Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues harmonica player and singer Big John Wrencher. Enjoy!

"I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance."

-- Ogden Nash

News and Opinion

Trump’s Showdown With Manufacturer Exposes Obama’s Weakness on Outsourcing

Donald Trump is in negotiations with Carrier to keep two Indiana air conditioning and furnace plants from moving to Mexico, eliminating 2,100 U.S. jobs. A video of executives informing workers of the plant closures went viral in February, leading Trump to vow to stop the outsourcing. Now president-elect, he is exerting his new leverage to make that a reality.

But someone else already holds that power. His name is Barack Obama. He just doesn’t seem to care.

The most Obama has said about Carrier, at a June town hall in Indiana, is that some jobs “are just not going to come back.” He cited automation in manufacturing, enabling many fewer workers to staff a production line than in previous decades, though that’s a separate issue from Carrier’s outsourcing.

Later in the discussion, Obama challenged Trump’s promises to keep Carrier’s plant open. “He’s going to bring these jobs back. Well, how are you exactly going to do that, what are you going to do? There’s no answer to it.”

In fact, every tool Trump could possibly use to persuade Carrier to keep operations in Indiana has been available to Obama since the day of the company’s announcement. He has just chosen not to use them. ...

Workers at the Carrier plant, while skeptical of Trump in other contexts, supported his presidential campaign because he signaled that he would at least fight for their livelihoods. Even if they don’t fully believe Trump can get it done, they at least found him willing to try.

Democrats lack an answer for these working-class manufacturing communities. Telling them to be realists certainly isn’t working.

Trump reaches deal to keep 1,000 jobs at Indiana plant from moving to Mexico

Nine months after announcing plans to move more than 2,000 jobs from Indiana to Mexico, the Carrier Corporation said Tuesday evening that it had reached a deal with President-elect Donald Trump to keep nearly 1,000 of those jobs in Indiana.

Carrier said via Twitter that it would announce more details soon. The New York Times reported that, according to transition team officials, Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who is Indiana’s governor, would appear at Carrier’s Indiana factory on Thursday to announce a deal. ...

“Most people feel pretty happy about the news,” said TJ Bray, an assembly line worker for 14 years at Carrier’s factory in Indianapolis. “It looks like they’re staying.”

Bray said he and other workers were waiting to hear details about how many jobs would remain in Indiana, which jobs would remain, and what the president-elect had done to persuade Carrier to keep 1,000 jobs in the state.

The Indianapolis Star reported that state incentives had helped to persuade Carrier to keep the 1,000 jobs in the state. Pence will remain governor until 20 January.

If John Brennan were not such an amoral, prevaricating bastard, you might almost think he had a point. When the drone assassin who shuffles Obama's kill-list baseball cards says something halfway reasonable sounding, it makes you want to review your position just to be sure.

Tearing up US deal with Iran would be disastrous, says CIA chief

The outgoing director of the CIA has warned of disastrous consequences if Donald Trump goes ahead with his threat of tearing up the US deal with Iran over nuclear weapons.

In an unusually frank interview with the BBC, John Brennan said Trump’s opposition to the nuclear deal with Iran was the “height of folly”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Brennan said: “I think it would be disastrous, it really would: for one administration to tear up an agreement that a previous administration made would be almost unprecedented.”

Spelling out the dangers, the US intelligence chief added: “It could lead to a weapons programme inside of Iran that could lead other states in the region to embark on their own programmes with military conflict, so I think it would be the height of folly if the next administration were to tear up that agreement.”

Brennan also expressed alarm about many of the key foreign policy pledges made by Trump during his election campaign, including the president-elect’s admiration for Vladimir Putin, his anti-Islamic rhetoric and his willingness to use torture.

US Admits ‘Mistake’ in Killing Scores of Syrian Troops in Airstrikes

Centcom: Killings Were 'Regrettable'

On September 17, in the middle of a ceasefire negotiated by the US and Russia, US warplanes attacked a Syrian military base in the Deir Ezzor Province, killing at least 62 troops and setting the stage for an ISIS offensive into the region.

US officials have finally gotten around to issuing a report on the matter, calling the attack a “mistake” that was caused by “human error.” Centcom further labeled the killing of all the Syrian troops as “regrettable.” Lt. Gen. Jeff Harrigan added that US forces must “do better than this.”

