Aspirational thought o' the day
When Andrés Manuel López Obrador presides in Mexico, Jeremy Corbyn is British prime minister, and Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren is president of the United States, what a better world this will be.
Youth is irrepressible
Palestinian youth performing the Palestinian Dabkeh on the border under the close watch of Israeli snipers.
Fun Fact
"The Teddy Bear was invented in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt. On a bear hunting trip in Mississippi, Roosevelt's hunting party cornered a Louisiana black bear, then tied the bear to a willow tree and suggested that the President shoot it. Viewing this as extremely unsportsmanlike, Roosevelt refused to kill the bear. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman heard the story and drew a cartoon celebrating the President’s decision. A Brooklyn candy shop owner by the name of Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and decided to create a stuffed toy bear and dedicate it to the president who refused to shoot a bear. He called it Teddy's Bear and children have been enjoying them ever since." -- doi.gov
Central America: So far from God...
...so near to the United States.
How much of the refugee crisis in the Americas is caused by our own actions?
And at least one more, in Venezuela, almost certain soon to come.
"The four countries discussed in this report [see, below], Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, share a history as well as contemporary social and economic characteristics. The Spanish colonial period, which lasted from the early sixteenth century until 1821, laid certain institutional foundations whose legacies are still in place. Two legacies stand out: concentration of land in the hands of a small powerful elite and the exploitation of the indigenous labour force. The economies of all four countries are dominated by a handful of extremely rich families while the overwhelming majority is socially marginalized, economically and politically excluded, and suffers the lacerating effects of poverty, racism and discrimination. Moreover, the bloody internal conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s produced large-scale displacement, economic hardship, and debilitating fear. The recent surge of everyday violence rips into the most vulnerable, but society as a whole suffers from the instability resulting from the failure to reign in criminal activity.
"The new gang-related violence can be attributed to several factors including decades of internal wars and impunity, extensive displacement to urban areas, the absence of social and economic programmes to integrate the youth, the migration to the United States, and the over all social exclusion of a large proportion of the population. The continuation of death squad violence and the expansion of the drug trade is a reflection of the absence of the rule of law as well as the continued links between these clandestine organizations and the military and other power elites.
"The harsh response to the variety of gang activities in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras has proved ineffective. While the problems are real, the government and the press find it more expedient to target the gangs and street children for virtually all the rampant violence in the society. In response, many citizens support draconian anti-gang laws and self-help “social cleansing” practices. In the process, the more powerful clandestine organized crime units tend to be overlooked, in part because of the links, influence and control they exercise at various institutional levels in the governments. Nicaragua, while the poorest country in Central America, has fewer gangs and less violence and its government’s alternative approach to rehabilitate and integrate gang members into society has been much more successful.
"Violence against women is an extremely serious problem. These crimes are seldom solved or punished, creating further fear and vulnerability among women. Crimes against homosexuals are less identified and are also likely under-reported. Politically motivated violence against party workers, human rights defenders, and professionals dedicated to investigating and bringing to justice those responsible for these crimes, especially in Guatemala, has seen an alarming rise. The judicial system and the police have proved largely to be ineffective. The serious instability and danger resulting from violence and the failure of national protection leads to displacement and migration out of the country, especially to the United States. These undocumented migrants live in limbo with the increasing threat of deportation back to the country they fled, often in fear for their lives."
From Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua): Patterns of Human Rights Violations (pdf) by Beatriz Manz (University of California, Berkeley) commissioned by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Status Determination and Protection Information Section (DIPS) (Writenet Independent Analysis).
Writenet is a network of researchers and writers on human rights, forced migration, ethnic and political conflict.
See image larger.
(Resource: GreenNet is not-for-profit collective, established in 1985, providing internet services, web design and hosting to supporters of peace, the environment and human rights.)
How much of the refugee crisis in the Americas is caused by our own actions?
"The four countries discussed in this report [see, below], Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, share a history as well as contemporary social and economic characteristics. The Spanish colonial period, which lasted from the early sixteenth century until 1821, laid certain institutional foundations whose legacies are still in place. Two legacies stand out: concentration of land in the hands of a small powerful elite and the exploitation of the indigenous labour force. The economies of all four countries are dominated by a handful of extremely rich families while the overwhelming majority is socially marginalized, economically and politically excluded, and suffers the lacerating effects of poverty, racism and discrimination. Moreover, the bloody internal conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s produced large-scale displacement, economic hardship, and debilitating fear. The recent surge of everyday violence rips into the most vulnerable, but society as a whole suffers from the instability resulting from the failure to reign in criminal activity.
