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This evening's music features Louisiana swamp bluesman Slim Harpo. Enjoy!

“For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.”

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

News and Opinion

There's more reporting at the link.

Julian Assange denied access to lawyers and vital evidence in US extradition case

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared via videolink at Westminster Magistrates Court in London yesterday for a brief administrative hearing. The half-hour proceedings confirm that the fundamental legal rights of the world-famous investigative journalist are being trampled in what amounts to an extraordinary rendition. ... He was in a visibly worse state than at his last court appearance, appearing fidgety, tired and downcast. Witnesses in the public gallery agreed his health seemed to have deteriorated further. Naomi Colvin from Bridges for Freedom later tweeted that Assange was, “Visibly depressed, slumped shoulders. He had his arms crossed with hands inside his sleeves throughout.”

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser began the hearing by referring to complaints by Assange’s defence lawyer Gareth Peirce that her client’s access to legal counsel is inadequate. Baraitser claimed she had “no desire to stand in the way of any lawyer having proper access to their client. It is clearly in the interest of justice that they do so.”

Her subsequent actions proved this to be a barefaced lie.

Baraitser stated, “What I can do and say is to state in open court that it would be helpful to this extradition process that Mr. Assange’s lawyers have access to their client.” However, she then insisted, as she has done in the past, that she has “no jurisdiction over the prison system” and could exercise “no influence” over the decisions of Belmarsh prison’s governor regarding visiting rights for Assange’s lawyers. Peirce countered with legal precedent. She noted that a judge presiding over the recent case of another defendant at Belmarsh had requested the governor provide the defendant a legal visit. As Peirce explained, facilities are available in Belmarsh’s healthcare wing for additional legal visits. The “deficiency of what ought to be available” was a result of the governor’s prioritising different uses of that space. Baraitser was unmoved. She repeated that she had “made a clear statement in open court” that it would be “helpful” for Assange to have sufficient contact with his lawyers: “At this stage that’s all I’m going to do.”

Peirce moved on to the practical impossibilities of carrying out Assange’s defence under these conditions. She explained the defence team had prepared a “summary of issues” which they intended to raise in future proceedings, including some 20-25 witnesses and extensive footnotes in reference to other evidence. The deadline for the submission of evidence is December 18, and the next case management hearing scheduled for December 19. However, Peirce explained she has not yet been able to discuss the document or underlying evidence with Assange. The next available date for such a meeting at Belmarsh was December 18, with prison authorities giving him less than a day to review the details.

Astoundingly, Baraitser asked, “Do you agree that it is perhaps less important that that information is gone through in detail with your client?”

Peirce replied that the document was “incredibly detailed... essential and integral... some of it is recently acquired evidence, some of it is subject to months of investigation not always in this country, of which [Assange] is unaware because of the blockage in visits.”

“Despite our best efforts, Mr. Assange has not been given what he must be given, and we are doing our utmost to cut through this.”

Baraitser replied that she was “hopeful” that they could “serve at least some of the evidence” and conclude their discussions on December 18.

Turkey could close Incirlik air base in face of U.S. threats - Erdogan

Turkey could shut down its Incirlik air base, which hosts U.S. nuclear warheads, in response to threats of U.S. sanctions and a separate U.S. Senate resolution that recognised mass killings of Armenians a century ago as genocide, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday. ...

Turkey can also close down the Kurecik radar base if necessary, he added. “If they are threatening us with the implementation of these sanctions, of course we will be retaliating,” he said. ... Erdogan suggested on Sunday that Turkey could also respond with parliamentary resolutions recognising the killings of indigenous Americans in past centuries as genocide.

Turkey renews military pledge to Libya as threat of Mediterranean war grows

The threat of a military clash in the Mediterranean has drawn nearer following talks in which Turkey has underlined its willingness to send troops to Libya to defend the country’s UN-recognised government. Such a move would risk a direct military confrontation with General Khalifa Haftar, the eastern Libyan military warlord who is thought to be planning a decisive assault on the government of national accord in Tripoli, or GNA. Either the UAE or Egypt, which are supporting Haftar’s forces, might also become involved.

Turkey, already at loggerheads with the US Congress and EU on multiple fronts, last week signed a military co-operation agreement with GNA that enables it to request troops from Turkey. The agreement, sent to the Turkish parliament on Saturday, provides for a so-called quick reaction force for police and military in Libya, as well as enhanced cooperation on intelligence and defence.

