From the No Comment Desk:
Scenarios presented in Fighter Not Killer, an app that is used by militant groups, including the Islamic State, to test combatants’ knowledge of international humanitarian law. The app was created by Geneva Call, an NGO that promotes humanitarian norms in armed conflict. Zako is a character who represents an untrained recruit:
You are on patrol after a battle and come across two wounded fighters. First, Zako, with a bullet wound in the shoulder. Second, an enemy fighter, who is breathing but unconscious. Zako looks at you and says, “Kill him!” Can you kill the unconscious enemy fighter?
You go to a café to pick up new recruits. They begin to harass and fondle the barmaid, telling her that she should do her duty to the cause. Can the men force the barmaid to have sex?
On patrol, you discover that many farm animals have died from starvation. Zako has an idea: “Let’s dump the carcasses into the stream. It flows into the enemy camp and we’ll contaminate their water supply.” Can you use the carcasses to contaminate the enemy’s water supply?
It is the end of a long, dry summer. Zako says, “Let’s burn the forest down. The enemy will either become charcoal or run right into our arms.” Can you burn down the forest?
Zako is very excited. He has discovered that the local hospital is treating wounded enemy fighters. He wants to destroy the hospital so that it can no longer assist the enemy. Can you target the hospital?
Zako approaches your checkpoint in an ambulance with a red crescent. He winks at you and says the enemy will never know what hit them. Can Zako use an ambulance with the red-crescent emblem to attack the enemy?
You have received information on the route an enemy general will take. You plan an ambush and capture the general. Your supreme commander calls you on the radio and says the general has critical information. Because of military necessity he authorizes you to torture the general, but only as much as necessary. Can you torture the general?
You are conducting a guerrilla campaign. Your commander instructs you to detonate a remote-control bomb targeting an enemy general on a road. Just as the jeep approaches, you notice a school bus full of children approaching from the opposite direction. They will pass the bomb at the same time. Can you launch the attack?
You retreat to a village where civilians are sympathetic to your struggle. The mayor offers to assemble the schoolchildren around your base as shields. Can you accept the mayor’s offer?
Your bureaucrats at work
"City gears up to count the homeless"
"Cyclists count (officially now) in Santa Monica" -- Local headlines.
Here's an idea. Instead of counting bicyclists and the homeless, how about making the streets safe to ride and building some shelters?
Unforced Error
After eight years in office, Barack Obama's greatest failure will be to leave office without delivering justice and mercy to political prisoner Leonard Peltier.
Case of Leonard Peltier (FreeLeonard.org)
Leonard Peltier, 38 years a detainee: How did we get here? (Amnesty International)
A Tax for All Seasons
So, Christmas eve:
Santa Monica's meter maids and masters -- Grinches, all -- are out in force.
Parking spaces everywhere, so it's not about "managing a scarce resource."
It's about imposing an extremely high, regressive tax.
It's about revenue.
Cover Up
Those outraged by Muslim culture might consider how recently our own modesty police roamed the land.
Who'll be AG?
Non-profit executive Sara Hernandez, a former aide to Los Angeles city councilmember Jose Huizar, on Tuesday entered the race to replace state attorney general nominee Xavier Becerra in the House, joining assemblyman Jimmy Gomez and Arturo Carmona, a former political strategist for Sen. Bernie Sanders, in the competition. Hernandez said she had raised more than $150,000 since she began fundraising last week, according to the LA Times. LA city councilmembers Gil Cedillo and David Ryu and school board member Monica Garcia are also believed to be considering runs; former assembly speaker John A. Pérez, the first to announce, has already dropped out. “The special election would probably be held no earlier than spring 2017, though the law gives the governor wide discretion in setting the schedule," says the Times.
Not The Onion:
Rick Perry, who blew up his own campaign for president, will now oversee the National Nuclear Security Administration for the winner.