"The new gang-related violence can be attributed to several factors including decades of internal wars and impunity, extensive displacement to urban areas, the absence of social and economic programmes to integrate the youth, the migration to the United States, and the over all social exclusion of a large proportion of the population. The continuation of death squad violence and the expansion of the drug trade is a reflection of the absence of the rule of law as well as the continued links between these clandestine organizations and the military and other power elites.
"The harsh response to the variety of gang activities in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras has proved ineffective. While the problems are real, the government and the press find it more expedient to target the gangs and street children for virtually all the rampant violence in the society. In response, many citizens support draconian anti-gang laws and self-help “social cleansing” practices. In the process, the more powerful clandestine organized crime units tend to be overlooked, in part because of the links, influence and control they exercise at various institutional levels in the governments. Nicaragua, while the poorest country in Central America, has fewer gangs and less violence and its government’s alternative approach to rehabilitate and integrate gang members into society has been much more successful.
"Violence against women is an extremely serious problem. These crimes are seldom solved or punished, creating further fear and vulnerability among women. Crimes against homosexuals are less identified and are also likely under-reported. Politically motivated violence against party workers, human rights defenders, and professionals dedicated to investigating and bringing to justice those responsible for these crimes, especially in Guatemala, has seen an alarming rise. The judicial system and the police have proved largely to be ineffective. The serious instability and danger resulting from violence and the failure of national protection leads to displacement and migration out of the country, especially to the United States. These undocumented migrants live in limbo with the increasing threat of deportation back to the country they fled, often in fear for their lives."
From Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua): Patterns of Human Rights Violations (pdf) by Beatriz Manz (University of California, Berkeley) commissioned by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Status Determination and Protection Information Section (DIPS) (Writenet Independent Analysis).
Writenet is a network of researchers and writers on human rights, forced migration, ethnic and political conflict.
See image larger.
(Resource: GreenNet is not-for-profit collective, established in 1985, providing internet services, web design and hosting to supporters of peace, the environment and human rights.)
quote unquote: Molly Ivins
I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag. -- Molly Ivins
It's sad, when you stop to think about it.
Here we are.
In a revolutionary moment.
And we have no revolutionaries.
It's good to be the king...
Having one, less so.
The Founders intended the legislature to be preeminent, with the President largely an administrator (and the Supreme Court a referee), but over time Congress has ceded far too many of its responsibilities and far too much of its power to the executive, until we have reached the point where what we have is a sort of serial monarch, one chosen -- because of Citizens United and other electoral corruptions -- by the nobles, like a Polish King. And although we still have a more or less (mostly less) functioning legislature, our king has vastly more power than any constitutional monarch among his contemporaries.
How we make our way back to truly representative democracy is the most central political question of our times.
The Founders intended the legislature to be preeminent, with the President largely an administrator (and the Supreme Court a referee), but over time Congress has ceded far too many of its responsibilities and far too much of its power to the executive, until we have reached the point where what we have is a sort of serial monarch, one chosen -- because of Citizens United and other electoral corruptions -- by the nobles, like a Polish King. And although we still have a more or less (mostly less) functioning legislature, our king has vastly more power than any constitutional monarch among his contemporaries.
How we make our way back to truly representative democracy is the most central political question of our times.
We have met the enemy and he is us (with apologies to Walt Kelly)
Ironically, given our long and sordid history of meddling in the domestic affairs of other nations, regime change in the U.S. is now a reasonable foreign policy goal for our former allies.
Party poopers
“Nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has, at all times, characterized political parties.” -- Alexander Hamilton, 1787While at present political parties are practical mechanisms for the expression of political intentions, for average citizens allegiance to party -- partisanship -- is self-defeating.
It was the existence of independent concentrations of power and influence, especially labor unions, national associations (such as the NAACP) and, on the local level, social clubs, that gave ordinary people muscle in the long struggle for economic and social justice.
Restoring such organizations must be part of any long-term reform of our democracy.