Turkish support for the GNA government led by Fayez al Serraj has until now been limited to drones and armaments, and it would be a major escalation to send ground troops to defend Tripoli. ... As part of a binding together of Turkey and the Tripoli government, the two sides have also drawn up a memorandum of understanding to carve out drilling rights in the Mediterranean that has infuriated the European Union, and in particular Greece. Athens says the exclusive economic zone agreement in effect blocks Greece from drilling around Crete and is illegal.

Ankara’s actions risk an anti-Turkish coalition forming comprising Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Italy. These countries came together under the umbrella of the eastern Mediterranean gas forum – an outwardly energy-related but ultimately military partnership from which Turkey was excluded. The natural gas reserves in the region are estimated to be around 122 trillion cubic meters in total.

Argentina's 'dirty war': France approves extradition of suspected torturer

France will extradite Argentinian Mario Sandoval to Buenos Aires late on Sunday to face trial over the torture and disappearance of a student during the country’s “dirty war”, airport and legal sources said. The 66-year-old former police officer was arrested on Wednesday at his home near Paris, after French authorities gave the final go-ahead for his extradition, ending an eight-year legal battle.

He will be sent back under escort aboard an Air France flight from Paris to Buenos Aires, the sources said. Sandoval has been living in France since 1985 and obtained French citizenship with few aware of his full identity.

Argentina suspects that Sandoval took part in more than 500 cases of kidnappings, torture and murder at a time when some 30,000 were “disappeared” during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. But the extradition concerns only the alleged kidnapping in October 1976 of Hernan Abriata, an architecture student whose body has never been found.

Argentinian authorities say investigators have several witness accounts linking Sandoval – known there as the “butcher” of the dictatorship – to Abriata’s killing.

Max Blumenthal on The War On Democracy in Bolivia the UK and DC

Bolivia's interim leader says arrest warrant to be issued against Morales

Bolivia will issue an arrest warrant in the coming days against former leftist President Evo Morales, accusing him of sedition, interim Bolivian President Jeanine Anez said on Saturday.

Morales is in Argentina, granted refugee status this week just days after the inauguration of new President Alberto Fernandez. Peronist Fernandez succeeded outgoing conservative Argentine leader Mauricio Macri, who lost his bid for re-election in October. ...

"He can return whenever he wants. He left because he wanted to," Anez told reporters. "The arrest warrant will be issued in the next few days, because we have already brought the charges."

Democrats CAVE To Trump On Defense Budget

Ukraine: Can We Get That Meeting With Trump or Is Now a Bad Time?

Days after President Trump tweeted out a picture of himself enjoying a “very good” Oval Office meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top diplomat, a Ukrainian official told a roomful of D.C. journalists that his own president is still hoping for his own meeting at the White House.

But there’s no date yet. And that’s despite the fact that Trump’s literally about to get impeached in part for withholding just such a meeting this past summer, while allegedly trying to trade it for an announcement of investigations into the Bidens.

For Ukraine, the stakes are a lot higher than just some quality time in the White House with Trump. The continued effort to score an Oval Office meeting despite all the political turmoil shows just how vital the gesture remains for Ukraine's fledgling president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to demonstrate U.S. support for his country’s bloody conflict with Russia-backed separatists, in which 14,000 people have died since 2015.

Festival in Ukraine This Weekend Is the Neo-Nazi Networking Event of the Year

Hundreds of far-right extremists will converge on Ukraine’s capital this weekend for a “militant black metal” music festival that experts say has become a networking hub in the international neo-Nazi scene. Asgardsrei, which will be held Saturday and Sunday in Kyiv’s Bingo Club, bills itself online as a black metal festival that has “grown into the largest (and certainly the most radical)” in the region. ...

Far-right experts say the festival, now in its fifth year in Kyiv, has become an important networking hub for the transnational white supremacy movement. The festival was organized by individuals linked to Ukraine’s powerful far-right Azov movement, the ultranationalist group that played a major role in the revolution and the war against Russian-backed separatists in the east. It also includes a mixed-martial arts “fight night” by an Azov-affiliated fight club on Friday night.

The festival has previously drawn extremists from groups including the U.S.-based neo-Nazi organization Atomwaffen Division, Germany’s The Third Path party, and Italy’s neofascist CasaPound. “It’s established itself as the major festival of the national Socialist black metal scene,” said Thorsten Hindrichs, a musicologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz who specializes in far-right music subcultures. ...