Book Proposal
Why hasn't John Wiley & Sons published "The Oval Office for Dummies"? There are 239 titles in the series, but not the one we need.
"It Can't Happen Here."
Not only can it happen here, it probably will.The same people who, out of complacency, did not resist as Barack Obama embraced and enlarged the mechanisms of oppression, will not resist, this time out of fear and despondency, as Donald Trump uses them.
No longer can Americans smugly scorn the complicity of "good Germans" in Hitler's rise. We are all good Germans now.
Seriously?
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) is reportedly under consideration for Energy or Interior secretary, as is Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Whether the Democrats allow their numbers in the Senate to be reduced in this way will provide another measure of how serious they are about thwarting GOP ambitions.
Mr. "President"
"Normalizing" took an interesting turn tonight when NPR, reporting on candidates to head the VA, noted that, even though up to now the administrator has always been a veteran, this time two non-veterans are also being considered, including "Sarah Palin, whose son served in Iraq," the last said in a tone suggesting her son's history somehow makes up for her own lack of military experience.
It's class, stupid
To understand economic justice, we need to think beyond touching anecdotes about lost jobs, untreated illnesses and hungry kids.
"Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy." -- V.I. Lenin, A Great Beginning, in Collected Works, Vol. 29, p. 421.
Hansen Unplugged: Signs of change
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Albert Einstein.
From the How Things Really Work Desk:
Madoff Investors Keep Billions in Profit (this is from a NYTimes email)
The company led by the American billionaire Koch brothers, along with dozens of banks and fund managers, kept billions of dollars in profit from Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in accounts offshore.
And, it turns out, the funds can stay there.
They had invested in the Madoff fund from offshore accounts, and a judge said that certain funds held abroad, worth an estimated $2 billion, could not be made available to victims of the Madoff scheme.
The judge said foreign bankruptcy proceedings blocked the trustee from gaining access to the money. Koch Industries began investing in the Madoff fund well before its collapse and pulled out $21.5 million in 2005.
The money went to a fund registered in the British Virgin Islands and then to a Koch entity in Britain. They were not alone.
Several European banks also had Madoff money offshore, according to court papers, including HSBC, UBS, Credit Suisse, an international arm of Merrill Lynch and the French money manager Natixis.
The rest of the story:
The company led by the American billionaire Koch brothers, along with dozens of banks and fund managers, kept billions of dollars in profit from Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in accounts offshore.
And, it turns out, the funds can stay there.
They had invested in the Madoff fund from offshore accounts, and a judge said that certain funds held abroad, worth an estimated $2 billion, could not be made available to victims of the Madoff scheme.
The judge said foreign bankruptcy proceedings blocked the trustee from gaining access to the money. Koch Industries began investing in the Madoff fund well before its collapse and pulled out $21.5 million in 2005.
The money went to a fund registered in the British Virgin Islands and then to a Koch entity in Britain. They were not alone.
Several European banks also had Madoff money offshore, according to court papers, including HSBC, UBS, Credit Suisse, an international arm of Merrill Lynch and the French money manager Natixis.
The rest of the story:
What's wrong with the Democrats?
“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.” -- Sen. Chuck Schumer before the election.
How'd that work out for you, Chuck?
Be careful what you wish for
All this talk about Donald Trump getting busted or impeached... Mike Pence would be a lot more focused, determined and competent than the attention-deficited president-elect. And Pence would start with a cache of good will for not being Trump.
"I'll be back."
Last night Bernie Sanders gave a surprise address outside the White House during a global day of action against the Dakota Access pipeline that included demonstrations in over 300 cities.
