LIZ SHELD’S CYBER MONDAY MORNING BRIEF: Harassment, Tax Reform, RUSSIA and Much, Much More.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THIS WAS IMPOSSIBLE: Gun crime rises in England despite gun bans.

The Office for National Statistics found a 27 percent increase in crimes involving firearms during its most recent review of crime data. Despite a near ban on the civilian ownership of handguns the review found crimes committed with handguns increased by 25 percent and accounted for the majority of gun crimes. The agency said the increases in 2016 were part of a multiyear trend.

“The latest rise continues an upward trend seen in firearms offences in the last few years, however, offences are still 31 percent below a decade ago,” the most recent annual report from the agency said. “Over the last year, over two-thirds (32 of the 439) of police forces recorded a rise in offences involving firearms.”

NABIS cited the statistics as part of the reason it decided to undertake a new gun surrender program this month.

It will work for sure, this time.

STRAPPING THE LIFEBOATS TOGETHER: OPEC, Russia Said To Announce Oil Pact Extension On Nov 30.

While OPEC and Russia have agreed on a general framework, discussions are ongoing as to how OPEC could meet Russia’s demands, including how to include a link between the size of the cuts and the state of the rebalancing of the oil market. There are also discussions about including an option to review the pact again in early 2018, including calling a new meeting, according to Bloomberg’s sources.

As of last week, not all Russian oil companies were on board with extending the cuts, and they were said to have discussed a six-month extension with Energy Minister Alexander Novak.

Novak, for his part, said on Friday in a television interview posted on the energy ministry’s website that some 50 percent of the global oil oversupply had been erased and Brent prices had risen to an “acceptable enough” level of more than $60 a barrel.

Nevertheless, the oil market is not yet balanced and the pact needs to be extended, Novak said, adding that Russia supports an extension, and various options are being discussed.

If they pull it off, that’s more market share for American frackers. If they don’t, we get cheaper oil.

BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SEE IT: Islamic Military Coalition to ‘Wipe Terrorists’ Off the Earth.

FAKE NEWS: Made in China.

In light of the recent revelations that divisive and inflammatory websites and Facebook pages were run out of Russia ahead and after the 2016 United States presidential election, journalists and researchers have paid little attention to biased news websites targeting audiences in the U.S. run out of countries other than Russia.

One such case study is 4thmedia.org, a China-based media outlet run by Kiyul Chung, a visiting professor at China’s Tsinghua University’s Journalism and Communication School in Beijing. The media outlet does operate in what seems to be an official connection to state university, but it is not clear whether the Chinese Communist Party is connected to the 4th Media.

4thmedia.org started out as antiCNN.com, a Chinese youth website launched in 2008 by a Tsinghua University graduate Rao Jin, who in 2015 spoke at a Communist Youth League of China event and worked with a Communist Party-sponsored rap group named CD Rev. The antiCNN.com website was created in response to what the website’s creators perceived as biased and prejudiced reporting on unrest in Tibet by Western media outlets. AntiCNN.com amassed significant support in China and, according to the website’s managers, grew from 100,000 to 100 million monthly visitors in less than two years.

I’m dubious of any statistics coming out of China, but it is interesting that while Russia has been taking the heat, Beijing has kept its head down.

Anyway, it’s a lengthy article, but you might find it worth your time.

SHE PUT HERSELF THERE: Conyers allegations put Pelosi in tight spot.

In an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Pelosi seemed to underscore the cautious approach by taking pains to praise Conyers’ record and call for “due process,” even as she said she believed “he will do the right thing.” She also referred to Conyers as an “icon” for his lengthy service and work “to protect women.”

That’s rich, especially since Conyers himself seems to have sold out Pelosi by quitting his Judiciary Committee post after her overly kind words on Sunday morning.

AMERICA’S LONGEST WAR: Pentagon tried to block independent report on child sex among Afghan forces, Senate office says.