Hindrichs said Kyiv had become a “safe space” where events like Asgardsrei could take place without disruption from authorities or protesters. He said the festival’s growing importance on the international far-right scene meant it warranted closer attention from Western security services to monitor the contacts their extremists were potentially making in Kyiv. “There’s horrifying things going on there,” he said. “It would be a good idea to try to stop people attending.” ...

Researchers said the event highlighted the way Ukraine, through the influence of Azov and affiliated far-right movements, has emerged as a global hub for right-wing extremists since the outbreak of war. In recent years, events like Asgardsrei have drawn foreign radicals to Ukraine to network with Azov-affiliated extremists, where they have documented their presence at far-right subcultural events like concerts and MMA tournaments on social media.

Tensions high as France enters 12th day of pension-reform strikes

Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland 'cannot be imprisoned in the UK'

Nicola Sturgeon has insisted that Scotland cannot be “imprisoned in the UK against its will” and warned that Boris Johnson’s continued refusal to grant her the powers to hold a second referendum can only increase support for Scottish independence.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, the SNP leader and Scotland’s first minster said: “It really is such a subversion of democracy that you’re talking to the leader of the party that overwhelmingly won the election [in Scotland], and I’m under pressure to say what I’m doing because the mandate that I won is not going to be honoured by the party that got roundly defeated in Scotland. It is just such perversion and subversion of democracy that it will not hold.”

She told Marr that Scottish voters had “rejected the Tories, said no to Brexit and made clear we want our future in our own hands”, adding: “I don’t presume everyone who voted SNP on Thursday is yet prepared to back independence, but it’s not for me to decide that question, it’s not for Boris Johnson to decide, it’s for the people of Scotland.”

In Scotland, the SNP increased its share of the vote to 45%, winning a greater proportion of the votes there than the Tories did across the UK, and also increased its number of MPs at Westminster to 47. In contrast, the Tories – whose campaign in Scotland was focused on opposition to a second independence referendum – lost more than half their Scottish MPs, dropping from 13 to six.

Accusing the Tories of “raging against the reality” of the markedly different election result in Scotland, Sturgeon said: “The risk for the Conservatives here is that the more they try to block the will of the Scottish people, the more utter contempt they show for Scottish democracy, the more they are going to increase support for independence.”

George Galloway | Another 5 years of majority Tory govt led by BoJo not going to be nice to look at

Boris Johnson threatens BBC

Downing Street is threatening the future of the BBC by insisting it is seriously considering decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee, while boycotting Radio 4’s Today programme over the broadcaster’s supposed anti-Tory bias. No 10 pulled ministers from Saturday’s edition of the Today programme and sources said it intended to “withdraw engagement” from the show in future.

The row is seen as an ominous sign of Boris Johnson’s willingness to bypass independent scrutiny and follows criticism of the BBC’s election coverage from both left and right.

No 10 pointed to Andrew Neil’s on-air monologue in which he lambasted Johnson for his refusal to be interviewed, and the BBC’s “extensive coverage” of a four-year-old boy with suspected pneumonia forced to sleep on a hospital floor – as supposed evidence of anti-Tory, pro-remain bias at the corporation.

Meanwhile, Labour backers have raised concerns about the BBC’s coverage, from the editing out of laughter aimed at Johnson in a news bulletin to leading reporters uncritically repeating Conservative sources, and the prime minister escaping scrutiny after dodging the one-on-one interview with Neil. ...

During the election campaign, Johnson threatened to take the BBC’s licence fee away as he called into question its status as a publicly funded broadcaster. The prime minister suggested the licence fee, which is guaranteed to continue until at least 2027, was a general tax that could no longer be justified when other media organisations had found other ways of funding themselves. Any changes to the BBC’s funding model would require parliament to pass fresh legislation. Abolition would be hard, but a bigger risk for the BBC is the negotiations with the government over the cost of the licence fee between 2022 and 2027.

Ralph Nader on Impeachment: Democrats Should Go After Trump’s Full Corruption, Not Just Ukraine

Mitch McConnell Just Told Fox News Exactly How Impeaching Trump Is Going to End

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already knows how this whole impeachment thing is going to go down - it'll end exactly how President Donald Trump wants it to end.

