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This evening's music features Motown songwriter and singer Smokey Robinson. Enjoy!

"Whenever the US intelligence agencies collaborate with mass media to throw up on the screen the face of a foreign leader, giving him devil’s horns and making his face red with the flames of hell, we have to take that depiction as a sign that they intend to do something to that country."

-- Juan Cole

News and Opinion

Making Russia ‘The Enemy’

The rising hysteria about Russia is best understood as fulfilling two needs for Official Washington: the Military Industrial Complex’s transitioning from the “war on terror” to a more lucrative “new cold war” – and blunting the threat that a President Trump poses to the neoconservative/liberal-interventionist foreign-policy establishment.

By hyping the Russian “threat,” the neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks, who include much of the mainstream U.S. news media, can guarantee bigger military budgets from Congress. The hype also sets in motion a blocking maneuver to impinge on any significant change in direction for U.S. foreign policy under Trump.

Some Democrats even hope to stop Trump from ascending to the White House by having the Central Intelligence Agency, in effect, lobby the electors in the Electoral College with scary tales about Russia trying to fix the election for Trump. ...

On Thursday, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. joined the call for electors to flip, writing: “The question is whether Trump, Vladimir Putin and, perhaps, Clinton’s popular-vote advantage give you sufficient reason to blow up the system.”

That Democrats would want the CIA, which is forbidden to operate domestically in part because of its historic role in influencing elections in other countries, to play a similar role in the United States shows how desperate the Democratic Party has become. ...

On another level, it cements the Democratic Party as America’s preeminent “war party,” favoring an escalating New Cold War with Russia by ratcheting up economic sanctions against Moscow, and even seeking military challenges to Russia in conflict zones such as Syria and Ukraine. ... Democrats now are excitedly joining the bash-Russia movement, making it harder to envision how the party can transition back into its more recent role as the “peace party” (at least relative to the extremely hawkish Republicans).

The potential trading places of the two parties in that regard – with Trump favoring geopolitical détente and the Democrats beating the drums for more military confrontations – augurs poorly for the Democrats regaining their political footing anytime soon.

Obama pledges to take action against Russia over hacking claims

U.S. President Barack Obama has vowed to “take action” against Russia for alleged cyberattacks intended to influence the outcome of the presidential election.

“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action, and we will – at a time and place of our own choosing,” Obama said in an interview with U.S. radio station NPR that will air Friday.

“Some of it may be explicit and publicized. Some of it may not be,” he said, according to excerpts of the interview released Thursday. “But Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this because I spoke to him directly about it.”

Obama said he was waiting for a final intelligence report on the issue before deciding on a response. ...

While Obama said in his comments to NPR that the hack had obviously created “more problems for the Clinton campaign than it had for the Trump campaign,” he stopped short of blaming it for the Democratic candidate’s loss.

Demonization of Putin as "Personally" Behind Clinton Hack Is Old Propaganda Technique

The most recent psy-ops leaks, allegedly from the CIA, speak in loving detail of how Putin himself took control of the operation, as part of a longstanding vendetta against Sec. Clinton. ...

Personalization and demonization are well-known Washington propaganda techniques.

At one point George W. Bush maintained that he had been right to overthrow Saddam Hussein of Iraq even though that country had not had any dangerous unconventional weapons. The reason? Saddam Hussein, he said, was “evil.”

The “evilness” of an opponent of US policy is metaphysical, and can be used to justify almost anything.

Back in 1953, Iran had a nationalist prime minister who wanted a fair share from BP of the money from sale of Iran’s own oil. His name, Mohammad Mosaddegh, showed his aristocratic lineage. The Eisenhower administration and the compliant Washington press corps waged a campaign of personal vilification against Mosaddegh, hinting around that he was a communist and a puppet of the Soviet Union. This was an aristocratic nationalist!

Demonizing Mosaddegh was a prelude to the CIA buying a crowd and overthrowing the elected prime minister of a major parliamentary country. It has never to this day recovered its democracy.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was also demonized.

So was Yasser Arafat. Salvador Allende of Chile.

Obama vows retaliation over alleged Russian election hack

White House says Vladimir Putin had direct role in hacking US election

The White House on Thursday went its furthest yet in joining the dots between Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Press secretary Josh Earnest indicated that he shared the view of US intelligence officials, reported by NBC News, that Putin had a direct role in hacking during the presidential election.

