterations. In its old core values, the NSA explained that it would strive to be deserving of the “great trust” placed in it by national leaders and American citizens. It said that it would “honor the public’s need for openness.” But those phrases are now gone; all references to “trust,” “honor,” and “openness” have disappeared.

The agency previously stated on its website that it embraced transparency and claimed that all of its activities were aimed at “ensuring the safety, security, and liberty of our fellow citizens.” That has also been discarded. The agency still says it is committed to transparency on the updated website, but the transparency is now described as being for the benefit of “those who authorize and oversee NSA’s work on behalf of the American people.” The definition of “integrity” has been edited, too. The agency formerly said its commitment to integrity meant it would “behave honorably and apply good judgment.” The phrase “behave honorably” has now been dropped in favor of “communicating honestly and directly, acting ethically and fairly and carrying out our mission efficiently and effectively.”

The Navy built a ‘fast, agile’ warship for $440M. It’s been stuck in ice since Christmas Eve.

The commissioning of the USS Little Rock was held in Buffalo last month, on a day so cold that people’s breath billowed through the air as they spoke. ... One Navy official spoke of the combat ship’s “adaptability, speed and maneuverability.” A Navy chaplain bowed his head in prayer to bless the Little Rock before it sailed to its home port, Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville. ...

Despite the benedictions, the ship’s maiden voyage has gotten off to a rather inauspicious start. A week after it was commissioned, as it made its way along the Saint Lawrence Seaway, the USS Little Rock became trapped by ice near Montreal. It has remained stuck there since Christmas Eve, the Toronto Star first reported, thanks to “unusually heavy ice conditions.”

Brazilian court upholds corruption conviction for ex-president Lula

A Brazilian court has upheld the conviction of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for corruption and money laundering, in a ruling that complicates his plans to run for a third term and marks an extraordinary change of fortune for the most popular leader in modern Brazilian history.

Three judges at the appeals court in Porto Alegre voted unanimously on Wednesday to uphold the sentence that Lula was handed by a lower court, and increased the penalty from nine and a half years to 12 years and one month.

The ruling prompted protests across Brazil, and protestors set fire to tires and block streets in Porto Alegre and São Paulo. Lula leads early polls for October’s presidential election, but the latest court decision means that he could be barred from running. The former union leader says he is innocent and the process is politically motivated to stop him from standing for an election. His supporters have called it an attack on democracy.

Hale County, AL is Subject of Poetic Documentary on Blackness and Everyday Life in the Black Belt

Eight Humanitarian Activists Face Federal Charges After Leaving Water for Migrants in the Arizona Desert

A faith-based humanitarian group that provides aid and shelter to undocumented migrants on the southwestern border fears it has become the latest target in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration advocates. Eight members of the group, No More Deaths, were charged with federal crimes and misdemeanors in recent months, including one volunteer arrested last week shortly after the publication of a report documenting alleged abuses by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Last week, the Tucson, Arizona-based organization published a report presenting what it described as evidence of Border Patrol agents’ systematic destruction of water jugs left for migrants in the desert, as well as “months of increasing surveillance and harassment” by the agency beginning last year. Hours after the report was published, one of the group’s organizers was arrested in a remote area of Arizona, along with two undocumented immigrants, and hit with felony charges.

The Bigot Threatening CNN Got Out of Jail in Time for Dinner

Early Tuesday morning, we learned that Brandon Griesemer, a 19-year-old grocery store clerk from Novi, Michigan, made at least 22 calls to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters where he not only threatened to shoot and kill employees, but used racial and ethnic slurs for both African-Americans and Jews. The calls were made two weeks ago, and Griesemer was charged last Friday.

This was not Griesemer’s first rodeo. On September 19, he was reported to have made similarly ugly calls to an Islamic center in Ann Arbor, Michigan. ...

But Griesemer did not seem to frighten the U.S. District Court.

Griesemer, you see, is a dangerous bigot, but he is also white. And because of his whiteness, he is already free on just $10,000 bond. He was charged, arrested, and released all in a single day, last Friday.