Speaking on Fox News to host Sean Hannity, the Kentucky senator straight-up said on Thursday that he’d take his cues from Trump’s lawyers if and when the Senate has an impeachment trial.

“Everything I do during [the impeachment process], I’m coordinating with White House counsel,” McConnell said on Fox. “There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position, as to how to handle this.”

Mitch McConnell: Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House Counsel. There will be no difference between the President’s position and our position as to how to handle this pic.twitter.com/baFaTKWvUl

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) December 13, 2019

The House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Trump on Friday morning, which means it will soon go to a vote before the entire House. Once the articles of impeachment get through the house, it’ll go before the Senate, which much have a trial. But that doesn’t necessarily mean McConnell has to take the trial seriously.

IG report exposes FBI, Congressional, and media deceit in Russia probe

Heh, Comey says it's hard to get a FISA warrant from the rubber-stamp FISA court. Quite a whopper.

Trump threatens Comey with 'years in jail' over FBI Russia report

James Comey, the former director of the FBI who has become a prime nemesis of Donald Trump, admitted on Sunday to being responsible for “real sloppiness” over the handling of surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser. He also fiercely defended himself and the bureau against any suggestion of political bias, prompting a new threat, of “years in jail”, from Trump.

Comey, who was fired by Trump as America’s top law enforcement official in May 2017, came under intense questioning on Fox News Sunday, sparring with anchor Chris Wallace over the findings of the inspector general’s report into the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey seized on one of Michael Horowitz’s main conclusions, that there was no evidence of political bias in the investigation, to launch an impassioned critique of how he and his FBI colleagues had been treated by Trump.

“The FBI was accused of treason, of illegal spying, of tapping Mr Trump’s wires illegally, of opening an investigation without justification, of being a criminal conspiracy to unseat a president. All that was nonsense.” ...

The president followed up by attacking Comey himself, in loose and intemperate terms. “So now Comey’s admitting he was wrong,” he tweeted. “Wow, but he’s only doing so because he got caught red handed. He was actually caught a long time ago. So what are the consequences for his unlawful conduct. Could it be years in jail? Where are the apologies to me and others, Jim?”

Even before Trump’s intemperate intervention, Comey did not get an easy ride. Under persistent questioning by Wallace, he was forced to admit he presided over serious mistakes in the course of applying for permission to place former Trump adviser Carter Page under surveillance.

Asked to explain the contrast between the report’s criticism of serious problems in the Fisa process and his earlier defense of the FBI’s actions as “thoughtful and appropriate”, Comey replied that Horowitz “was right, I was wrong”.

“I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI had built over 20 years. I thought they were robust enough. It’s incredibly hard to get a Fisa and he was right there was real sloppiness. It was not acceptable.”

Comey embarrasses himself when confronted with IG report

Keiser Report: A Rolling Loan Gathers No Loss

Explosive Report Details ICE Negligence in Medical Care for Detained Children Resulted in Deaths, Preventable Surgeries

Reporting from Buzzfeed News Thursday evening exposed how President Donald Trump's immigration policies led to four deaths and preventable surgeries for children held in the administration's detention regime, including one eight-year-old boy whose forehead was partially removed. ...

Reporter Hamed Aleaziz broke the story, based on an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) whistleblower report he obtained about conditions for immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The report is here (pdf).

Immigrants held in ICE jails received medical care so bad it resulted in 2 preventable surgeries, inc. an 8-yr-old who had to have part of his forehead removed, & contributed to 4 deaths, according to a complaint from a whistleblower.

My investigation: https://t.co/ugsJE9eRC2

— Hamed Aleaziz (@Haleaziz) December 12, 2019

In a call to action, immigrant youth organization United We Dream noted there's blame to go around for the treatment of migrants by the federal government.

"While horrific torture like this occurs inside immigration concentration camps, Democrats and Republicans are moving forward on funding the Trump's white supremacist agenda," said United We Dream.

Minnesota Woman Sues 2 Pharmacies for Denying Her Morning-After Pills

Andrea Anderson - a 39-year-old mother of five who lives in the rural town of McGregor about 100 miles north of Minneapolis - knew she didn’t want more children after a mishap with a condom, her typical form of contraception. “The next morning, I got up and said, ‘We can’t roll the dice,’” she told KSTP in a story published Tuesday.

Anderson said her doctor then prescribed Ella, a prescription-only morning-after pill that’s effective for up to five days after unprotected sex. The prescription was sent to her local pharmacy, Thrifty White Pharmacy.