Democrats have some 'splainin' to do
"In ... poring over the exit polling, there are numerous counter-intuitive findings that explain why Trump proved to be a lot more acceptable than his detractors acknowledged." For example, "Trump won white women by a whopping 10 points (53 to 43 percent), smashing the conventional wisdom that his candidacy would fuel a historic gender gap. ... Nonwhite voters preferred Trump to" Mitt Romney, Trump won a greater share of blue-collar votes than Ronald Reagan. ... Trump won 10 percent of Obama supporters. ... The military leadership is wary of Trump, but veterans supported him overwhelmingly. ... [H]e won a larger share of the Jewish vote ... than either George W. Bush in 2000 ... or John McCain in 2008." (National Journal)
Just axing
It is intriguing that some U.S.Senators who have the most liberal records -- Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Al Franken -- come from swing states. Is there a lesson here in what it takes to win in the flyover as a Democrat?
How far back can Trump turn the clock?
It is going to be interesting to see how much President Donald Trump will be able to or even try to get done.
In his first 100 days, he promised, he will cancel “every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum, and order issued by President [Barack] Obama," which he will have the power to do. These could include the Syrian refugee program; increased regulations on greenhouse gas emissions for the nation’s power plants; the right to take family medical leave for same-sex couples; and halting the deportations of illegal immigrant children. And he vowed to repeal Obamacare, which would strip over 20 million Americans of their health insurance, although this may be more difficult than he imagines: the insurance hogs will not go easy from the trough.
He threatened to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports, officially branding China as “a currency manipulator,” while also seeking a 35 percent tariff on Mexican imports, but pressure from the business community should be enough to keep him from setting off a trade war and sparking a world-wide depression (the stock market already seems to be pricing in tax-cut Trump but ignoring trade-war Trump).
He promised to deport 2 million “criminal illegal immigrants” on his first day in office, but it took Obama six years to accomplish that, so expect a slow acceleration there, and the wall is a non-starter.
More seriously, he pledged to cut all federal funding to “sanctuary cities,” which are municipalities whose local policies do not permit prosecuting people only for being undocumented. He said he will cut all payments to U.N. climate-change programs which, in addition to likely signaling an increase in U.S. emissions, will also cut budgets of U.S. universities and laboratories dedicated to studying climate-change. Some of this is real. Some of it is campaign rhetoric. More dangerous may be that he won't veto actions by the whackos controlling Congress.
Also, amid all the whining and puling about Trump, it's important to remember that Obama still has a month and a half to try to ram through TPP.
Time to get organized, folks.
Even if they are mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre people. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? -- after Roman Hruska
BuzzFeed has an inside list of eminences being considered for senior positions in the next administration.
Not to draw distinctions too fine, but: cretins, criminals, conmen and clowns.
I know this is serious, and it's going to take a lot of hard work to stop this cabal from doing its worst, but -- Christie? Bolton? Palin? Rick Scott? Giuli-freaking-ani! -- admit it, it's also going to be fun. Ben Carson as Secretary of Education alone is almost worth the pain and suffering. Plus, you gotta wonder which countries will get Willie Robertson, Scott Baio, Natalie Gulbis, Antonio Sabato, Jr. and Kid Rock as U.S. ambassadors (will the Swon Brothers each get a country or will they have to share? Maybe one can have Trinidad and the other Tobago).
And where's Carly Fiorina when you need her?
"In total, the list includes 41 names and covers 14 different departments. A source told BuzzFeed that the list is not final and will likely be changed in the future.
"Attorney general picks include Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions and Rudy Giuliani.
"Newt Gingrich, John Bolton and Bob Corker are listed as potential picks for the secretary of State.
"Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is the only name listed under chief of staff, while Sessions is also the only one being considered for director of Office of Management and Budget.
"Christie is also being weighed for secretary of Homeland Security, and Carson, Gingrich and Florida Gov. Rick Scott are potential picks for secretary of Health and Human Services.
"Sarah Palin also makes a surprise appearance on the shortlist, mentioned as one of seven potential candidates to become the secretary of the Interior.
"Potential secretary of Commerce picks include Christie and [Mike] Huckabee, while Carson is under consideration to be secretary of Education."
