David Swanson humorously recalls his "career" as a "fake news" propagandist on behalf of the Russians "without ever receiving a dime from Russia or realizing what I was doing." The Washington Post has apparently published a sort of "enemies list" of news outlets purveying "Russian propaganda," nearly 20 of which have published Mr. Swanson's work (including Counterpunch, Naked Capitalism, and OpEd News, three sites to which I've linked numerous times in the past). Then follows a good primer on how to think for yourself (though Interstate Crosscheck hasn't actually stripped 7 million voters from the rolls -- it has 7 million voters in its database, but Greg Palast has lately estimated that Crosscheck had actually stripped 1.3 million voters from the rolls). Again, I urge you to remember that when the "liberal" media complains about "news bubbles," they're also complaining that they don't run the One Big News Bubble anymore.
Frank Clemente at Inequality.org gives you the "Six Worst Things About the Trump Tax Plan." Roll call: gives huge tax breaks to rich folks and corporations! Cuts the corporate tax rate! Gives big tax cut to corporations immorally stashing their profits overseas! Actually increases taxes on middle-class families! Cuts taxes on hedge funds (remember when Mr. Trump said they "get away with murder"? Good times!) and other "pass-through" corporations! Gets rid of the Estate Tax entirely! Yeah, what a boon for the little guy that all is.
Kyle Swenson at The New Republic profiles Nancy Pelosi's challenger for House Minority Leader, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan. He sure talks a good game, and he comes from that area of the Rust Belt where Donald Trump apparently did so well, and Ms. Pelosi is certainly compromised by corporate money (although the article describes this phenomenon as her "fundraising prowess"), but I didn't need to hear him bring up "public-private partnerships" to know that we're still better off trusting ourselves to press our Reps and Senators, rather than wait for Another Great Hope to emerge for the Democrats. That's how Our Glorious Elites keep us in their world; it's not how we create our world.
Police officer who killed Philando Castile in Minnesota in July gets charged with second-degree manslaughter. Charging and convicting aren't the same thing, obviously -- nor should they be! -- but you have to wonder if Officer Yanez would ever have been charged without Mr. Castile's girlfriend documenting the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook. No use arguing with me that Mr. Castile must have done something wrong because police had already stopped him almost four dozen times in his life, as if you've never heard of Driving While Black, and besides, does getting stopped 46 times on minor traffic violations warrant the death penalty?
Finally, Alexis Bonogofsky at TruthOut explores how Norwegian indigenous activists helped get Norway's largest bank to divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline. Key point: the activists managed to get a 20-page report on human rights abuses at Standing Rock mere hours before their meeting with DNB executives. "We needed something to convince the bank that the abuses weren't just found on social media," and in the 20-page report compiled by members of the Water Protector Legal Collective turned out to be just that. Protests at DNB branches in Norway and work from a Sierra Club organizer in Montana also helped a great deal. Which only goes to prove the adage: "One mosquito will not bother a snake. But a thousand mosquitos will kill it."
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