The weekend attack did major harm to the Syrian military’s position around the key city of Deir Ezzor, and the Syrian government withdrew from the ceasefire just days after the US attack, saying there was no point to keeping the ceasefire in place given how much they were getting attacked.

Aleppo will fall, but war will continue: "neither side is tiring of killing each other"

Syrian Officials: Goal Is to Oust Rebels From Aleppo by Trump’s Inauguration

Major gains in recent days by the Syrian military in Aleppo have seen them seizing roughly a third of the Nusra Front-held eastern portion of the major city. Officials are now saying that the goal is to take the rest of the city by the January 20 inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump. ...

That could suggest that Russia wants the Aleppo flashpoint removed from the table before Trump is in place so as to avoid any obstacles to this major shift in US policy. France and some other nations are pushing for the US to “do something” to prevent Nusra’s loss in Aleppo.

Since Nusra is a thinly rebranded al-Qaeda affiliate, it’s unlikely Trump is going to be eager to go to bat for them, particularly at the expense of a potential normalization deal with Russia. At the same time, the US hawks pushing for intervention against the Syrian government will lose a big talking point if the siege of Aleppo has already been resolved.

Growing Far-Right Nationalistic Movements are Dangerously Anti-Muslim — and Pro-Israel

Austria is the latest example of a far-right xenophobic party on the verge of obtaining what was, until quite recently, unthinkable power. Because the country is the birthplace of Hitler, with a not-so-distant past of electing Nazi-connected leaders, it is perhaps the most viscerally alarming yet. Today’s New York Times describes with overt concern the very real possibility that the Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer will defeat his Green Party opponent in this weekend’s election and become Austria’s President. It quotes a prominent columnist with the liberal daily Der Standard as saying that “Austria will not be recognizable” if the Freedom Party ascends to power. The party’s leaders, quite reasonably, credit Trump’s election and the approval of Brexit with increasing their own chances of success.

The Freedom Party “was created by a group of former Nazis in the 1950s,” and its rise in the 1990s created global controversy under the charismatic extremist, Hitler-admiring Jörg Haider. Today, Hofer demagogues animosity toward Muslims in all the standard ways: equating migrants with “jihadists,” warning of the “Islamification” of Europe, and pronouncing that “Islam is not a part of Austria.”

Israeli officials have noticed the pro-Israel bent of Hofer’s posture and some have returned the sentiments of support. “They are one of the most pro-Israel parties in Europe,” proclaimed former Knesset member Michael Kleiner, who spoke on a panel at the Freedom Party’s anti-semitism conference. The Freedom Party’s leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, visited Israel on the invitation of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he spent his time meeting with settlement leaders, planning how to oppose a movement in the EU to label goods from illegal Israeli settlements, vowing to do everything he could to oppose all boycotts aimed at Israel. A settlement leader gushed: “He supports Israel, he is against labelling and against the boycott. I didn’t hear that from anyone in the UK.”

The same dynamic is seen even more remarkably in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Front Party – founded by her Holocaust-minimizing father and long filled overt Nazi sympathizers – has not only purged anti-semites from its ranks but declared itself steadfastly pro-Israel. For years she has been re-casting her far right party as pro-Israel based on shared antipathy toward “Muslim extremists,” and news reports in both Israeli and Jewish journals are increasingly describing the receptiveness of French Jews toward voting for her, in large part due to their shared fear of, and animosity toward, French Muslims. These far-right parties are uniformly opposed to any boycott movement aimed at ending Israeli settlements.

Israeli airstrikes hit Damascus outskirts, Syrian reports say

Israeli jets fired two missiles from Lebanese airspace towards the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, early on Wednesday, the official Syrian news agency said, in a strike on an unknown target that caused loud explosions.

The Sana news agency said the missiles struck the Sabboura area, west of Damascus, and did not cause any casualties. Citing an unnamed military source, Sana did not specify what the missiles struck. Damascus residents reported on social media hearing loud blasts at around 2am.

The Israeli military declined to comment, but Israel is widely believed to have carried out a number of airstrikes in Syria in the past few years that have targeted advanced weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles. The arms are believed to be destined for the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah militant group, a close ally of the Syrian government and a fierce enemy of Israel.