He also argued that Trump knew Russia was engaged in malicious cyber-attacks that boosted him and damaged his rival, Hillary Clinton. ...

Although there is no evidence that Russians hacked voting machines on election day, intelligence officials have claimed Russians were behind the raid on Clinton campaign chairperson John Podesta’s emails, which were published by WikiLeaks and featured regularly in media coverage of the race.

Earnest pointed White House reporters to a unanimous statement from all 17 intelligence agencies, issued in October, that found “only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities”.

Towards the end of this video, Ray McGovern corroborates elements of Craig Murray's claim to have received the leak of the Podesta emails in Washington DC.

'Russia Card’

To answer the headline question below, perhaps a quick look at the list of "in the tank" journalists overcompenstated media celebrities and presstitutes revealed by Wikileaks might offer a clue.

An excellent article, worth reading in full:

Why Are the Media Taking the CIA’s Hacking Claims at Face Value?

Despite the CIA’s uninspiring record for the past 70 years, the media are defending the agency for all it’s worth.

In 1977, Carl Bernstein published an exposé of a CIA program known as Operation Mockingbird, a covert program involving, according to Bernstein, “more than 400 American journalists who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Bernstein found that in “many instances” CIA documents revealed that “journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”

Fast-forward to December 2016, and one can see that there isn’t much need for a covert government program these days. The recent raft of unverified, anonymously sourced and circumstantial stories alleging that the Russian government interfered in the US presidential election with the aim of electing Republican Donald J. Trump shows that today too much of the media is all too happy to do overtly what the CIA had it once paid it to do covertly: regurgitate the claims of the spy agency and attack the credibility of those who question it. ...

The bombshell reports—and Trump’s quick dismissal of them as “ridiculous”—have dominated the news cycle in the days since their publication.

The current fight between Trump and the CIA is of potentially of historic consequence. Never before has the intelligence establishment shown so much hostility to a newly elected president. Never before has a president shown so little deference to the CIA. ...

While Trump’s sin in committing an act of lèse majesté against the CIA has been treated as a grave transgression in the eyes of the media, serious questions remain over the veracity of the CIA’s finding. ... And yet, despite its uninspiring record of the past 70 years, the media has driven itself into a self-righteous frenzy over what it perceives to be President-elect Trump’s grave show of disrespect to the CIA.

Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange goes on the offensive over claims Russia was behind Clinton email hack, saying Kremlin is NOT its source

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange flatly rejected U.S. intelligence claims that his organization received leaked Clinton emails from the Russian government, saying the allegations are part of a 'foolish' and 'dangerous' effort by Democrats to overturn Donald Trump’s election victory.

'Our source is not the Russian government,' Assange told Sean Hannity on his radio show on Thursday, in his first U.S. interview since the election. 'We have U.S. intelligence saying that say they know how we got our stuff and when we got it, and us saying we didn’t get it from a state.'

Assange said his group has a strict policy against commenting on its sources, but he wanted to dispute allegations that Wikileaks was involved in a Russian-orchestrated campaign to swing the election for Donald Trump. ...

Assange declined to confirm or deny comments from former UK Ambassador Craig Murray – a close Wikileaks associate – who told Dailymail.com this week that the group's email sources were American and that he met with one of them in Washington, D.C.

'We don’t comment on sourcing,' said Assange. 'Craig Murray is a former UK ambassador. He is a friend of mine. He is not authorized to speak on behalf of Wikileaks.'

America Goes Insane

With neoliberal tool Barack Obama set to provide ‘evidence’ of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, I mean Russian interference in the interminable recent election, the broader question of who, exactly, has conspired to turn the U.S. into a neo-impoverished, plutocrat-led, environmental catastrophe creating, auto-militarized, privatized, gangster-state, there is nary a mirror in front of national Democrats to be found. Donald Trump was a plutocratic ‘friend’ of national Democrats before he became the explicit version of their very-own crony-capitalism gone wild. ...