In the lawsuit filed this week in Aitkin County, Minnesota, Anderson alleged the pharmacist there, a man named George Badeaux, refused to fill her prescription based on his “beliefs” and warned her against trying to get it filled at another nearby pharmacy. Anderson said she then drove to a CVS some 20 miles away from her home, which also declined the prescription, and allegedly told her a Walgreens some 50 miles away didn’t have the pill. But then, Anderson says, she called the Walgreens herself and found out the pill was available there. She drove through a treacherous snowstorm to fill the prescription. ...

The suit argues that although pharmacists in Minnesota are allowed to deny patients seeking an emergency-contraception prescription because of religious or personal objections, they must counsel the patient on another place to get the drug, according to the Washington Post.

Super Tuesday poll shows shaky support for Biden

Democrats beware – the UK election was actually a terrible night for centrists

Not long after exit poll results came in, pundits across the pond started making bold claims: if Corbyn – what with his leftwing manifesto and socialist politics – could lose so badly against Johnson, surely this spells doom for any allied efforts in the United States, namely the primary candidacies of Bernie Sanders and (to a lesser extent) Elizabeth Warren. Hand either of them the Democratic party’s nomination, they warn, and deliver the country to Trump for another four disastrous years. This is, to borrow a phrase from our comrades in the UK, bollocks.

There’s plenty of reflection to be done in the coming weeks, months and probably years about why Labour failed to get a victory or even a hung parliament this election – much of it unflattering of Labour and with plenty of lessons for the electoral left stateside.

But what all the finger-wagging about Corbyn and Sanders ignores is that the kind of tepid politics these pundits espouse had an awful night too. The centrist Liberal Democrats – who campaigned harder against Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson – failed to deliver a surge in seats. Its leader, Jo Swinson, lost her own seat after her performance in the general election devolved rapidly. The Lib Dems presented themselves similarly to establishment Democrats across the pond: a respectable third way between the Conservatives and Labour, and effectively a single-issue party committed to staying in the EU by any means necessary. Last spring Nancy Pelosi met with members of Change UK, a collection of Labour MPs who quit the party over opposition to its leftward shift. Two of the three MPs she met with lost their seats last night. The other spent this election season urging marginals – think swing districts, in US-speak – to vote for Johnson.

Let’s also not forget these politicians’ and pundits’ recent record in the US. Democrats lost over 1,000 seats under Obama and handed a rash of state legislatures over to Republican trifectas, neglecting the kind of decentralized, grassroots organizing that fueled his campaign to victory. They lost miserably in 2016 mounting a wildly unpopular candidate committed to maintaining the status quo. And none of them have faced any consequences, continuing to lead the party into what may well be an abyss. Their counterparts elsewhere are losing ground to the far right, or ceding on points like migration. The left may have lost, but the center is hollowing out.

As they were in 2017, Labour’s policies remain highly popular across party affiliation. Six in 10 people support Labour’s policy of free broadband for all, and 64% support renationalizing the country’s railways. A full 56% back a total decarbonization of the UK economy by 2030 and 63% support a Green New Deal to do so, and making considerable public investments in jobs and infrastructure. Similar figures hold in the US, where Sanders enjoys wildly higher favorability ratings than Corbyn. These kinds of policies helped Corbyn to mobilize tens of thousands volunteers to canvass around the country and bring millions into the work of politics, energy (and votes) not likely to disappear any time soon.

This UK election was ultimately an election about Brexit, and Brexit won. There’s no clean analogue to that in the US.

How come Corbyn's defeat in Brexit-complicating UK proves the left can't win in US, but the stunning victory by Argentina's leftist Fernandez/Kirchner ticket doesn't show undiluted leftism is necessary to win? Maybe people are manipulating inapplicable results for their own ends?

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 13, 2019

Biden Parrots 'Profoundly Silly' Narrative That Lesson From UK Elections Is Democrats Should Not Go 'So, So Far Left'

Former Vice President Joe Biden Thursday night told a gathering of rich donors that the Labour Party's crushing defeat in the U.K. general election represents a warning sign that Democrats should not nominate a left-wing candidate in 2020, a narrative progressives immediately condemned as highly misleading and pernicious.

"Look what happens when the Labour Party moves so, so far to the left," Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, told donors at a fundraiser in San Francisco Thursday. "It comes up with ideas that are not able to be contained within a rational basis quickly."