US legislation proposes new committee to counteract Russian 'covert influence'

A measure, tucked into the fiscal 2017 House and Senate bills authorizing US intelligence operations, would create a powerful new committee across the security services to oppose Russian destabilization measures and propaganda domestically and worldwide.

Its mission – defined broadly and without geographic limitation – is to “counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments”, according to the texts of both the House and the Senate bills, both of which have won the approval of their intelligence committees.

It was first published in June – long before Trump’s election, and his tilt toward Moscow, seemed likely. Such a broad brief could in theory lead to a probe into allegations of ties between Trump’s circle and Moscow, and of Russian attempts to skew the outcome of the presidential vote by hacking Democratic party headquarters and leaking emails, and helping spread fake news.

“If indeed there are ties between the Russian government – and in particular intelligence agents – and people who have worked for Trump or continue to work for Trump, an investigation of this breadth could conceivably pick up information regarding Russia’s attempts or success in influencing American citizens working for Donald Trump,” said Evelyn Farkas, who from 2012 to 2015 was US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.

However, after 20 January, the proposed committee would be staffed largely by Trump appointees. As framed in the legislation it would consist of representatives handpicked by the leadership of the FBI, State Department, Pentagon, office of the director of national intelligence, Justice Department, Treasury Department, the 16 intelligence agencies and any other agency the president designates.

Specifically, the high-level committee would be tasked with “exposing falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism and assassinations carried out by the security services or political elites of the Russian Federation or their proxies”.

Yet its work would not be necessarily limited to exposing such activity. It can be broadened to include “such other duties as the president may designate”, a vague and potentially expansive mandate.

Naked Capitalism is trying to raise some cash for a lawsuit against the Propornot smear campaign promoted in the Washington Post.

Naked Capitalism Responds to Attack By Fake News "Researchers"

Over Thanksgiving weekend, the Washington Post legitimated a thin, amateurish site whose principals have libeled not only Naked Capitalism but also Ron Paul’s institute, former Reagan Administration officials David Stockman and Paul Craig Roberts, well-respected progressive stalwarts, such as Counterpunch, Truthout, TruthDig, and Black Agenda Report, as supposed Russian propaganda outlets with foreign “coordinators.” Moreover, with no supporting evidence whatsoever, this site called for everyone on its list to be investigated by the FBI and DoJ for Espionage Act violations.

The common denominator for all these websites seems to be skepticism about the failed Clinton coronation.

This is intimidation of the most crass sort. Make no mistake: this isn’t about media, it’s about a wholesale attack by the Democratic establishment on anything they don’t like, which includes the Naked Capitalism community. This version is a lunatic conspiracy theory, that the election was stolen by Putin, and no different from the ones the ones peddled by the right, like birtherism and climate change denial. ...

Given the rash of recent stories about “fake news,” the Post’s article looks to be part of a push to get certain sites designated as purveyors of “fake news” and to have links to them banned on Facebook and Twitter, delegitimating them and cutting their revenues.

One of the most disconcerting developments of the ugly 2016 Presidential campaign has been ongoing criticism by mainstream media sites and pundits of competing sources of news and information. This attempt at information control is reminiscent of the line of thinking argued by Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays, both members of the Creel Committee. ... Apologists like Lippmann and Bernays argued that modern life had become too complicated for ordinary people to understand; that citizens needed to have their information screened, interpreted, and presented by experts, such as members of the media. Bernays in his 1928 book Propaganda tried to rehabilitate the term, arguing that the word originally referred to religions presenting their message to potential converts, and that governments and businesses were justified in presenting the most persuasive version possible of their case, including using emotional techniques and validators to bolster their image. To illustrate how routine propaganda was, Bernays took the front page of a New York Times edition and ascertained that half the stories were propaganda.

In other words, the notion that the public should accept elite minders and gatekeepers as their sole source of information comes straight from successful first-generation propagandists.

Paul Jay and Abby Martin on Trump and 'Fake News'

Publications Called Russian-Propaganda Distributors Consider Suing Anonymous 'Experts'

Several American news outlets are considering legal action against the anonymous person or group that last week published a widely distributed list of alleged Russian propaganda outlets and “bona-fide ‘useful idiots’” of the Kremlin.