Reflexive recourse to Red-baiting is the natural home for national Democrats because it places them on the side of their donor base against the people they claim to represent. After four decades of siding with industrialists, Wall Street and the military establishment against the interests of the vast majority of Americans and citizens of the world these lost souls so despise the victims of their policies that they can only conceive of political pushback in terms of ‘foreign’ intervention.

The question of the moment is: who created the conditions that this new McCarthyism is being manufactured to draw attention away from? Before it was the Russians it was deplorable Americans, the biased national media and home grown ‘traitors’ whose tendencies to disseminate inconvenient truths were …, inconvenient. And assuming for a moment that these neo-McCarthyite tactics are successful, are these really the people that Democrat Party constituents intend to vote for in future elections?

Should this not have been considered by the clever folks trying to overturn the election results through the Electoral College, around half of those who voted were apparently well-enough swayed by devious Russian propaganda to have actually voted for Mr. Trump. This is to suggest that calling these voters easily-duped stooges is roughly akin to calling them deplorable. And should the effort be successful, prepare yourselves for cocktail party interruptus. How well do stock prices respond to civil war again?

Yes, Mrs. Obama, America is hopeless. Much like it was under the leadership of Barack.

First Lady steps up war with Trump as she tells Oprah that Americans have no 'hope' now that he's weeks from the Oval Office

Michelle Obama fed her husband's feud with Donald Trump on Friday as she gave a gloomy description of the hopeless climate his election win has created.

The First Lady used her final interview in the White House to tell Oprah Winfrey that a 'grown up' should be in charge of the country.

Looking forward to president-elect Trump's looming inauguration, she said even though hope was lost, it was necessary to move on.

'Now we're feeling what not having hope feels like. Hope is necessary,' she said in her first direct response to the November 9 election result.

Swedish Towns Told to Prepare for War With Russia

Adding to the seemingly endless flurry of moves anticipating a full-scale world war centering on the Baltic Sea, Sweden’s Civil Contingency Agency has sent letters to every town and village in the country advising them to make preparations for a possible war against Russia.

The letter said the towns should ensure that their emergency sirens work, and should prepare to move operations centers into underground bunkers for the conflict, adding that they should be open to substantial cooperation with the Swedish military.

The Agency’s head of civil defense operations, Magnus Dyberg-Ek, insisted the move was the result of a worsening “security situation in our neighborhood,” saying Sweden had to make preparations over the threat of war breaking out. Other officials indicated a lot of the measures in place are the same as those during the Cold War.

Amid Finger Pointing at Russia, US Brings Tanks Back to Cold War Depot

As President Barack Obama vows that the United States will take "action" in response to the allegations that Russia interfered with the November election, the U.S. army has started to bring tanks back to a Cold War site in the Netherlands as a show of its "commitment to deterrence in Europe."

The U.S. and Dutch military reopened the Eygelshoven site on Thursday. It will contain "strategically prepositioned critical war stock" including M1 Abrams Tanks and M109 Paladin Self-Propelled Howitzers.

"Three years ago, the last American tank left Europe; we all wanted Russia to be our partner," said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, head of U.S. Army Europe. "My country is bringing tanks back," and "[w]e are signaling our commitment and demonstrating the ability to prepare," he said. ...

U.S. Congress earlier this month passed the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, which, as the Wall Street Journal noted, "approved a $3.4 billion spending plan to boost European defenses including reopening or creating five equipment-storage sites in the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, and two locations in Germany." ...

According to Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University, "We're in the most dangerous confrontation with Russia since the Cuban missile crisis. It needs to be discussed." ...

"[O]ne motive is to keep Trump from going to the White House. Another is to delegitimize him before he gets there. But the main motive—and you can hear it clearly—is Trump has said he wants cooperation with Russia, and the war party here that's against that is determined to stop it," he said.

The man that "shoed" Bush

Aleppo evacuation suspended as al-Qaida-linked rebels block deal

A deal to evacuate tens of thousands of civilians from the besieged districts of east Aleppo has been suspended and is at risk of unravelling after al-Qaida linked fighters in Idlib province refused to allow a simultaneous evacuation of two pro-government villages.

A source with knowledge of the Aleppo evacuation deal told the Guardian it was suspended over the refusal of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) to allow the evacuation of wounded people from Fua and Kefraya, two Shia villages in Idlib province that have been besieged by rebels for years.

