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As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99% — Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not The 1% Who Profit From Austerity!
Images of the Day:
“Fake News”: There are many loathful things about the so-called fight against “fake news.” There are free speech concerns, first and foremost, and the “slippery slope” effect waging battle against it creates. For example, whose news is “fake” and whose is not? But additionally, what about fact that corporate/mainstream media so often leaves out key details/context in stories/reporting which would inform the public to a greater degree? The lie of omission, if you will. What about the stories that never get told? Isn’t that “fake news” too, or at least not the “real news”? And then there’s the fact the new fighting vanguard against “fake news,” many of them Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, themselves consistently lie/spin/manipulate/massage the facts to craft the narrative about themselves. And guess who plays ball with them to do that, carrying their water and conveying that message? The corporate/mainstream media. Would people not be flocking to the so-called “fake news” if not for the above-explained paradigm to begin with? — Steve Horn
Videos of the Day:
The New Death Penalty: Withholding Medicine: Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier Facing Potentially Fatal Medical Emergency Eddie Conway speaks with organizer Jasmine Heiss about ongoing efforts to get President Obama to grant a pardon to Peltier, who has been a political prisoner in the US for more than 4 decades
New Anti-BDS Bill in Senate Would Criminalize Criticism of Israel Journalist Charlotte Silver says the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act doesn’t do anything to counter or address anti-semitism, but instead targets Palestinian activism
U.S.
Women’s March on Washington barred from protesting Donald Trump inauguration Trump’s Presidential Inauguration Committee has blocked access to the landmark Lincoln Memorial in D.C. Protesters who plan to descend on Washington in the days surrounding President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration next month will find themselves barred from the nation’s most famous public protest site. The (Obama’s) National Park Service, on behalf of the Presidential Inauguration Committee, filed a “massive omnibus blocking permit” securing much of the National Mall, Pennsylvania Avenue, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial for Trump’s inauguration festivities, The Guardian reported on Thursday.
Trump Is Inheriting Power to Assassinate Anyone, Including US Citizens, With No Oversight Of all the people the United States government killed in the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, one of the most controversial targets was Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen and imam who at the time of his death had become the face of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The US killed Awlaki in a drone strike in late September of 2011 — despite having never charged him with a crime or presented evidence of his guilt in court — marking what The New York Times described as the “first time since the Civil War [that] the United States government had carried out the deliberate killing of an American citizen as a wartime enemy and without a trial.” Now, as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office after a campaign in which he promised to carry out war crimes, such as killing the families of suspected terrorists and reviving the torture program, Awlaki’s death is getting renewed attention. If Awlaki, a US citizen, could be deprived of life without judicial oversight, what limits will there be on Trump’s authority to carry out similar strikes against citizens and non-citizens alike? By John Knefel
Roaming Charges: Nasty As They Wanna Be Back in the 1990s, Alexander Cockburn and I coined a term for how the mainstream press goes about disclosing acts of government villainy that the newspapers had previously connived with or worked to conceal, and often both. We called this technique the “uncover-up.” An uncover-up unfolds something like this. A human rights group alleges that the US government has actively sponsored the torture and assassination of priests and nuns in a Latin American country. The front pages of a national paper, say the Washington Post, furiously deny the reports, citing unnamed sources deep in the intelligence community that a review had taken place and determined that the charges are unsubstantiated rumors with no factual basis. The editorial pages of the same paper then smear the sources of the story as left-wing agitators, agents of subversion or paranoids. Weeks go by. More evidence emerges: testimonials, photos, tape-recordings of screaming victims, American bootprints in the blood. Silence. And then after the initial fury has died down, somewhere in the nether regions of the paper the atrocities are quietly confirmed in sedate tones, never to be repeated and then solemnly filed away in the archives as “old news.” by Jeffrey St. Clair
This Week at CounterPunch: More Hollow Smears and Baseless Accusations This past week CounterPunch and other reputable independent media outlets were accused of spreading fake news during the presidential election – stories allegedly fabricated by the Ruskies. The baseless accusations originated from an obscure new anonymous outfit called PropOrNot, which claims that the “overall Russian effort is at least semi-centralized, with multiple Russian projects and influence operations working in parallel to manage the direct and outsourced production of propaganda across a wide range of outlets.” By Joshua Frank 
The ‘Lesser Evil’ witch hunt: Obama orders review of Russian election-related hacking President Barack Obama has ordered a full review into hacking by the Russians aimed at influencing US elections going back to 2008, the White House said Friday. “The President has directed the Intelligence Community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process. By Tal Kopan, Kevin Liptak and Jim Sciutto 
Environment:
An Apocalyptical Cycle — As Global Warming Increases, The Rate of Global Warming Increases: The Earth Itself Is Now Accelerating The Demise Of The Human Species In a massive new study published Wednesday in the influential journal Nature, no less than 50 authors from around the world document a so-called climate system “feedback” that, they say, could make global warming considerably worse over the coming decades. That feedback involves the planet’s soils, which are a massive repository of carbon due to the plants and roots that have grown and died in them, in many cases over vast time periods (plants pull in carbon from the air through photosynthesis and use it to fuel their growth). It has long been feared that as warming increases, the microorganisms living in these soils would respond by very naturally upping their rate of respiration, a process that in turn releases carbon dioxide or methane, leading greenhouse gases. It’s this concern that the new study validates.