Online publications including the influential news-aggregating Drudge Report, the primary-source publisher WikiLeaks and news outlets of various leanings made “the list” hosted on the website PropOrNot.com. ...

The anonymous website offers no individual analysis to justify its listing of sites, many of them with political views distinct from the mainstream media, such as the Ron Paul Institute, Antiwar.com, the finance blog Zero Hedge and the Black Agenda Report. ...

“I haven't had any financial damages yet, so that's the only reason I haven't started a libel suit,” says Doug Owen, senior editor of Blacklisted News, a popular independent news-hosting website. ...

Yves Smith, editor of the economics and news site Naked Capitalism, proposed a collective legal “counter-attack” Tuesday night, expressing concern that if unchallenged the characterization might be used to justify censorship on platforms such as Facebook. Smith wrote that a “seasoned First Amendment litigator” had volunteered their services, but asked readers to chip in for additional legal expenses.

[See also: The 'Washington Post' 'Blacklist' Story Is Shameful and Disgusting - js]

Watergate-Era Church Committee Staffers Urge Leniency for Snowden

Fifteen staff members who worked on a well-known bipartisan intelligence watchdog committee wrote to President Barack Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Monday requesting the administration negotiate a plea agreement with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“There is no question that Edward Snowden’s disclosures led to public awareness which stimulated reform,” wrote the staffers who served on the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operation with Respect to Intelligence Activities — called the Church Committee, after its chairman, Idaho Sen. Frank Church.

“Whether or not these clear benefits to the country merit a pardon, they surely do counsel for leniency,” the authors continued.

Frederick, or “Fritz” Schwarz, Jr., the Church Committee’s chief counsel who now heads up policy and legal advocacy organization the Brennan Center for Justice, penned the letter alongside the committee’s staff director, William Green Miller, and 13 other co-signers.

Barrett Brown leaves prison still chained to a crime he didn't commit

Dallas-based journalist Barrett Brown walked free from prison on Tuesday morning after spending more than four years behind bars.

The 35-year-old cause célèbre, convicted in January 2015 after spending more than two years in pretrial confinement, faces a laundry list of post-release restrictions and obligations, including drug treatment, mental health evaluations, and computer monitoring. After departing the Three Rivers federal correctional institution in San Antonio, where Brown continued his work as a writer over the past year, publishing award-winning essays at D Magazine and the Intercept, he will report to a halfway house in Hutchins, Texas, before 4pm CT.

Brown has been ordered to continue paying at least $200 every month to Stratfor, the Austin-based intelligence firm, over the devastating cyberattack that nearly crippled the company five years ago. While Brown had no foreknowledge of the security breach—which, despite popular belief, occurred more than a month prior to the involvement of Anonymous hacker Jeremy Hammond and his AntiSec crew—Brown is nevertheless stuck paying $890,250 in restitution for a computer crime he had neither the skillset nor the inclination to carry out himself.

Former Law Clerk: Antonin Scalia Is Turning in Grave over Trump's Threat to Jail Flag Burners

Clinton introduced bill to criminalize flag burning

Critics on Tuesday morning were quick to pan President-elect Trump's proposal to make burning the American flag illegal, but soon after a bill began circulating on social media that Hillary Clinton introduced in 2006 to do exactly the same thing.

Clinton, then a senator from New York, reportedly opposed a constitutional amendment that would criminalize the desecration of the flag, but introduced legislation in 2005 and backed a second bill in 2006 that would criminalize flag burning. More than half of Democrats in the Senate backed her effort, the New York Times reported at the time.

Supreme Court to decide whether immigrants can be locked up indefinitely

The immigration agents came for Alex Lora the week before Thanksgiving in November 2013. ... Lora, 34, was born in the Dominican Republic but raised in Brooklyn; his mother brought him to the U.S. legally when he was seven. He had a green card and no recent trouble with the law, so he assumed the issue was a misunderstanding. ... The next thing he knew, he says, he was shoved up against a light pole and told he would soon be deported. ...

The deportation was triggered by a 2009 case in which Lora was arrested for allegedly selling cocaine from the Brooklyn bodega where he worked. He pleaded guilty to a possession charge and was sentenced to probation, not realizing, he says, that it would be considered a deportable offense under immigration law.