But by the early afternoon, a senior rebel source said the al-Qaida affiliate had given its consent to the deal. Rebels in Idlib are part of a predominantly Islamist coalition, of which JFS is one of the most powerful.

The refusal risked reigniting large-scale fighting that threatens the lives of civilians who have yet to depart from the shrinking patch of territory under opposition control in east Aleppo, and who have lived for months with dwindling food and water supplies and no functioning hospitals.

About 8,000 people have already been evacuated from east Aleppo in buses, ambulances and private cars that left the besieged districts between Thursday and Friday morning.

Trump Has Appointed More Generals in His Cabinet Than Any President Since World War II

Turkey's relationship with the EU is worse than ever

As European Union leaders met in Brussels on Thursday for their final summit of the year, one topic was likely at the forefront of discussions: What to do about Turkey?

Relations with the bloc’s powerful Eurasian neighbor, which has long sought to become the first majority-Muslim country to join the union, have sunk to a new low at a time when cooperation has never been more critical. A bitter standoff is developing between Ankara and Brussels, throwing the hard-fought refugee deal between the parties into a state of uncertainty. ...

EU leaders are meeting just weeks after the European Parliament overwhelmingly voted in favor of a nonbinding resolution to freeze negotiations with Turkey on joining the 28-member union, a process that began in 2005.

The move drew a furious response from Turkey’s president, who threatened to unleash a flood of illegal migrants across Europe’s borders in retaliation.

“If you go any further, these border gates will be opened,” he said in a speech in late November. “Do not forget: The West needs Turkey.”

Andrew Bacevich: Trump's "Israel First" Policy Will Likely Lead to More Violence in Region

China live-fires aircraft carrier group amid Taiwan tensions with US

China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier battle group has conducted its first exercises with live ammunition, the country’s navy said, in a show of strength as tensions with the US and Taiwan escalate.

China’s first and only aircraft carrier led large-scale exercises in the Bohai Sea, the navy of the People’s Liberation Army announced late on Thursday.

The drills involved dozens of ships and aircraft in the carrier group and more than 10 air-to-air, anti-ship and air defence missiles were tested, it said. ...

The drills come as a heated war of words intensifies between Beijing and the US president-elect, Donald Trump, who broke convention by speaking directly to the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, and even suggested Washington could jettison the decades-old “One China policy” – a diplomatic compromise allowing the US to do business with both China and Taiwan while only recognising Beijing.

Since Trump’s and Tsai’s phone call, China has sent military aircraft close to Japanese territory near the Miyako Strait and reportedly sent a bomber to circumnavigate disputed territory in the resource-rich South China Sea – flights its air force has described as “routine”.

China's Navy seizes American underwater drone in South China Sea

A Chinese Navy warship has seized an underwater drone deployed by an American oceanographic vessel in international waters in the South China Sea, triggering a formal diplomatic protest from the United States and a demand for its return, a U.S. defense official told Reuters on Friday.

The incident, the first of its kind in recent memory, took place on Dec. 15 northwest of Subic Bay off the Philippines just as the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey ship, was about to retrieve the unmanned, underwater vehicle (UUV), the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ...

The Chinese seizure will add to concerns about China's growing military presence and aggressive posture in the disputed South China Sea, including its militarization of maritime outposts.

NSA Inspector Who Criticized Snowden for Not Using 'Official' Channels Found Guilty of Retaliating Against Whistleblower Who Did Just That

National Security Agency (NSA) inspector general George Ellard, an outspoken critic of whistleblower Edward Snowden, personally retaliated against another NSA whistleblower, Adam Zagorin reported at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) on Thursday.

An intelligence community panel earlier this year found that Ellard had retaliated against a whistleblower, Zagorin writes, in a judgment that has still not been made public.

The finding is remarkable because Ellard first made headlines two years ago when he publicly condemned Snowden for leaking information about the NSA's mass surveillance of private citizens, wherein Ellard claimed that Snowden should have raised concerns through internal channels. The agency would have protected him from any retaliation, Ellard said at the time. ...

"The finding against Ellard is extraordinary and unprecedented," Stephen Aftergood, director of the Secrecy Program at the Federation of American Scientists, told Zagorin. "This is the first real test drive for a new process of protecting intelligence whistleblowers. Until now, they've been at the mercy of their own agencies, and dependent on the whims of their superiors. This process is supposed to provide them security and a procedural foothold."