Caveat Empty
So a vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries turns out to have been a vote for Donald Trump in the general election. It's not like millions of people didn’t try to warn the Democrats.
quote unquote: Adlai Stevenson
In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take. -- Adlai Stevenson
“Inside the polling booth, every American man and woman stands as the equal of every other American man and woman. There they have no superiors. There they have no masters save their own minds and consciences.” -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is not a horse race. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Tomorrow, vote with your conscience.
From the Irony Desk:
"NSA Theft Suspect Worked for Contractor That Sells the Government Tech for Spotting Rogue Employees" --headline
Watch the feet not the mouth (a series)
Hillary Clinton is pressing Bernie Sanders to round up the kid vote for her.
"Although Sanders lost to Clinton, he consistently drew younger voters to his side with promises to take on Wall Street, make college less expensive and close the income gap. He called on young people in New Hampshire, a swing state in the presidential election, to get behind Clinton."Because, you know, Wall Street.
High Noon in Orange County
Needless to say, Applegate has the attention of the Democratic organization with an attendant increase in donations since June, but he's running against the richest person in Congress, so help out if you can: Doug Applegate for Congress.
The rest of the story:
Darrell Issa Gets Viable Challenger (Rollcall)
Issa may face tough re-election by Martin Wisckol (OC Register)
Extra credit:
(Don't Look Back: Darrell Issa, the congressman about to make life more difficult for President Obama, has had some troubles of his own by Ryan Lizza (The New Yorker)
Not So Grand: Behind Rep. Darrell Issa’s Three Auto Theft Accusations by Tommy Christopher (MEDIAite)
Dakota Access Pipeline Company Attacks Native American Protesters with Dogs & Pepper Spray
Something monumental happened after the Obama Administration put a temporary halt on construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. For the first time ever, tribe leaders from dozens of historically rival nations put aside their differences to join together in ceremonial solidarity at the Sacred Stone Camp in North Dakota to call for a permanent end to the pipeline project.
Dorothy Healey, RIP.
"Legendary Communist and, later, legendary ex-Communist Dorothy Healey died [a decade ago today] at age 91. At barely five feet tall, with piercing blue-grey eyes, a razor sharp-intellect, often a pipe or a panatela in her hand, Dorothy was a power-house orator, a relentless organizer, and a fireball of political energy and optimism. The most
Thanks to her son, Richard Healey, her autobiography is available as a free pdf (Grass Roots Policy).
More:
-> Dorothy Ray Healey, Activist by Marc Cooper (Z Magazine).
-> An appreciation of one of the last members of the left's "greatest generation," known for her physical courage, warmth and intelligence, who spent a lifetime arguing eloquently for socialism, feminism and peace: Dorothy Healey by Mike Davis (The Nation).
Resource: Mapping U.S. Social Movements Through the 20th Century
The links on this site lead to more than 80 visualizations and data tables, with more to come. Dozens of maps and charts show the activist geography of NAACP, United Farm Workers (UFW), Socialist Party, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Communist Party, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). SNCC, Black Panther Party, the Chicana/o Movement, and underground newspapers from the 1965-75 are in the works. The National Woman's Party and NOW will follow.
Mapping U.S. Social Movements Through the 20th Century, directed by Professor James Gregory (University of Washington).
See, also: IWW History Project--The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1935 and Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California Campaign.
Mapping U.S. Social Movements Through the 20th Century, directed by Professor James Gregory (University of Washington).
See, also: IWW History Project--The Industrial Workers of the World 1905-1935 and Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California Campaign.
"Is Bernie Sanders an effective political leader?"
Sen. Bernie Sanders' supporters are accused of idealizing their candidate and ignoring his flaws and mistakes. But part of Sanders appeal lies in the fact that his campaign is focused on process and on building a movement that will help to turn the nation in a more positive direction than it has been in since the rise of Reaganism and Clintonism. Such a movement will be able to influence the behavior of those in power, including Bernie Sanders, just as the peace, civil rights and labor movements once did. In this context, his flaws and mistakes are less important than they might otherwise be.