"You're also going to see people saying, 'My God, [U.K. Prime Minister] Boris Johnson, who is kind of a physical and emotional clone of the president, is able to win," the former vice president said, according to pool reports. ...

Progressives and other critics were quick to push back against efforts to use Corbyn's loss as a cudgel against Sanders and Warren, noting that unique political dynamics in the U.K.—particularly polarization over Brexit and Corbyn's deep unpopularity—make such comparisons absurd and dishonest. ...

Commentators were quick to note that, unlike Corbyn against Johnson, Sanders has polled favorably against Trump in hypothetical general election match-ups.

"Comparisons to the U.K. are inevitable but lazy," said Adam Jentleson, public affairs director at advocacy group Democracy Forward. "If you're gonna do it, you have to grapple with the fact that Corbyn was deeply unpopular whereas Biden, Bernie, and Warren all rank about the same on fav[orability]."

Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York, also pointed out that Sanders' overall favorability rating among the U.S. electorate is far higher than Corbyn's in the U.K.

Krystal Ball: The secret to ending Joe Biden

The Search for a Pete Buttigieg Fundraiser

Ilhan Omar Joins Sanders in Drawing 1,300 People to Largest New Hampshire Rally of 2020 Primary So Far

Sen. Bernie Sanders held his largest rally yet in the key state of New Hampshire on Friday night, joined by Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has faced racist attacks since taking office earlier this year but who received a warm welcome from the crowd of more than 1,300 people.

The rally was reportedly the largest of any Democratic primary candidate in the state so far, according to the campaign; last month, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg reported that he drew "about 1,300" to a rally in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

"The political revolution is strong in New Hampshire," said Sanders campaign New Hampshire state director Shannon Jackson. "We are seeing incredible enthusiasm from voters across the state. Sanders and Omar represent a vision for the future of economic, racial, environmental, and social justice, and the voters of New Hampshire are on board. The multiethnic working class coalition we are building was on display today and will ultimately lead us to victory on February 11th."

Omar's appearance with Sanders came hours after a Washington Examiner op-ed claimed the Vermont senator is running "the most anti-Semitic [campaign] in decades" despite the fact that Sanders' fathers' family members were killed in the Holocaust. Omar, one of the first Muslim women to be elected to Congress and, like Sanders, a vocal critic of Israel's violations of Palestinians' human rights, was named as an example of the senator's allyship with so-called anti-Semites.

The editorial raised alarm among progressives concerned that anti-Sanders groups could level the same attacks that weakened outgoing British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in Thursday's general election—but the New Hampshire crowd showed enthusiasm for Omar's appearance.

Trump is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot. Our campaign is the strongest to defeat him because it is rooted in human solidarity. Join us live for our rally with @ilhanmn in Nashua, NH: https://t.co/vArIp7GjiI

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 14, 2019

Michael Brooks: NYT smears Cenk Uygur

Wisconsin judge's ruling could purge 200,000 from voter rolls

A Wisconsin judge’s order to boot more than 200,000 people from voter rolls in the battleground state spurred condemnation from Democrats, amid claims of voter suppression.

If the decision stands, it could have an impact on the 2020 presidential election. In 2016, Donald Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes. Subsequent contests have also returned tight margins.

“I won the race for governor by less than 30,000 votes,” tweeted Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat who beat the former Republican presidential hopeful Scott Walker last year. “This move pushed by Republicans to remove 200,000 Wisconsinites from the voter rolls is just another attempt at overriding the will of the people and stifling the democratic process.

In October, the Wisconsin Elections Commission mailed a letter to 234,000 voters who it thought might have moved, requesting that they update registration information. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (Will), a conservative group, then filed suit. The lawsuit said the voters contacted should have 30 days to confirm their addresses. If they did not do so, Will said, their registration status should be changed from “eligible” to “ineligible”.

Will asked county circuit judge Paul Malloy to grant an injunction that would require election authorities to purge the rolls. In his ruling on Friday, Malloy identified a legal obligation to strip the rolls in 30 days. “I don’t want to see someone deactivated but I don’t write the law,” said Malloy, who was appointed in 2002 by the then Republican governor, Scott McCallum, and has since been re-elected. “There’s no basis for saying 12 to 24 months is a good time frame. It’s not that difficult to do it sooner … If you don’t like [it], you have to go back to the legislature.”