Lora ended up spending five and a half months detained by ICE at a jail in Kearny, New Jersey. ...

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a class-action lawsuit over immigrant detention, the jail system where people facing deportation for everything from minor offenses like shoplifting to major crimes such as murder are locked up while their cases are resolved. Unlike in the criminal justice system, where defendants typically appear in court within a day of being arrested and a judge decides whether they’re eligible for bail, immigrants — including lawful permanent residents like Lora — can be held indefinitely, sometimes for years.

The justices will decide whether a legal precedent set by Lora will be allowed to stand. After Lora was detained, he successfully sued to get a bond hearing. When the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, it gave every detained immigrant in the jurisdiction, which includes New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, the right to a bond hearing — now called a “Lora hearing” — within six months. The government appealed Lora’s case to the Supreme Court, along with Jennings v. Rodriguez, a case from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that involves a nearly identical six-month bond policy for immigrant detainees in California, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii.

The federal government, represented at the Supreme Court by the solicitor general, has argued that immigrant detainees shouldn’t be eligible for bond because the right to due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply to people who aren’t U.S. citizens.

Keith Scott shooting: no charges to be filed against Charlotte police officer

No state criminal charges will be brought against the police officer who fatally shot Keith Scott in North Carolina earlier this year, prosecutors announced on Wednesday.

Andrew Murray, the district attorney in Charlotte, said that officer Brentley Vinson’s shooting of Scott in September was justified because Scott refused to drop a gun held at his side.

“It is my opinion that officer Vinson acted lawfully when he shot Mr Scott,” Murray said at a press conference. “He acted lawfully.”

Scott, 43, never raised or pointed the gun, according to the prosecutor, but Vinson felt he posed an imminent threat because he ignored orders to drop it and stared at them in a “trance-like state”.

Scott’s wife Rakeyia, who filmed some of his confrontation with police and the aftermath, insisted that he was not armed when he was killed.

Click the link and read this. It's totally worth your time.

Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it

Yes, Donald Trump’s politics are incoherent. But those who surround him know just what they want, and his lack of clarity enhances their power. To understand what is coming, we need to understand who they are. I know all too well, because I have spent the past 15 years fighting them.

Over this time, I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government.

I first encountered the machine when writing about climate change. The fury and loathing directed at climate scientists and campaigners seemed incomprehensible until I realised they were fake: the hatred had been paid for. The bloggers and institutes whipping up this anger were funded by oil and coal companies. ...

Charles and David Koch – who for years have funded extreme pro-corporate politics – might not have been enthusiasts for Trump’s candidacy, but their people were all over his campaign. Until June, Trump’s campaign manager was Corey Lewandowski, who like other members of Trump’s team came from a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). AFP purports to be a grassroots campaign, but it was founded and funded by the Koch brothers.

I could fill this newspaper with the names of Trump staffers who have emerged from such groups: people such as Doug Domenech, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, funded among others by the Koch brothers, Exxon and the Donors Trust; Barry Bennett, whose Alliance for America’s Future (now called One Nation) refused to disclose its donors when challenged; and Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and others. ...

Understandably, there has been plenty of coverage of the racists and white supremacists empowered by Trump’s victory. But, gruesome as they are, they’re peripheral to the policies his team will develop. ... As usual, the left and centre (myself included) are beating ourselves up about where we went wrong. There are plenty of answers, but one of them is that we have simply been outspent. Not by a little, but by orders of magnitude. A few billion dollars spent on persuasion buys you all the politics you want. Genuine campaigners, working in their free time, simply cannot match a professional network staffed by thousands of well-paid, unscrupulous people.

Steven Mnuchin nominated for US treasury secretary

Donald Trump has nominated Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs banker-turned-Hollywood movie financier with no government experience, as US Treasury secretary.

Mnuchin, a multimillionaire who was dubbed a “foreclosure king” for buying up distressed mortgages and evicting thousands of homeowners during the financial crisis, immediately announced he would oversee “the largest tax change since Reagan” and said his “No 1 priority is tax reform”.

As well as cutting personal taxes, Mnuchin said the US corporate tax rate would be reduced from 35% to 15%. “By cutting corporate taxes, we’re going to create huge economic growth and we’ll have huge personal income,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “We’re going to get to 15% and bring a lot of cash back into the US.” ...