As for his record of leadership, Sen. Sanders was largely responsible for the Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2013 that provided "for an increase in the rates of compensation for veterans with service-connected disabilities and the rates of dependency and indemnity compensation for the survivors of certain disabled veterans," not an insignificant piece of legislation.
It's worth noting in this context that, even given the cooperative nature of legislating, just a handful of bills, between four and six percent, submitted by members of Congress come to a vote and even fewer, somewhere between two and four percent, are enacted. It is striking that during his years in the House the Independent Socialist from Vermont had the highest rate of successfully passing amendments, bettering the record of any member from either major party.
Developing and introducing original legislation is a small part of what members of Congress are sent to Washington to do: co-sponsoring legislation (which Sanders has done for more than 200 successful bills) is another; also vitally important is organizing support for or opposition to proposed legislation among both legislative colleagues and the public; that he is good at this is presumably why the Democratic Senate leadership appointed Sen. Sanders to at least seven committees and named him chair of the important committee on the budget; actively participating in hearings, which Sen. Sanders also has been very active at; reviewing and voting on proposed bills; participating in oversight and investigation of the conduct of the legislative branch; and meeting and assisting constituents, which Sen. Sanders also must have a handle on, since he has held elective office for more that three decades and is viewed favorably by about 80% of his constituents in his home state.
One other thing: Sanders is frequently accused of introducing bills that have "no chance of passing." This misses an important part of the legislative process: preparing the ground for the future. In the Thirties and in the Sixties, opportunities opened up to make historic advances in social and economic progress. One important reason for the legislative achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society is that the groundwork had been laid by decades of debate over proposals that, when they were introduced, had "no chance of passing" (in fact, most of them had "no chance of passing" even in the legislative session in which they passed). The reason that the Sanders candidacy is so important is that it lays the groundwork for future advances in social and economic policy. It's not that a new New Deal will result immediately from Sanders' election, but that, for the first time since the early 1970s, we will be arguing over the right things.
About the frequently heard charge that he couldn't pass his "Socialist" (really, New Deal and Great Society) program even when "a totally Democratic Congress and Speaker" held sway: At no time since the Sixties, has the Congress not had a conservative majority. The big corner offices may have changed hands a few times, but the kleptocracy and the corporate agenda have never been seriously challenged. In so far as there has been resistance to business as usual, though, it has come from the Progressive Caucus in the House, made up of Liberal Democrats and founded by -- wait for it -- Bernie Sanders.
Despite the fact that Congress at certain points since the early 1970s has been nominally in the hands of Democrats is irrelevant, because the conservative majority -- made up of both Democrats and Republicans -- controlled both houses during the entire period. That nothing was done during the 25 working days with a Democratic supermajority underscores the the need to change business as usual in Washington by changing the makeup of the legislature. But you use what you have. Advancing the candidacy of Sen. Sanders is a step in the right direction.
Finally, it has to be kept in mind that one of Sanders' great blind spots is militarism. Although not nearly the hawk that Hillary Clinton is, Sanders supported brutal economic sanctions, drone assassinations and the legislation that paved the way for the Iraq War. One of the first jobs of his supporters if he is elected will be to oppose his endorsement of a militarized foreign policy, the same as it will be should Donald Trump or Clinton be commander in chief (the difference being that progressives will have considerably more influence in a Sanders administration).
It won't matter who is elected in 2016 if 2017 doesn't mark the rebirth of an independent, people's movement, accountable to its members, strong and disciplined enough to change the outcome of federal and local elections, and effective enough eventually either to wrest control of the Democratic Party from Wall Street and the corporations or to evolve into a viable progressive party. Sanders supporters are united in their persistent belief that change is possible, that the nation's present level of decline and dysfunction is not the way things need to be.