Although the report released Nov. 16 by the Defense Department Inspector General’s office (DODIG) reached the grim conclusion that, for years, U.S. personnel have been inadequately trained to report such crimes, a parallel investigation by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) is thought to contain a much more detailed accounting of the problem’s severity.

But the results of SIGAR’s unreleased inquiry, which was requested by 93 members of Congress in 2015, remains classified at the Pentagon’s direction, raising questions about the military’s transparency and the extent to which it is complying with laws meant to curb such abuse.

The Pentagon responded with “resistance” when Congress tapped SIGAR to conduct the probe, said Tim Rieser, an aide to Leahy, vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee whose namesake legislation, known as the Leahy Law, requires the U.S. military to halt assistance to foreign military units found to have committed gross human rights violations.

Instead, senior Pentagon officials argued that SIGAR, which since 2009 has produced dozens of reports exposing corruption within the Afghan government and incompetence among Afghan security forces, lacked the jurisdiction for this particular task, Rieser said.

“It’s fair to say there was an effort to discourage the investigation” by SIGAR, he said, adding that eventually the two agencies agreed to coordinate and release complementary reports, but that the Pentagon’s investigators did not fulfill promises to fully cooperate.

What do we hope to accomplish with yet another Afghanistan surge?

HMM: Cornyn Bill Would Nix Pay for Federal Overseers Who Don’t Report to Gun Background Check System.

HIJAB BARBIE: Perfect Christmas gift for non-Muslim parents who want to stick it to Trump.

Is there a big demand for hijab Barbie? Mattel thinks so. One obvious market for the doll is the liberal, non-Muslim parent who wants to make a statement to the world about tolerance and intersectionality.

This is the kind of person who dresses a baby boy in pink to trap the unwary into an uncomfortable/sanctimonious discussion about gender roles. These parents will have a special glow of virtue about them in the checkout line. In fact, they will make a special effort to go to the mall instead of ordering online so they can chat up the patient checkout person about the social importance of their purchase.

But kids love to experiment with juxtaposition, so what happens on Christmas morning when their girls (or boys, whatever!) immediately put hijab Barbie into a skimpy bikini? Odds are they will get a stern lecture on cultural sensitivity. Because really, kids, this isn’t about you having fun; it’s about your parents sticking it to Trump.

There’s nothing a committed progressive can’t ruin.

INCHON II IF BY SEA: South Korea Has a Secret Weapon If North Korea Starts a War.

Under the mentorship of the U.S. Marine Corps, South Korea has maintained one of the largest marine forces in the world. As one USMC colonel put it during the Vietnam War, which saw a brigade’s worth of South Korean marines (and their U.S.-trained officers) sent to Southeast Asia, “We taught them everything we know, and now they know it better than us.” Today, the Republic of Korea Marine Corps (ROKMC) consists of twenty-nine thousand marines organized into two divisions and a brigade.

In past years, the ROKMC has operated as a theater reserve, capable of rapidly reinforcing areas where invading North Korean forces might stage a breakthrough. This could be accomplished by moving troops over land, but it could also be done by sea: in 1975, the ROK Navy had twenty landing ships, including eight tank landing ships, and sixty other amphibious craft. If necessary, the ROKMC could stage its own, smaller-scale version of Inchon, though staging an attack into North Korea was not yet feasible.

After the end of the Cold War and the abandonment of North Korea by its Soviet ally, contingency plans involving the ROKMC began taking a more audacious tone. OPLAN 5027-94, one of the Pentagon’s contingency plans for the Korean Peninsula, envisioned a U.S. and South Korean amphibious landing at Wonsan to make an end-run on Pyongyang. The ROKMC would be used not just to defend South Korea, but to destroy the North Korean government.

I don’t know how to say “Semper Fi” in Korean, but I’d wager the men and women of ROKMC do.

UGH: In Detailed Account, Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys Is Accused of Rape.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Pornhub to open erotic NYC shop with live-streaming bed videocam.

IT NEVER ENDED: The End of the End of History.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Google Plans ‘Knowledge Cards,’ ‘Newstrition Labels’ to Highlight Credible Sources.