The appointment of Mnuchin appears to fly in the face of Trump’s campaign message chastising members of the business elite for causing the US’s ills and attacking Hillary Clinton for her close ties to Wall Street.

[See also: Trump's Pick for Head of Nation's Economic Policy "A Self-Dealing, Wall Street Tool"

and: Trump Was Always Going to Be a Gift to Wall Street. His Pick for Treasury Secretary Proves It. - js]

OPEC reaches deal to cut production by 1.2 million barrels

Oil price rises sharply as Opec members hint at deal to limit production

The price of oil has risen sharply after Opec members meeting in Vienna said they were on the verge of agreeing a deal to cut production.

Brent crude was up by more than 7% at $49.80 a barrel on Wednesday following comments from some of the world’s leading oil producers, who have gathered to discuss possible action to rein in the oversupply of oil and halt the fall in prices.

The Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, said a deal was close and Riyadh was prepared to take “a big hit” on its own production.

Falih said Opec was focused on capping production at 32.5m barrels a day, or cutting output by more than 1m barrels a day. He said he hoped Russia and other non-Opec members would also contribute by cutting production by 600,000 barrels a day.

“It will mean that we take a big cut and a big hit from our current production and from our forecast for 2017. So we will not do it unless we make sure that there is consensus and an agreement to meet all of the principles,” he said.

Uber is trying to convince Europe's highest court that it's not a taxi service

Europe’s highest court has begun hearing arguments in a case which will ultimately decide the fate of Uber — and other ‘sharing economy’ services like Airbnb — across the entire continent. ...

Uber claims it is simply an intermediary between the customer and driver and, as such, should not be regulated like a traditional taxi company. Opponents say that Uber is overseeing a huge fleet of drivers and cars and must therefore be subject to the same strict regulations as everyone else. ...

While the court is not expected to publish a ruling until March 2017, Europe remains divided over the issue. Supporting Uber’s claim are the European Commission (the executive arm of the EU), along with countries like the Netherlands, Finland, Poland and Greece. France, Spain and Ireland have all filed documents with the court in support of the Barcelona taxi driver association, saying that Uber should be regulated like any other transport service.

If Uber is victorious, it will mean it can quickly and easily set up its business across the entire 28-member bloc. A positive ruling for Uber will benefit other sharing economy services like Airbnb, Deliveroo and Hassle in a similar manner.

Jill Stein: Recounts are Necessary Because Electronic Voting Invites Tampering, Hacking, Human Error

US election recount: Hillary Clinton supports hand-counting Wisconsin ballots

Hillary Clinton made her first move in the presidential election recount effort on Tuesday, declaring support for an attempt to force Wisconsin authorities to review the state’s 3m votes by hand.

Clinton intervened in the case of a lawsuit brought by Jill Stein, the Green party candidate, which seeks to bar officials in Wisconsin from carrying out recounts with machines, according to the docket for the case at Dane County circuit court.

An attorney for Clinton said in a court filing that the former secretary of state argues, like Stein, that hand recounts are superior to automatic recounts of ballots by optical scanners, which are used by about 90% of counties in the state.

Cybersecurity Expert Bruce Schneier: American Elections Will Be Hacked

'Bogus charges': Standing Rock activists say they face campaign of legal bullying

In what appears to be a concerted effort to deter people from joining the Standing Rock protests, North Dakota officials are pursuing serious criminal charges and threatening to levy hefty fines against Native American activists.

Despite state and federal evacuation orders, a government roadblock, escalating police violence and aggressive prosecutions that attorneys say lack basic evidence, thousands of veterans are preparing to travel to Cannon Ball this weekend to support the growing movement to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.

Since the demonstrations against the $3.7bn oil project began in April, law enforcement have made more than 500 arrests, with state prosecutors filing serious charges, including rioting and conspiracy, against many of them.

The militarized police response, mass arrests and felony cases are part of what critics say is an unconstitutional strategy to silence and bully activists, who argue that the pipeline threatens the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s water supply and sacred grounds. ...

In recent weeks, many of the state’s cases have unraveled in court with dismissals or rejections by a judge due to lack of evidence, further suggesting that prosecutors are more interested in intimidating activists than securing convictions.