“If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” -- Thomas Jefferson, 1789
There's more going on than the Russia investigation, Stormy Daniels, and pee tapes
"He succeeded in dragging the Republican Party into the White House with a minority of the votes. And this is a Republican Party that is one of the most radical mainstream political parties in all of American history, perhaps with the exception of the pro-secessionist Democrats at the time of the Civil War. And they’ve been in there, they’ve been implementing a rightist revolution, doing the massive transfer of wealth in part via the tax bill, but also an important part by systematically, agency by agency, trying to gut the constraints on large corporations and the oligarchs, regarding the environment, their treatment of labor, their ability to discriminate, their ability to commit fraud without fear of being sued by the public, increasing the rights of rich individuals to intervene in politics, decreasing the rights of collectives of working people to intervene in politics, like the Gorsuch-led Supreme Court decision just the other day, inhibiting the ability of workers to file class-action lawsuits against their employers.
"It’s a systematic program that’s been in the works since 1980, really. In a sense, it dates back to the old Powell memorandum, where Powell, who later joined the Supreme Court, said we, the representatives of the rich, we’ve got to fight back against this new environmental movement, against this consumer movement, against the labor movement, and also implicitly against the Civil Rights movement. 'These people have been making too many gains, we’ve got to organize ourselves.'
"And they did!"
The rest of the story:
Allan Nairn On How Trump Dragged a Rightist Revolution to Power by Jeremy Scahill (The Intercept)
"It’s a systematic program that’s been in the works since 1980, really. In a sense, it dates back to the old Powell memorandum, where Powell, who later joined the Supreme Court, said we, the representatives of the rich, we’ve got to fight back against this new environmental movement, against this consumer movement, against the labor movement, and also implicitly against the Civil Rights movement. 'These people have been making too many gains, we’ve got to organize ourselves.'
"And they did!"
Allan Nairn On How Trump Dragged a Rightist Revolution to Power by Jeremy Scahill (The Intercept)
Advice
"Leap Before You Look"
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
-- W. H. Auden
quote unquote: J. M. Keynes
“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work together for the benefit of all.” ― John Maynard Keynes
What's wrong with this picture?
2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than for military service members. You are safer in our various and sundry war zones than you are in school.
"Running, With Confidence, to Topple a Dictator"
"Election in Venezuela Looms as Crossroad for Democracy." -- N.Y. Times headline and subhead, front page, 2018/05/18
Put it this way: a foreign leader is a dictator if the Times isn't pleased with him or her. An election is "democratic" only when it achieves the outcome the Times desires.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Venezuela, an act of economic warfare, to influence the outcome.
We've been down this road dozens of times in Central and South America. It never works out well for the country targeted by our bullying.
Put it this way: a foreign leader is a dictator if the Times isn't pleased with him or her. An election is "democratic" only when it achieves the outcome the Times desires.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on Venezuela, an act of economic warfare, to influence the outcome.
We've been down this road dozens of times in Central and South America. It never works out well for the country targeted by our bullying.
Our long-running political theater of the absurd
Closing soon?
When Scott Pruitt is fired he will be replaced by his deputy, Andrew Wheeler (not incidently a coal lobbyist and former aid to Jim Inhofe, the Senate’s most prominent denier of climate change), who will calmly, efficiently, and unostentaciously proceed along the same course as Pruitt, polluting air and water, trashcanning regulations, shutting down enforcement, highjacking public lands, and generally undermining 70 years of hard-won progress on the environment.
The system will have worked, however: the corrupt and "extremist" Pruitt will be banished (but, not to worry, he will in all certainty spin through the revolving door to a high-paying precinct from which he will pester his former employees for special treatment for the same industries he currently -- nominally -- regulates).
The same dynamic will follow Donald Trump's departure. We will be told ad nauseum that our "exceptional," "democratic" system of checks
 |
| Dan Wasserman twitter@wassermantoons |
If the system worked, it hardly needs to be said, we wouldn't have a Pence or a Trump in the first place. Nor for that matter, would we be burdened with elected officials like blue dog Democrats Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly who helped to deploy Andrew Wheeler for his assault of the environment.
Extra credit:
✓ If scandals oust Pruitt, Andrew Wheeler is an ex-coal industry lobbyist pledged to end the ‘pure hell’ of Obama regulations: Scott Pruitt's new EPA deputy could surpass boss in scrapping protections by Oliver Milman (The Guardian)
✓ The US election and the systematic failure of modern politics by Benjamin Farrand (Critical Legal Thinking)
What does he think, drone pilots grow on trees?
Barack Obama made a point of criticizing electronic devices in a commencement speech to more than 1,000 graduates and thousands of their family and friends gathered on the football field at Hampton University, a historically black college in
"Obama said today’s college graduates are coming of age at a time of great difficulty for the United States. They face a tough economy for jobs, two wars and a 24/7 media environment not always dedicated to the truth, he said.