Twitter blocks government 'spy centers' from accessing user data

Twitter has blocked federally funded “domestic spy centers” from using a powerful social media monitoring tool after public records revealed that the government had special access to users’ information for controversial surveillance efforts.

The American Civil Liberties Union of California discovered that so-called fusion centers, which collect intelligence, had access to monitoring technology from Dataminr, an analytics company partially owned by Twitter. The ACLU’s records prompted the companies to announce that Dataminr had terminated access for all fusion centers and would no longer provide social media surveillance tools to any local, state or federal government entities.

The government centers are partnerships between agencies that work to collect vast amounts of information purportedly to analyze “threats”. The spy centers, according to the ACLU, target protesters, journalists and others protected by free speech rights while also racially profiling people deemed “suspicious” by law enforcement.

“These are massive hubs for information collection and monitoring and surveillance of individuals,” said Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the ACLU of California. “The information they collect is often about innocent people.”

An interesting article with far more information than can be fairly abstracted. Here's a taste:

How Google's search algorithm spreads false information with a rightwing bias

Robert Epstein from the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology has spent four years trying to reverse engineer Google’s search algorithms. He believes, based on systematic research, that Google has the power to rig elections through something he calls the search engine manipulation effect (SEME).

Epstein conducted five experiments in two countries to find that biased rankings in search results can shift the opinions of undecided voters. If Google tweaks its algorithm to show more positive search results for a candidate, the searcher may form a more positive opinion of that candidate.

In September 2016, Epstein released findings, published through Russian news agency Sputnik News, that indicated Google had suppressed negative autocomplete search results relating to Hillary Clinton.

“We know that if there’s a negative autocomplete suggestion in the list, it will draw somewhere between five and 15 times as many clicks as a neutral suggestion,” Epstein said. “If you omit negatives for one perspective, one hotel chain or one candidate, you have a heck of a lot of people who are going to see only positive things for whatever the perspective you are supporting.”

Even changing the order in which certain search terms appear in the autocompleted list can make a huge impact, with the first result drawing the most clicks, he said.

Resignation of FCC chair Tom Wheeler paves the way for net neutrality battle

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler, who championed strong net neutrality rules, resigned on Thursday, calling his service “during this period of historical technological change” a particular honor.

“It has been a privilege to work with my fellow commissioners to help protect consumers, strengthen public safety and cybersecurity, and ensure fast, fair and open networks for all Americans,” Wheeler wrote.

His resignation paves the way for a likely more conservative FCC chairman under Donald Trump and a new battle over net neutrality. ...

Wheeler came to the position after leading two separate lobbying instruments for the cable industry: the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), where he was president and CEO, respectively.

Both groups, representing AT&T, Comcast, and dozens of other telcos, sued the FCC over net neutrality during Wheeler’s leadership. The regulator passed broad rules reclassifying internet service under the same category as telephone service, preventing web providers from forcing subscribers into “slow lanes” unless they paid more. The industry groups lost the lawsuit in June.

Killings by US police logged at twice the previous rate under new federal program

A new US government program to count killings by police, which draws on data collected by the Guardian, has recorded a sharply higher number of deaths than previous official efforts.

Homicides by police were logged by the Department of Justice’s new system at more than twice the rate previously reported by the FBI, according to new data that was published by the department on Thursday.

Officials said their new method for counting “arrest-related deaths” should improve the “reliability, validity and comprehensiveness” of information on killings by police, after the weakness of previous efforts was exposed. ...

Duren Banks, the program’s lead statistician, said the trial had been “a success” compared to a previous incarnation, which was estimated to be catching only half of all arrest-related deaths before being temporarily shut down in 2014.

Justice department sues Michigan city over denial of proposed mosque

The US Department of Justice is suing the city of Sterling Heights, Michigan, alleging it violated federal law in 2015 when it denied a proposal to build a mosque in the city.

The 20-page complaint filed in US district court says the city discriminated against the American Islamic Community Center (AICC) on the basis of religion, when it refused to approve a land use request for a proposed mosque.