During last warming period, Antarctica heated up two to three times more than planet average Amplification of warming at poles consistent with today’s climate change models A new study of warming after the last ice age 20,000 years ago confirms climate models that predict an amplification of warming at the poles. By 15,000 years ago, the Antarctic had warmed about 11 degrees Celsius, almost 3 times the average global warming (4 degrees Celsius). The calculations, based on temperature measurements down a 3.4-kilometer-deep borehole, prove that climate models do a good job of estimating past climatic conditions and, very likely, future changes. — University of California Berkeley
S.O.P. Save Our Planet — Worldwide Air Pollution is Making Us Ill Contaminated air is the world’s greatest preventable environmental health risk, and, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is responsible for the premature deaths of an estimated 6.5 million people annually (11.6% of global deaths) – an average of six every minute. And unless there is substantial reduction in the quantity of pollutants cast into the atmosphere, the death count is forecast to double by 2050. Indoor air pollution, mainly from wood or dung stoves in developing countries, accounts for a staggering three million annual deaths. By Graham Peebles 
Washington State Launches Suit Against Monsanto for Toxic PCB Pollution ‘Monsanto knew the dangers of PCBs yet hid them from the public to generate profits,’ said Wash. Attorney General Bob Ferguson by Andrea Germanos 
Ongoing Big Energy Crisis:
Black Liberation/ Civil Rights:
The Criminalization of Black Homelessness White supremacy systematically creates poverty with one hand while violently punishing it with the other. In communities all over the country, police are strongly incentivized — by federal grant conditions and local budgetary constraints alike — to make arrests and issue fines as frequently as possible. By Ebony Slaughter
Labor:
#ImWithChuck: Faux-Populist Trump Wages All-Out War on American Workers “Anyone who believes in robust, pluralistic democracy should be worried that a national leader, so soon after being elected, is assailing labor unions with an eye to weakening them.” By Lauren McCauley 
Carrier Spending Millions From Trump Deal To Automate Plant – Will Lay Off ‘Saved’ Workers Greg Hayes, the CEO of United Technologies, the parent of the Carrier Corporation, has confirmed that the money the company promised to invest in its Indianapolis facility as part of its deal with President-elect Donald Trump – $16 million in total – will be spent on technology to further automate its plant operations. Translation: robots will take over more human jobs.
Economy: 
If Trump Nominates John Allison as Bank Supervisor at the Fed, It Will Be a Triumph for Charles Koch and the Loony Ideas of Ayn Rand and Greenspan On December 4 the Wall Street Journal reported that President-elect Donald Trump was considering the following three individuals for Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve for Bank Supervision: John Allison, the long serving head of BB&T bank and a Board Member of the right-wing Cato Institute which was half owned by the Koch brothers for decades; Paul Atkins, a consultant, former member of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Visiting Scholar at the right-wing think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, which has heavy ties and financial backing from the Koch brothers. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
Austria enters a new normality “A red-white-red signal of hope and positive change; a red-white-red signal today goes from Austria to all the capitals of the European Union.” This election contest eventually took four rounds before a winner could finally be named. The first election, with six candidates, ended as a disaster for the candidates of the two governing parties – the social democrats and the Christian democrats – who jointly received less than 23 per cent of the votes. Three outsiders – the right-wing opposition candidate Hofer, and the independents liberals, Van der Bellen and Irmgrad Griess – came first, second, and third respectively. This lead to the fall of the social democratic Prime Minister Faymann. by Emanuel Tomaselli
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
Conclusion
It bears repeating that fires have never caused the total collapse of a steel-framed high-rise before or since 9/11. Did we witness an unprecedented event three separate times on September 11, 2001? The NIST reports, which attempted to support that unlikely conclusion, fail to persuade a growing number of architects, engineers, and scientists. Instead, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that all three buildings were destroyed by controlled demolition. Given the far-reaching implications, it is morally imperative that this hypothesis be the subject of a truly scientific and impartial investigation by responsible authorities.
Quote of the Day: