Resource:
Your Empire At Work
Does anybody know if our honorable client-state, Saudi Arabia, has crucified (sic) Ali al-Nimr, the teenager so sentenced last year?
He was only 17 years old when he was condemned to death by crucifixion (sic) for participation in an illegal demonstration and for a large number of other offences, including “setting up a page on his Blackberry with over 800 people, naming it ‘The Liberals,' with the goal of inciting demonstrations by way of sending pictures of the demonstrations, their time/locations and inviting people to participate"?
I can't find any follow-up coverage in the press, although there are plenty of happy and not-so-happy stories about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his efforts to "stabilize" the Saudi monarchy.
For instance, have they yet chopped the head off Mujtaba al Sweikat, the 17-year-old arrested, at the airport on his way to matriculate at the University of Western Michigan, for “supervising” a group on Facebook and “photographing the demonstrations, which is punishable according to the cybercrime bill”? And has the disabled teenager Munir Al-Adam been beheaded yet for his participation in Arab spring protests?
All these executions would be crimes under international law, by the way. Any word from Turtle Bay or The Hague?
--
Postscript: Despite a deadly war he is waging against neighboring Yemen, Saudi Arabia's King Salman has been awarded 'Personality of the Year' for his role in “uniting and protecting” the Muslim community.
He was only 17 years old when he was condemned to death by crucifixion (sic) for participation in an illegal demonstration and for a large number of other offences, including “setting up a page on his Blackberry with over 800 people, naming it ‘The Liberals,' with the goal of inciting demonstrations by way of sending pictures of the demonstrations, their time/locations and inviting people to participate"?
I can't find any follow-up coverage in the press, although there are plenty of happy and not-so-happy stories about Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his efforts to "stabilize" the Saudi monarchy.
For instance, have they yet chopped the head off Mujtaba al Sweikat, the 17-year-old arrested, at the airport on his way to matriculate at the University of Western Michigan, for “supervising” a group on Facebook and “photographing the demonstrations, which is punishable according to the cybercrime bill”? And has the disabled teenager Munir Al-Adam been beheaded yet for his participation in Arab spring protests?
All these executions would be crimes under international law, by the way. Any word from Turtle Bay or The Hague?
--
Postscript: Despite a deadly war he is waging against neighboring Yemen, Saudi Arabia's King Salman has been awarded 'Personality of the Year' for his role in “uniting and protecting” the Muslim community.
When you hear the word "reform"...
...reach for your gun.
The most pointed irony of the DCCC/DNC interventions in California, specifically, is that here the party leadership is being hoist on its
own petard. They colluded in a "reform" effort led by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to lock insurgents and independents out of general elections by limiting the final contestants to the top two vote getters in open primaries, assuming they would be the establishment picks from each party. Now the party bosses are forced to intervene to protect their pre-washed, pre-shrunk, pre-approved, corporate-friendly choices from an army of progressive challengers and angry Democratic voters.
The rest of the story:
✓ Fearing Chaos, National Democrats Plunge Into Midterm Primary Fights by Alexander Burns (New York Times).
✓ Democrats consider attacking their own California candidates to win back Congress by Emily Cadei (Sacramento Bee).
Reading list:
✓ Unintended consequences of California’s open primary by Martin Wiskol (Orange County Register).
✓ California GOP should embrace open primary system: Orange County Register editorial 2017/10/22.
✓ The political parties would like voters to kill California's top-two primary system in 2018 by John Myers (Los Angeles Times).
✓ The defining characteristic of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for too many years has been its well-honed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: Texas Progressive Laura Moser Is Beating Democratic Insiders by John Nichols (The Nation).
✓ While this article is mostly true, it would be fairer to say that, after 30 years of Democratic missteps, the chickens came home to roost during Obama's stay in office: The Democratic Party Got Crushed During The Obama Presidency. Here's Why by Mara Kiasson (NPR).
✓ Instead of campaigning on issues that reform-minded voters care about, the DCCC is going after a GOP “culture of corruption.” Once again, elect us because we're not them. It worked then. But not since. Will it work now?: Democrats Look To Their Successful 2006 Messaging In Bid To Retake The House by Amanda Terkel (Huffington Post).
Extra credit:
✓ Maybe they can hire the lawyers who won the Citizens United case: DNC Lawyers Argue ‘Primary Rigging’ Is Protected by 1st Amendment (Liberty Headlines).
The most pointed irony of the DCCC/DNC interventions in California, specifically, is that here the party leadership is being hoist on its
 |
| Drew Shebeman—Tribune Media |
"The approach is laced with peril for a party divided over matters of ideology and political strategy, and increasingly dominated by activists who tend to resent what they see as meddling from Washington. A Democratic effort to undercut a liberal insurgent in a Houston-area congressional primary in March stirred an outcry on the left and may have inadvertently helped drive support to that candidate, Laura Moser, who qualified for the runoff election next month."The same thing is happening across CA where the party establishment's chronic distrust of voters is leading them to make the same mistakes that have cost them countless seats in local, state and congressional races (not to mention Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton) since the 1990s.
