Alternet: At least 50 Donald Trump electors were illegally seated as Electoral College members: report

More than 50 Electoral College members who voted for Donald Trump were ineligible to serve as presidential electors because they did not live in the congressional districts they represented or held elective office in states legally barring dual officeholders.

That stunning finding is among the conclusions of an extensive 1,000-plus page legal briefing prepared by a bipartisan nationwide legal team for members of Congress who are being urged to object to certifying the 2016 Electoral College results on Friday.

“Trump’s ascension to the presidency is completely illegitimate,” said Ryan Clayton of Americans Take Action, who is promoting the effort. “It’s not just Russians hacking our democracy. It’s not just voter suppression at unprecedented levels. It is also [that] there are Republicans illegally casting ballots in the Electoral College, and in a sufficient number that the results of the Electoral College proceedings are illegitimate as well.” [...]

The Electoral College’s results have only been challenged twice since 1877. The most recent was in 2005, when an objection to Ohio’s Electoral College votes was filed by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, D-OH, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA. While that effort did not stop President George W. Bush's reelection, it did force both chambers of Congress to debate for two hours before the Electoral College vote was ratified. Tubbs-Jones and Boxer used the podium to rail against GOP efforts to suppress the vote and disqualify ballots in communities of color.

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Al Jazeera: Stranded and sick, refugees endure harsh Serbian winter

The other side of the street is lined with hotels, cafes and restaurants. Within eyeshot is a construction site for Belgrade Waterfront, a controversial real estate project that will place a high-rise tower and luxury apartments along the Danube River.

Fawad Wakili, an 18-year-old who fled Afghanistan's Kabul four months ago, is among the estimated 700 refugees and migrants sleeping in and around the abandoned buildings behind Belgrade's central bus station.

As of November, the United Nations estimated that more than 6,000 refugees and migrants were in Serbia. [...]

An estimated 361,019 refugees and migrants fled war and economic devastation to reach European shores by boat last year, while more than 5,000 died or are still missing at sea, according to the UNHCR. In 2015, more than a million made the often-fatal journey across the Mediterranean Sea. [...]

As part of the Dublin Regulation protocol, refugees and migrants can be deported to the country they were first registered in upon entering the EU. For Fawad, the prospect of returning to Bulgaria ignites fears of de facto imprisonment, as well as being beaten and robbed by authorities and vigilantes.

In addition to extortion and robbery, rights organisations have decried Bulgarian authorities and civilian-led militias for violence and ill treatment of refugees and migrants.

In December 2015, the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and Oxfam published a joint report accusing Bulgaria of "extortion, robbery, physical violence, threats of deportation and police dog attacks". [...]

Yet in November, the Serbian Ministry of Labour and Employment issued a statement announcing a ban on NGOs from providing refugees and migrants who live outside of government-recognised camps with food, blankets and clothing. 

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Political Critique: Polish racism in a Mazurian kebab shop

Place: Elk, a sixty-thousand strong city in the Polish region of Mazury. Time: the last night of the year. Action: A bar brawl ended with the death of a twenty-one-year-old Polish man. Sadly, this is nowhere near an isolated occurrence: not so long ago, similar incidents of bar brawls escalating to knifing to death took place in Sopot, Radom and Warsaw. But the Elk stabbing is special nonetheless: it sparked riots lasting for two days now. Lynching almost took place, more than thirty people were arrested, a wave of hatred is sweeping social networks, nationalist organizations urge revenge against the supposed murdered. Why? Simple: the accident took place in front of a kebab shop and foreign workers from the fast food took part in the incident. [...]

It is not difficult to connect the dots and realize the relation of these attacks to the politics of the ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), to the deluded raving of Jarosław Kaczyński about zones of Sharia law in Sweden and to the declared unwillingness to accept refugees from Syria. And, primarily, to  Kaczyński’s constant flirting with nationalists, racists and preachers of violence – like the Member of Parliament Paweł Kukiz or the extremist right-wing movement Ruch narodowy. Those who incited the riots feel their violence is being officially blessed by higher echelons.  Mariusz Błaszczak, the Minister of Interior, even went as far as to claim that the attitude of people trying to lynch the supposed perpetrator is “perfectly understandable”. [...]

There is one more – purely technical – factor to this. By condoning assaults on Muslims we are asking for an actual terrorist attack in our part of Europe – not committed by the common, honest immigrant but his polar opposite: a radicalized religious fundamentalist, produced by our own hatred.

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Quartz: The UK knew China was planning a massacre at Tiananmen Square two weeks before it happened

“Two hundred dead could bring 20 years of peace to China,” former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was quoted as saying in recently declassified documents. His words were spoken weeks ahead of the bloody military crackdown on student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

The UK’s National Archives released on Dec. 30 a huge number of previously secret government files from 1989 and 1990. Over two dozen documents (pdf) dated between May 20 and July 21 in 1989 revealed the Margaret Thatcher administration’s understanding of the political climate in China in the lead-up to the crackdown. A major reveal: The UK embassy in Beijing knew two weeks before June 4 that the People’s Liberation Army was preparing to kill hundreds, if not thousands, of student protesters who had been gathering at Beijing’s main square for weeks. [...]

And on May 19, when ousted party chief Zhao Ziyang went to see the students with future prime minister Wen Jiabao at his side, he broke into tears as he told the students: “We have come too late.” Many took that as a further sign that a violent crackdown was imminent, but it was still not enough to convince the students and their supporters to leave. Beijing residents were conducting daily rounds to talk to the soldiers already stationed in the city, telling them that the protesters were not “counter-revolutionaries.” And at the end of it all, it was hard for a lot of Chinese people to believe that “the People’s Army” could open fire on the people.

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The Guardian: China to invest £292bn into renewable fuel by 2020

China will plough 2.5tn yuan (£292bn) into renewable power generation by 2020, the country’s energy agency has said, as the world’s largest energy market continues to shift away from dirty coal power towards cleaner fuels.

The investment will create more than 13m jobs in the sector, the National Energy Administration said in a blueprint document that lays out its plan to develop the nation’s energy sector during the five-year 2016 to 2020 period.

The NEA said installed renewable power capacity including wind, hydro, solar and nuclear power would contribute to about half of new electricity generation by 2020. [...]

Concerns about the social and economic costs of China’s air pollution have increased as the northern parts of the country, including the capital Beijing, have battled a bout of hazardous smog.

Illustrating the scale of the challenge, the NEA repeated on Thursday that renewables will still only account for just 15% of overall energy consumption by 2020, equivalent to 580m tonnes of coal.

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