The proposal, which drew consistent, visceral protests in the suburban Detroit community, was slated to cover five adjoining parcels of land in the city. In denying the request, the complaint alleges, Sterling Heights imposed a “substantial burden” on the center’s ability to exercise its religious freedom.

“The Constitution protects the rights of religious communities to create the institutions and physical spaces they need to observe and practice their faith free from discriminatory barriers,” said Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general and head of the DoJ’s civil rights division, in a statement.

Trump's Cabinet Wealthier Than One-Third of US Households Combined

Besides comprising the wealthiest administration in modern U.S. history, President-elect Donald Trump's 17 ultra-rich cabinet-level picks thus far have a combined wealth that surpasses that of the 43 million least wealthy American households combined.

That's according to a Quartz analysis published Thursday, based on data from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances. It shows that the $9.5 billion held by Trump's cabinet or cabinet-level nominees is greater than that of 43 million U.S. households combined—over one-third of the 126 million households total in the United States. (Other analyses have shown the Trump administration to have an even higher combined wealth.)

"Even if we just compare the wealth of Trump's cabinet to the median household, it is still an impressive concentration of riches," Dan Kopf wrote for Quartz. "It would take about 120,000 households with the United States median net worth of about $83,200 to match the wealth of just the four richest members of Trump's cabinet—Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross Jr., Linda McMahon, and Rex Tillerson."

Apple, Google and Others at Trump Tech Summit Have Stashed $560 Billion in Profits Overseas

U.S.- based multinationals are currently holding $2.4 trillion in profits overseas to avoid paying taxes on them. Remarkably enough, the 11 technology companies represented at Wednesday’s summit with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York account for about one-quarter of that total — a staggering $560 billion — all by themselves.

So while some among the technology industry made muted sounds about refusing to attend a summit with someone who so flagrantly violates tech’s supposed values, they were never going to follow through: Trump is worth far much too much money to them.

Trump has promised to deliver ... a huge gift to multinationals by allowing them to bring back overseas profits at a one-time rate of 10 percent. ...This reduction in the tax rate from 35 percent to 10 percent could potentially be worth as much as $140 billion to the corporations meeting with Trump. ... T

rump has claimed that such a gigantic tax cut will lead to increased hiring in the U.S., but there’s no reason to believe this. When lobbying for a similar tax holiday in 2004, U.S.-based multinationals corporations also claimed they’d use their bonanza to create jobs in the U.S. In reality they actually cut jobs, as well as spending on research and development. The gusher of money was instead used for stock buybacks and to increase executive salaries. Compensation for the top officials at the biggest affected companies increased about 60 percent after the tax holiday.

"Pirates of the Caribbean": Bankers Who Created Puerto Rico's Debt Crisis Now In Charge of Fixing It

Whistleblower Vindicated: Massive Trading Firm Knight Capital Charged With Abusing “Naked Shorts”

Back in September, I wrote a seven-part series at The Intercept chronicling how former Wall Street trader Chris DiIorio, determined to figure out how he lost a small fortune on a penny stock, came to the conclusion that gigantic market-making firm Knight Capital, now known as KCG, repeatedly violated federal regulations meant to prevent abuse in what are known as “naked short sales.” ...

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra), a private self-regulatory organization, charged KCG on October 31 with thousands of violations over three years of Regulation SHO, which according to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “was established to address concerns regarding persistent failures to deliver and potentially abusive ‘naked’ short selling.

Finra further found that KCG “failed to establish and maintain a supervisory system” to comply with Regulation SHO going back to 2012, when the company was re-constituted through a merger. ...

But despite the routine of repeated misconduct, KCG accepted a settlement on November 22 for a mere $105,000 and some new monitoring. KCG did not even have to admit wrongdoing.

DiIorio’s reaction: “What a deterrent!”

New map reveals shattering effect of roads on nature

Rampant road building has shattered the Earth’s land into 600,000 fragments, most of which are too tiny to support significant wildlife, a new study has revealed.

The researchers warn roadless areas are disappearing and that urgent action is needed to protect these last wildernesses, which help provide vital natural services to humanity such as clean water and air.

The impact of roads extends far beyond the roads themselves, the scientists said, by enabling forest destruction, pollution, the splintering of animal populations and the introduction of deadly pests. New roads also pave the way to further exploitation by humans, such as poaching or mining, and new infrastructure.