Warren, Biden and other Democrats threaten to boycott debate amid labor feud

All the Democratic presidential candidates slated to participate in next week’s debate have threatened to skip the event if an ongoing labor dispute forces them to cross picket lines on the university campus where the debate will be hosted.

A labor union says it will picket as Loyola Marymount University hosts Thursday’s sixth Democratic debate, and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders responded by tweeting they would not participate if that meant crossing it. Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer and Andrew Yang followed suit.

“The DNC should find a solution that lives up to our party’s commitment to fight for working people. I will not cross the union’s picket line even if it means missing the debate,” Warren tweeted.

Sanders tweeted: “I will not be crossing their picket line.” Biden tweeted: “We’ve got to stand together with @UNITEHERE11 for affordable health care and fair wages. A job is about more than just a paycheck. It’s about dignity.” The other candidates used Twitter to post similar sentiments.

How the Fossil Fuel Industry Is Attempting to Buy the Global Youth Climate Movement

The same day that 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg gave a stirring speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September, in which she criticized delegates for “stealing my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” the architects of the climate crisis welcomed select youth participants from the summit to dine. CEOs from fossil fuel corporations including BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and Norway’s Equinor were attending the annual gathering of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative in New York, which includes industry leaders who claim to be committed to taking “practical” action on climate change. On the agenda for lunch was to “explore options for long-term engagement” with young people the industry could trust. Student Energy, a nonprofit based in Alberta, near Canada’s tar sands region, helped organize the event, which included time for students to grill the CEOs about their inaction on climate change.

Tension in the room was high, Student Energy’s executive director, 30-year-old Meredith Adler, told The Intercept. “The whole discussion started off with one of our participants talking about why youth don’t trust oil and gas companies,” she said. But by the end of the meeting, Adler tweeted that she was “very impressed” with OGCI. “I don’t feel they had all the answers or strong enough answers but they are really listening,” she wrote.

The students’ questions may have been tough, but the event was great PR for the fossil fuel industry. Gone are the days when CEOs openly questioned the existence of climate change. Today, industry leaders are feigning a sense of climate urgency while pushing forward proposals for climate action that will allow companies to keep harvesting carbon-emitting products well into the future. Subjecting themselves to a cohort of skeptical students was an opportunity for oil and gas executives to boost their credibility in an era when many young activists will only engage with them with picket signs. Young activists say they’re seeing more of this “youth-washing” as the global youth climate movement gains momentum, including at the U.N. annual climate conference, known as COP 25, which is wrapping up in Madrid this week. With “youth” becoming synonymous with climate action, corporations and politicians are increasingly using young people to portray themselves as climate serious. ...

Although Student Energy’s leaders often echo the talking points of activists like Thunberg, the group’s membership — a network it claims includes 40,000 young people — is largely made up of people who want to work in the energy industry. Student Energy is among the youth groups granted observer status at COP 25, meaning that its members can gain access to negotiation spaces, speak with the negotiating parties, and participate in events. Its presence at the U.N.’s international climate talks is only expected to grow. Student Energy’s 2018 report noted that the group had seen a 73 percent increase in active chapters. Next year, the oil and gas major BP has pledged to send 50 Student Energy delegates to COP26. The funding would double the size of the group’s usual delegation, according to a BP press release. In a conference space that serves as a battleground of ideas about how to address the climate crisis, BP apparently sees Student Energy’s presence as beneficial to the corporation.

Today #COP25 is ending in a state of disarray. The requirement to increase ambition & ramp up emissions reduction targets in 2020 - a critical piece of the Paris Agreement - has been removed. Wealthy countries have blocked talks about loss & damage for climate-impacted countries. https://t.co/2kvjVsHzWz

— Adrien Salazar (@adrien4ej) December 14, 2019

In Madrid, at #COP25, the U.S. continued its long tradition of sacrificing survival chances of billions of people for its own ability to continue making incredible amounts of money and shirking its historical climate responsibility.

The U.S. is a threat to humanity. Full stop. https://t.co/J0hWrvg2Dx

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) December 15, 2019

'We Are Furious': As COP 25 Draws to Close, Green Campaigners Fume as Rich Nations Move to Gut Paris Agreement

With just hours left in the COP 25 climate conference taking place in Madrid, Spain, international climate campaigners said Friday they are "furious" over rich countries' refusal to adequately commit to addressing the urgency of and pay for their role in fueling the climate crisis.