The most serious accusation – attempted murder of law enforcement – was dismissed on Monday.

The Resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline Undaunted by Threats of Evictions and Fines

How Obama's climate change legacy is weakened by US investment in dirty fuel

President Barack Obama has staked his legacy on the environment, positioning his administration as the most progressive on climate change in US history.

However, an obscure agency within his own administration has quietly spoiled his record by helping fund a steady outpouring of new overseas fossil fuel emissions – effectively erasing gains expected from his headline clean power plan or fuel efficiency standards.

Since January 2009, the US Export-Import Bank has signed almost $34bn worth of low-interest loans and guarantees to companies and foreign governments to build, expand and promote fossil fuel projects abroad.

That’s about three times more financing than the taxpayer-backed bank provided during George W Bush’s two terms, and almost twice the amount financed with loans and guarantees under the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton – combined.

The bank, which operates within Obama’s administration, provides US exporters with financing to sell goods and services overseas. ...

Since 2009, it has financed 70 fossil fuel projects.

Using information from the Energy Information Administration, if Obama’s clean power plan were enacted this year, over the next 15 years it would reduce US carbon emissions by about 2.5bn tons. That is nearly the same number that the Ex-Im Bank’s overseas fossil fuel projects will produce over 15 years, assuming they were all running at full capacity.

'Betrayal': Trudeau Approves Kinder Morgan Pipeline Expansion

To widespread dismay, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau late Tuesday announced the government's approval of the expansion of Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which will transport tar sands oil from northern Alberta to the British Columbia coast.

The decision was not unexpected, but it was swiftly met with loud condemnation and promises to block the project. Trudeau's announcement galvanized Indigenous communities, environmentalists, activists, and politicians in B.C. and across Canada, who have long campaigned against the pipeline.

The Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs has launched an opposition campaign, called Coast Protectors, to which 4,000 people have already pledged support, the organizers say.

North American tribes belonging to the Treaty Alliance Against Tar Sands Expansion have also vowed to block the project, which will carry 895,000 barrels of tar sands bitumen from the mines in Alberta to a terminal at Burrard Inlet in Burnaby, B.C.

"Let's be clear, this is about our survival. This is about protecting our home, on Burrard Inlet and on the planet," said Rueben George, Manager of the Sacred Trust Initiative of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation. "We're going to stop Kinder Morgan by working together. This is everyone's problem. Trudeau's permits are worthless without our consent."

"People are already standing up and fighting back, and that is only going to grow," Sven Biggs, the energy and climate campaigner for Stand.earth, told the New York Times. "It's going to be in the courts; it's going to be in the streets; it's also going to be at the ballot box."

Also of Interest

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

'We opened eyes': at Standing Rock, my fellow Native Americans make history

Relying on Unreliable Syrian Sources

Trump Loves to Do It, But American Generals Have Forgotten How

The CIA and the Press: When the Washington Post Ran the CIA’s Propaganda Network

Does What Happened to This Journalist at the US-Canada Border Herald a Darker Trend?

Citigroup Whistleblower Charges Should Raise Red Flags at the Fed

Companies Clamor for Cheap Labor, Fed Delivers

Leading Rights Groups Launch 'Wave of Litigation' to Protect Abortion Access

Public schools may not survive Trump's billionaire wrecking crew

Vying for DNC Chair, Howard Dean Praises Wall Street Bailout Architect

New Sanctuary Cities in Texas Vow to Resist Donald Trump’s Deportations

Trump and the GOP may be trying to kneecap climate research

FBI and NSA Poised to Gain New Surveillance Powers Under Trump

FBI may have also been investigating Trump

Donald Trump Flag-Burning Tweet Inflames, Distracts, Offends the Constitution

A Little Night Music

Big John Wrencher - Moonshine Blues

Big John Wrencher - Memphis To Maxwell

Big John Wrencher - I'm Going to Detroit

Big John Wrencher & Eddie Taylor - Telephone Blues

Big John Wrencher - Take A Little Walk With Me

Big John Wrencher - Rubbin' My Root

Big John Wrencher - How Many More Years

Big John Wrencher - Can't Hold out Much Longer

Big John Wrencher - Big John's Boogie