An international team of researchers analysed open-access maps of 36m km of road and found that over half of the 600,000 fragments of land in between roads are very small – less than 1km2.

A mere 7% are bigger than 100km2, equivalent to a square area just 10km by 10km. Furthermore, only a third of the roadless areas were truly wild, with the rest affected by farming or people.

Trump Picks Perry to Head Energy Dept., an Agency the Former Texas Governor Wants Abolished

Leaked Audio: Dakota Access Pipeline Executive Says "Election Night Changed Everything" and DAPL "Is Going Through"

Shaun King, a writer for the New York Daily News, has uploaded what appears to be a recorded audio file of Energy Transfer Partners' Chief Operating Officer saying that “election night changed everything” for the company as it relates to its embattled Dakota Access Pipeline.

King stated on social media and on the SoundCloud page on which he posted the file that a source sent him the file on December 13, hours after Matthew Ramsey — COO of Energy Transfer Partners — gave his speech. The source who gave King the audio, he explains on SoundCloud, “claimed to be in a corporate meeting at Energy Transfer Partners” and told him that the person speaking was Matthew Ramsey, the COO of Energy Transfer Partners. King also wrote that the recording was made during a mandatory company meeting.

“I've got to tell you, election night changed everything,” Ramsey apparently said in the 10-minute clip, the authenticity of which DeSmog could not independently verify. “We now are going into a transition where we are going to have a new President of the United States who gets it. He understands what we're doing here and we fully expect that as soon as he gets inaugurated his team is going to move to get the final approvals done and we'll begin to put [Dakota Access] across Lake Oahe.”

Dakota Access has yet to receive the easement permit it needs from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in order to cross Lake Oahe, which the company has publicly decried. Ramsey said in the clip, one in which the voice sounds similar to his voice heard in a November 21 company conference call, that it will take about 65 days to cross the lake once they get the permit.

Beyond Standing Rock: Communities Along DAPL Route Fear for Drinking Water

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe near Cannon Ball, North Dakota is just one of many communities that have protested the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for fear that an oil spill will contaminate clean drinking water, the Associated Press reported Friday.

The pipeline crosses "countless waterways and wetlands, including eight major tributaries and the Missouri and Mississippi River," as geographer Jennifer Veilleux observed, and endangers the water sources of "hundreds of thousands of people," AP notes.

Two such waterways are the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers, the source of Des Moines, Iowa's, drinking water. Over 200,000 people live in Des Moines, and the pipeline crosses the Raccoon or its tributaries upstream of the city three times.

Des Moines residents also protested the pipeline's construction—some activists even went on a hunger strike in a last-ditch effort to defeat the project—but were ultimately unsuccessful. AP reports:

Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director for the Iowa-based environmental group Science and Environmental Health Network, noted the frustration she felt while watching the drilling and pipe installation. She has filed legal challenges and criticized the regulatory process for pipeline permitting, saying the layers of bureaucracy makes it difficult for citizens to be heard in any significant way.

Despite the finished construction in Iowa, environmental groups and landowners are continuing to pursue a lawsuit against state regulators for allowing the pipeline company to seize farmland through eminent domain. The plaintiffs say they are prepared to pursue the case up through the U.S. Supreme Court.

Also of Interest

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

Ah, So Putin Didn’t Hack Those Emails After All

NBC’s Denver Affiliate 9News Apologizes on Air to Naked Capitalism

If Donald Trump Is So Upset About Iraq WMD Lies, Why Would He Want to Hire John Bolton?

Big Banks $70 Billion Short in Fed Push to Prevent Bailouts

What’s Really Behind America’s Slumping GDP Growth?

If You Want to See How Donald Trump Will Destroy the Environment, Read This Legislative Roadmap

A Little Night Music

The Miracles - A Love She Can Count On

The Miracles - Who's Lovin' You

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Whole Lot Of Shakin' In My Heart

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - I Second That Emotion

Smokey Robinson - The Tracks Of My Tears Live

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Going To A Go-Go

Smokey Robinson - The Tears of a Clown

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Mickey's Monkey

The Miracles - Shop Around

Smokey Robinson - My Girl

The Miracles medley T.A.M.I Show 1964