The rest of the story:
✓ Fearing Chaos, National Democrats Plunge Into Midterm Primary Fights by Alexander Burns (New York Times).
✓ Democrats consider attacking their own California candidates to win back Congress by Emily Cadei (Sacramento Bee).
Reading list:
✓ Unintended consequences of California’s open primary by Martin Wiskol (Orange County Register).
✓ California GOP should embrace open primary system: Orange County Register editorial 2017/10/22.
✓ The political parties would like voters to kill California's top-two primary system in 2018 by John Myers (Los Angeles Times).
✓ The defining characteristic of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for too many years has been its well-honed ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: Texas Progressive Laura Moser Is Beating Democratic Insiders by John Nichols (The Nation).
✓ While this article is mostly true, it would be fairer to say that, after 30 years of Democratic missteps, the chickens came home to roost during Obama's stay in office: The Democratic Party Got Crushed During The Obama Presidency. Here's Why by Mara Kiasson (NPR).
✓ Instead of campaigning on issues that reform-minded voters care about, the DCCC is going after a GOP “culture of corruption.” Once again, elect us because we're not them. It worked then. But not since. Will it work now?: Democrats Look To Their Successful 2006 Messaging In Bid To Retake The House by Amanda Terkel (Huffington Post).
Extra credit:
✓ Maybe they can hire the lawyers who won the Citizens United case: DNC Lawyers Argue ‘Primary Rigging’ Is Protected by 1st Amendment (Liberty Headlines).
On Hanging Together
Some claim I'm a pessimist.
Not true.
I'm an optimist.
Things always turn out worse than I predict.
This is a post from 2015, titled "Block the Kochs":
Not true.
I'm an optimist.
Things always turn out worse than I predict.
This is a post from 2015, titled "Block the Kochs":
When Dylan sang "Your old road is rapidly agin'/Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand/For the times they are a-changin'," he was sending out a warning to the establishment of the day, the old order, the holders of the reins of authority, the guardians of business-as-usual.2015 seems like a long time ago.
And the times changed all right, just not the way he predicted. Now, it is we the people who need to heed the warning. The counter-revolution is nearly over. The oligarchs' final victory is around the next turn of the road. Despite the valiant resistance of individuals all over the planet, there are still too few willing to lend a hand. Difficult as it will be, we have to find the way to collective action.
"We must all hang together," Franklin said, "or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
Potted history, episode #947
We exited WWII with the most powerful military in the world and didn't demobilize, making a quick and seamless transition to neocolonialism and Korea. Surely, the existence of the Soviet Union was a boon, but the Reds were more of an excuse than a threat; in accounts of the Cold War it is clear that the Kremlin was usually playing catch-up when it came to escalation. A world map of the 1950s shows the Soviets surrounded by American bases and surrogates, not the other way around (Russian screwing with Cuba was an example of playing catch-up, however feebly). Long before the fall of The Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, we were engaged in military adventurism around the globe, the sorriest example being Vietnam. Luckily for the military-industrial complex, 9/11 and The War of Terror arrived in time to keep the global network of military outposts and franchises thriving.
Rule of Law
Ex-CIA chief Mike Pompeo says the president has authority launch missile strikes without congressional action: "I don't think that has been disputed by Republicans or Democrats throughout an extended period of time."
Sen. Rand Paul: "Actually, it's disputed mostly by our Founding Fathers."
Sen. Rand Paul: "Actually, it's disputed mostly by our Founding Fathers."
Experience
“I use those skills every day.” -- deputy minority leader Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), on being the only former preschool teacher in the Senate.
Budget deficit. So what.
Liberals and progressives need to think twice about making an issue of deficits. The federal debt, per se, is not a problem. If the government uses deficit spending to invest in the nation's future prosperity, as it must and should, we would not have a complaint. What needs to be attacked is our retrogressive tax system, corporate welfare, and military waste and adventurism. Deficit funding -- of efficient and economically competitive infrastructure; health care; lifetime education (not just pre-K to college and technical school, but skill-maintenance and retraining to avoid obsolescence); housing; and guaranteed basic income -- would be a bargain in the long run. Fetishizing the federal deficit runs the risk of making needed spending too expensive politically.
Bookkeeping
Spend like there is a tomorrow.
Liberals and progressives should be wary of making an issue of deficits, despite the imbalance resulting from the GOP's hypocritical tax cuts. The federal debt, per se, is not a problem. If the government used deficit spending to invest in the nation's future prosperity, as it must and should, there would be no occasion for complaint. What needs to be attacked is our retrogressive tax system, corporate welfare, and military waste and adventurism. Deficit funding -- on efficient and economically competitive infrastructure; health care; lifetime education (not just pre-K to college and technical school, but skill-maintenance and retraining to avoid obsolescence); housing; and guaranteed basic income -- would be a bargain in the long run.