His threats, in the spirit of the Trump administration’s soft stance on white supremacy and other violence from white people, were basically given the legal version of a wink and a nod. If you think for a single solitary moment that a Muslim-American who made 22 hateful, violent calls to CNN threatening mass casualties would’ve been charged, arrested, and released on the same day, with a bond of any kind, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. They wouldn’t get home in time to see next year’s Superbowl, let alone the game that night.

The DNC is finally sending money to state Democratic parties after 7 months

The Democratic National Committee will begin doling out $1 million to 11 state parties as part of its $10 million State Party Innovation Fund, a party spokesperson confirmed on Wednesday.

The move, first reported by the Washington Post, comes days after VICE News reported that state parties were increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of distributing the grants. More than seven months after the DNC’s July announcement of the ambitious plan to rebuild the state parties with the innovation fund, only one state—Washington—had received any money, VICE News reported. ...

The lack of money raised questions of whether party chairman Tom Perez was capable of raising sufficient money to fund the state part revamp. As of November 30th, the party did not even have $10 million cash-on-hand (the DNC declined to provide updated numbers). The DNC has been a conspicuous outlier on the left in its inability to raise significant money in the Trump era. New progressive “resistance” groups, candidates up and down the ballot, and even the Democratic Party’s House and Senate arms are flush with cash. But the DNC has had trouble raising money for its efforts.

Bernie Sanders - Medicare for All National Town Hall

Is this the end of civilisation? We could take a different path

It’s a good question, but it seems too narrow: “Is western civilisation on the brink of collapse?” the lead article in this week’s New Scientist asks. The answer is, probably. But why just western? Yes, certain western governments are engaged in a frenzy of self-destruction. In an age of phenomenal complexity and interlocking crises, the Trump administration has embarked on a mass de-skilling and simplification of the state. Donald Trump may have sacked his strategist, Steve Bannon, but Bannon’s professed intention, “the deconstruction of the administrative state”, remains the central – perhaps the only – policy. ...

But these pathologies are not confined to “the west”. The rise of demagoguery (the pursuit of simplistic solutions to complex problems, accompanied by the dismantling of the protective state) is everywhere apparent. Environmental breakdown is accelerating worldwide. The annihilation of vertebrate populations, insectageddon, the erasure of rainforests, mangroves, soil and aquifers, and the degradation of entire Earth systems such as the atmosphere and oceans proceed at astonishing rates. These interlocking crises will affect everyone, but the poorer nations are hit first and worst.

The forces that threaten to destroy our wellbeing are also the same everywhere: primarily the lobbying power of big business and big money, which perceive the administrative state as an impediment to their immediate interests. Amplified by the persuasive power of campaign finance, covertly funded thinktanks, embedded journalists and tame academics, these forces threaten to overwhelm democracy. If you want to know how they work, read Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money.

Complex societies have collapsed many times before. It has not always been a bad thing. As James C Scott points out in his fascinating book, Against the Grain, when centralised power began to collapse, through epidemics, crop failure, floods, soil erosion or the self-destructive perversities of government, its corralled subjects would take the chance to flee. In many cases they joined the “barbarians”. ... But today there is nowhere to turn. The wild lands and rich ecosystems that once supported hunter gatherers, nomads and the refugees from imploding early states who joined them now scarcely exist. ... In the nominally democratic era, the complex state is now, for all its flaws, all that stands between us and disaster.

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: First They Came for the Immigrants

Thought Police for the 21st Century

Alternative Media And Selling Out

Gaius Publius: Democrats Laying Their Own Bonfire

Why Are the Media Ignoring Crucial Parts of the Simpson Testimony?

Ex-President Lula’s Corruption Conviction Is Upheld by Brazilian Appeals Court. Now What?

A Little Night Music

Otis Williams and The Charms - Hearts Of Stone

Otis Williams and The Charms - Two Hearts

Otis Williams and The Charms - That's Your Mistake

Otis Williams & The Charms - Gotta Get Myself Together

Otis Williams & The Charms - Walkin' After Midnight

Otis Williams & The Charms - Ling Ting Tong

Otis Williams And The Charms - I Fall To Pieces

Otis Williams And The Charms - United

Otis Williams And The Charms - Heart of a Rose

Otis Williams & The Charms - Whirlwind

Otis Williams & The Charms - Baby, You Turn Me On

Otis Williams & The Charms - Whadaya Want

Otis Williams & The Charms - Red Hot Love