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG: Islamic State beheads 15 of its own fighters.

REQUIEM FOR A HIT MAN: A doomed hired gun unburdens himself in a jailhouse interview that sheds light on the shadow battle between Russia and Ukraine.

In a jailhouse interview with The Wall Street Journal in February, Mr. Makhauri expanded upon the murky world he inhabited, politely answering questions about his life for two hours while handcuffed in a hallway. He worked as an agent, he said, wherever there was a fight against Moscow’s influence, including Chechnya, Georgia, Turkey and Syria. Ukraine, his last place of employment, would turn out to be more hazardous than he reckoned.

Ukraine has become a magnet for hired guns as Kiev tries to fight its former master Moscow’s bid to reassert control. With a stalemate on the battlefront between Russian-backed rebels and the government, Moscow and Kiev appear to have turned to contract killings to settle scores and winnow the ranks of commanders in the war, Western diplomats say.

Most of those killings have been carried out far from the almost daily volleys of artillery in eastern Ukraine, turning Kiev into a hotbed of spies and hit men.

Victims have included the head of a Ukrainian special forces unit, Maksim Shapoval, who was blown up in his car at an intersection in downtown Kiev in June, and a former Russian prosecutor and parliament member, Denis Voronenkov, who had recently fled to Kiev for protection and was shot dead on a chestnut tree-lined boulevard in March.

This one is behind the WSJ paywall, but maybe you can find away around it here.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: It’s Black Friday and Much, Much More.

THIS DOESN’T TAKE A CLASSIFIED STUDY: Newly Declassified Documents Prove America’s North Korea Strategy Has Failed.

CHANGE? Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa takes power and vows to serve all citizens.

THAT’S THE EQUIVALENT OF THROWING AWAY MORE THAN 300 MODEL 3 SEDANS EACH DAY: Tesla’s Burning Through Nearly Half a Million Dollars Every Hour.

Over the past 12 months, the electric-car maker has been burning money at a clip of about $8,000 a minute (or $480,000 an hour), Bloomberg data show. At this pace, the company is on track to exhaust its current cash pile on Monday, Aug. 6. (At 2:17 a.m. New York time, if you really want to be precise.)

To be fair, few Tesla watchers expect the cash burn to continue at quite such a breakneck pace, and the company itself says it’s ramping up output of its all-important Model 3, which will bring money in the door. Investors don’t seem concerned. Tesla shares rose almost 3 percent to $317.81 Tuesday, giving it a market capitalization of $53 billion. Ford Motor Co. is worth $48 billion.

But still, its need for fresh cash came into high relief last week when Musk unveiled his latest plan to raise funds. He’s asking customers to pay him upfront to order vehicles that may not be delivered for years.

That seems… unwise.

GODSPEED? This man is about to launch himself in his homemade rocket to prove the Earth is flat.

Seeking to prove that a conspiracy of astronauts fabricated the shape of the Earth, a California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a rocket he built from scrap metal.

Assuming the 500-mph, mile-long flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Mike Hughes told the Associated Press, his journey into the atmosflat will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat-Earth space program.

Hughes’s ultimate goal is a subsequent launch that puts him miles above the Earth, where the 61-year-old limousine driver hopes to photograph proof of the disc we all live on.

“It’ll shut the door on this ball earth,” Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group for Saturday’s flight. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons and Elon Musk making fake rockets from blimps.

Hughes promised the flat-Earth community that he would expose the conspiracy with his steam-powered rocket, which will launch from a heavily modified mobile home — though he acknowledged that he still had much to learn about rocket science.

I think — I hope — he’s putting us on.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Sick of Your Family This Thanksgiving? Rent a New One.

THANK YOU, NASA: Cassini Team Unveils Farewell Photo of Ringed Planet.

DOESN’T THIS SEEM POTENTIALLY SELF-SERVING? Conyers: Allow ‘People Who are Incarcerated’ to Vote.

GIVING THANKS: Easily Overlooked Signs of a Gradually Improving Country.