Follow-up: Has Bernie Sanders been given a pass on his own record on regime change? The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill tells Democracy Now! it can't be ignored that Sanders supported brutal economic sanctions, drone assassinations and the neocon legislation that paved the way for the Iraq. War:
Word Game
"Justice Department Program Stops Using ‘Demeaning’ Terms Like Felon and Convict" -- headline today
Also on the list: miscreant, evildoer, villain, jailbird, malefactor, wrongdoer, transgressor, lawbreaker, brigand, highwayman, desperado, hooligan, hoodlum, thug, scofflaw, bad actor, bad guy and gunsel. Yardbird can still be used, but only when referring to Charlie Parker. Particularly wrenching for Justice was the deletion of already pc terms like holdup person and highwayperson.
In related news, Justice will now refer to all federal crimes as oopsies.
Alexander Hamilton Will Share His Space on the Ten-Spot -- U.S. Treasury
This is only the beginning of changes to our currency, according to the Treasury Department.
In 2020, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth will appear together on the back of the $10 bill, and Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King will be honored in a group portrait with Abe Lincoln on the $5.
Rumors are unconfirmed that the $2 bill will feature all the people on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
People sitting behind desks think raising the retirement age is a good idea.
"A recurring theme in debates over Social Security policy is that workers should be encouraged to work later into their lives by raising the age at which they can get full benefits. Implicit in this argument is that most workers are in a situation where they would be able to work to an older age; however, many older workers stop working because they can no longer meet the physical demands of their job.
"In 2010, CEPR did an analysis that examined the percentage of older workers (ages 58 and over) who either worked in physically demanding jobs or in difficult work conditions. This paper is an update of that earlier study and is based on data from 2014.
"Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and Occupational Information Network (O*NET) it finds that in 2014, 8.0 million workers ages 58 and older (34.5 percent) had physically demanding jobs, while 5.1 million workers ages 58 and older (22.1 percent) had jobs with difficult working conditions. About 10.2 million workers ages 58 and older (43.8 percent) were employed either in physically demanding jobs or jobs with difficult working conditions. The workers who were most likely to be in these jobs were Latinos, the least educated (less than a high school diploma), immigrants, and the lowest wage earners.
"Physically demanding jobs include general physical activities, handling and moving objects, spending significant time standing, walking or running, making repetitive motions, or having any highly physically demanding work. Highly physically demanding jobs require dynamic, explosive, static, or trunk strength, bending or twisting of the body, stamina, maintaining balance, or kneeling or crouching. Difficult working conditions include working in a cramped workspace, labor outdoors, or exposure to abnormal temperatures, contaminants, hazardous equipment, whole body vibration, or distracting or uncomfortable noise."
#FeelTheBern!
While Hillary Clinton was in NYC hosting a $2,700 per plate dinner in a swanky location, Bernie Sanders was standing on a box in the Bronx speaking to more than 15,000 fans.
If you have any influence in New York, remind them that this season's presidential primary is a watershed moment in our political evolution. Let it not be said of us, as AJP Taylor said of the Liberal revolutions of 1848, that American "history reached its turning-point and failed to turn."
If you have any influence in New York, remind them that this season's presidential primary is a watershed moment in our political evolution. Let it not be said of us, as AJP Taylor said of the Liberal revolutions of 1848, that American "history reached its turning-point and failed to turn."
Power to the Peeps
"What is most remarkable about the Sanders phenomenon is that despite unrelenting hostility from the media gatekeepers of the status quo -- for example, Adam Johnson at FAIR.org documented that The Washington Post ran 16 negative stories about Bernie Sanders within 16 hours on March 8 -- he has continued to draw record crowds. He has also obtained more votes from those under age 30 than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined, pointing to a weakening of the power of the corporate media over political information in U.S. society and the growing influence of social media, at least amongst youth."
Is democratic socialism the American Dream? by John Bellamy Foster (The Washington Post)
Is democratic socialism the American Dream? by John Bellamy Foster (The Washington Post)
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