"Just as we thought the slow pace and weak ambition shown at the climate talks couldn't get worse, along comes COP 25," said Sara Shaw, Climate Justice and Energy Program coordinator for Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). She also criticized "the advance of dodgy carbon trading that will only exacerbate the climate crisis and harm Southern communities."

As crunch time hits, hammering out a deal on controversial carbon markets is proving to be sticking point. ...

The climate campaigners' comments came on the final day of a conference that saw activists including Fridays for Future youth stage protests within the event hall demanding climate justice. The activists were kicked out of the conference, in their view, had their voices suppressed over those of corporate polluters.

Speaking about the unrest at the conference, Nnimmo Bassey of Health of Mother Earth Foundation told Democracy Now! Wednesday that "the protesters here are saying that the trajectory on which the COP negotiation is moving, which is towards market mechanisms rather than real climate action, is the wrong direction and that this cannot be accepted."

"We're seeing a situation where the rich, polluting countries are not ready to fund climate adaptation and mitigation to pay for loss and damage," said Bassey.

Some countries, though, have made good pledges, as Jake Schmidt, Brendan Guy, and Han Chen wrote at NRDC's expert blog Thursday. "The 80 countries that have committed to put forward stronger steps to curb climate change here at COP25 in Madrid are impressive."

But the 80 countries represent only about 10% of global emissions. The 20 major emitters that account for approximately 80% of global emissions have stood nearly mute in Madrid. They've dithered over side issues and done absolutely nothing about the 800-pound gorilla in the room—the continually rising global emissions of greenhouse gases hurtling us toward catastrophe. The eyes of the world are squarely on them.

It's no secret who those major emissions produers are.

"The United States," which last month began withdrawing from the Paris agreement, "is not a good actor here," Greenpeace International executive director Jennifer Morgan told CNN, adding that Saudi Arabia and Brazil are also thwarting progress. DeSmog blog also reported Friday that "almost a third of Saudi Arabia's representatives attending the Madrid meeting, known as COP25, are associated with the oil and gas industry."

"I think that the climate politics are quite dark," Morgan continued. "You have the oil majors working with the Trump administration, with others, to try and slow things down here. And you have others that just aren't prioritizing it." That means "the role of countries or units like the European Union becomes even more important, but... it's like they're tired and they're not rising above the daily kind of issues and there's no time for that."

FOEI's Shaw, in her statement, suggested such inaction and active thwarting of progress was sabotaging the prospect of global temperature rise to below the threshold agreed to in the Paris climate accord.

"Here, we have witnessed the gutting of the already weak Paris Agreement" as well as "a refusal by developed countries to pay up for loss and damage finance, while they try to introduce language that would remove their liability for the impacts their emissions have caused," she said.

"We are furious that while so many are already suffering the impacts of climate change, corporations and rich country governments are working to destroy any hope of keeping global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees," said Shaw. "And when we stood up in peaceful protest at COP 25, we were aggressively suppressed."

The only thing more disastrous than the state of UN climate negotiations at #COP25 is the state of the global climate. pic.twitter.com/dpf7XQHAHx

— Catherine Abreu (@cat_abreu) December 14, 2019

COP25 Was a Failure, But Activists’ Collective Organizing at the Talks Was Unprecedented

Also of Interest

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

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For WaPo’s Centrist Sources, Progressive Politics Are ‘Purity Tests’

Trump-Friendly California Democrat Is Facing His First Serious Primary Challenger

America’s Two-Headed One Party System

California Governor Newsom Nixes PG&E Bankruptcy Plan

The historical case for abolishing billionaires

“Who's Afraid of Bernie Sanders?” with Krystal Ball, Matt Karp, and Michael Brooks

Rising: NEA President: Which candidate stood out at the 2020 Education Forum

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Useful Idiots: Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks, His Campaign, and Media Coverage of Progressives

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Small-town Alaskan newspaper seeks new owner. Price: $0

A Little Night Music

Slim Harpo - I'm Your Bread Maker, Baby

Slim Harpo - I'm Gonna Keep What I've Got

Slim Harpo - I Love The Life I'm Living

Slim Harpo - Strange Love

Slim Harpo - Harpo's Blues

Slim Harpo - I Got Love If You Want It

Slim Harpo - I'm a King Bee

Slim Harpo - Mohair Sam

Slim Harpo - Buzzin'

Slim Harpo - Shake Your Hips