Israeli troops shoot 750 Palestinians at Gaza border
Ready-made movie pitch, spotted in Harper's.
A clinical lecturer in surgery at Imperial College London proposed a scenario wherein “an Oedipus-like individual exposed to a Gödel closed timelike curve would sire a child during his maternal fertilization cycle. As a consequence of heteropaternal superfecundation, he would father his own dizygotic twin and would therefore generate a new class of autofraternal superfecundation, and by doing so creating a ‘twin-father’ temporal paradox."
Netflix will grab it in a New York minute. You're welcome.
Must read: If MLK were alive today, his words would threaten most of those who now sing his praises
A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.
"The major threat of Martin Luther King Jr to us is a spiritual and moral one. King’s courageous and compassionate example shatters the dominant neoliberal soul-craft of smartness, money and bombs.
"In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives."
Martin Luther King Jr was a radical. We must not sterilize his legacy by Cornel West (Guardian).
The Party of Hope and Change -- or the new Whigs?
If you look at today's Democratic Party and wonder, how did we get here?, consider words Bill Clinton uttered on April 7, 1993: "'I hope you're all aware we're all Eisenhower Republicans,' he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. 'We're all Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market. Isn't that great?'" (from The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House by Bob Woodward).
Though he spoke those words in frustration, what he said was true. The party of FDR and LBJ had become -- and in many ways remains -- the party of Ike: on some issues, on support for Labor and protection of Social Security, for example, on economic policy and national security, the Democratic Party today stands to the right of 1950s Republicans.
It is because the party leadership has been doing Wall Street's bidding for so long, now going on four decades, that Democrats have lost much of their following among the middle and working classes; nor will the voters return unless in the next two election cycles the party changes direction as radically as it did in the 1990s.
At the grassroots level, Democratic voters, and people who would vote Democrat if the party were true to its roots, are organizing: fighting pipelines and fracking; pushing for a living wage or a guaranteed income; demanding gun control; defending the Dreamers; shoving back against free trade; marching in defense of the environment; calling for Medicare for All. Even the general public sides with the left on a number of key issues that reflect on the size and purpose of government: hefty majorities support higher taxes on the wealthy and the corporations and think the government should be actively reducing the growing gap between the rich and the rest; want legislation to significantly increase in the minimum wage; and look to Washington to create jobs by making urgently needed repairs to our neglected infrastructure.
What nearly all Americans crave most, though, is leadership.
Part of Donald Trump's appeal as a candidate -- his only appeal, really -- was in his promise to do something, even if that something was just to break up the furniture. Doing something was more appealing than poking along the road to ruin, as the Democrats seemed to intend on doing.
The elections of 2018 and 2020 together will mark a turning point in our history. Another round of defeats for the Democrats, and the party will fade into irrelevancy. There is still a chance that the Democrat Party will again take the lead in the struggle for social and economic justice. If it does, the party will be invincible. If it doesn't, a new Liberal party will arise from its ashes as surely as tomorrow will dawn.
Though he spoke those words in frustration, what he said was true. The party of FDR and LBJ had become -- and in many ways remains -- the party of Ike: on some issues, on support for Labor and protection of Social Security, for example, on economic policy and national security, the Democratic Party today stands to the right of 1950s Republicans.
It is because the party leadership has been doing Wall Street's bidding for so long, now going on four decades, that Democrats have lost much of their following among the middle and working classes; nor will the voters return unless in the next two election cycles the party changes direction as radically as it did in the 1990s.
At the grassroots level, Democratic voters, and people who would vote Democrat if the party were true to its roots, are organizing: fighting pipelines and fracking; pushing for a living wage or a guaranteed income; demanding gun control; defending the Dreamers; shoving back against free trade; marching in defense of the environment; calling for Medicare for All. Even the general public sides with the left on a number of key issues that reflect on the size and purpose of government: hefty majorities support higher taxes on the wealthy and the corporations and think the government should be actively reducing the growing gap between the rich and the rest; want legislation to significantly increase in the minimum wage; and look to Washington to create jobs by making urgently needed repairs to our neglected infrastructure.
What nearly all Americans crave most, though, is leadership.
Part of Donald Trump's appeal as a candidate -- his only appeal, really -- was in his promise to do something, even if that something was just to break up the furniture. Doing something was more appealing than poking along the road to ruin, as the Democrats seemed to intend on doing.
The elections of 2018 and 2020 together will mark a turning point in our history. Another round of defeats for the Democrats, and the party will fade into irrelevancy. There is still a chance that the Democrat Party will again take the lead in the struggle for social and economic justice. If it does, the party will be invincible. If it doesn't, a new Liberal party will arise from its ashes as surely as tomorrow will dawn.
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