"Added to the mix are the distractions offered by popular electronic devices that entertain millions of Americans.
“'With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,' Obama said."
The rest of the story:
Obama criticizes iPods & iPads; Xboxes & PlayStations -- Reuters news story.
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.
Learning from the past
Ben Ferencz, 98, was a prosecutor the Nuremberg trials.
What does the last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg think the trials achieved? Listen to a BBC interview here.
What does the last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg think the trials achieved? Listen to a BBC interview here.
Must read: The Left ascendant
"With his primary election victory last week, Illinois Congressman Dan Lipinski -- a Blue Dog and cultural conservative -- won the first major 2018 battle between the Democratic Party's establishment and progressive wings. But don't be confused about what it means. The war is already over, and the establishment lost.
"Even though only two states have actually voted so far this primary election season -- Texas, a red-state redoubt, and Illinois, a blue-state stronghold -- the battle for supremacy this primary season is all but complete. In state after state, the left is proving to be the animating force in Democratic primaries, producing a surge of candidates who are forcefully driving the party toward a more liberal orientation on nearly every issue.
"These candidates are running on an agenda that moves the party beyond its recent comfort zone and toward single-payer health care, stricter gun control, a $15 minimum wage, more expansive LGBT rights and greater protections for immigrants. In the surest sign of the reoriented issue landscape, they're joined by some of the most prominent prospects in the 2020 Democratic presidential field -- Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris among them -- who are embracing the same agenda."
The rest of the story:
Forget about Conor Lamb and Dan Lipinski. The progressive wing has already beaten the establishment in 2018: How the Bernie Wing Won the Democratic Primaries by Charlie Mahtesuian (Politico).
When Algorithms Go Bad
Ask Google almost any question about the U.S population and it will give you an answer that involves "The Foreign-Born Population in the United States."
We do have questions that have nothing to do with immigrantion.
Really.
A story with 140 characters
Fiction on Twitter: From short short story to endless stream
It is said that Ernest Hemingway once bet that he could write a complete short story in six words. He was Twitter-ready a half century before anyone conceived of tweeting.
In 2012, before it descended into wordy 240-character journalistic one-upmanship and tribal warfare, Twitter hosted a five-day Twitter Fiction Festival (#twitterfiction), “a virtual storytelling celebration held entirely on Twitter,” inviting creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world.
According to Twitter, it had hosted great experiments in fiction already, from Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box” to Teju Cole’s “Small Fates” to Dan Sinker’s @mayoremanuel. And Twitter bragged it has even inspired some literary criticism.
To get into the spirit of things, and without delving into the whole business of streaming and interaction as components of twitter-fiction (working within the limitations of the classic tweet, you could say), I came up with this 140-character, short story:
Reading list:
✓ Nanoism is an online publication for twitter-fiction: stories of up to 140 characters.
✓ Craig Taylor, Charlotte Mendelson, Louise Doughty, John Niven, Victoria Hislop, Val McDermid...Top writers try their hand at writing a story with only Twitter's 140-character limit to play with (Guardian).
✓ Well-known writers – from Ian Rankin and Helen Fielding to Jeffrey Archer and Jilly Cooper – come up with a tweet-length story: 21 authors try their hand at 140-character novels (Guardian).
✓ 13 Beautiful Pieces of Twitter Fiction Remind Us How Powerful Reading Can Be by Anne Charlton (Mic).
✓ Twitter Fiction: "No Constraints, No Joy" by Isaac Fitzgerald (Buzzfeed).
✓ Twitter Fiction Reveals The Power Of Very, Very Short Stories by Maddie Crum (HuffPost).
✓ Consider Twitter Fiction by Anthony Santulli (The Review Review).
It is said that Ernest Hemingway once bet that he could write a complete short story in six words. He was Twitter-ready a half century before anyone conceived of tweeting.
In 2012, before it descended into wordy 240-character journalistic one-upmanship and tribal warfare, Twitter hosted a five-day Twitter Fiction Festival (#twitterfiction), “a virtual storytelling celebration held entirely on Twitter,” inviting creative experiments in storytelling from authors around the world.
According to Twitter, it had hosted great experiments in fiction already, from Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box” to Teju Cole’s “Small Fates” to Dan Sinker’s @mayoremanuel. And Twitter bragged it has even inspired some literary criticism.
To get into the spirit of things, and without delving into the whole business of streaming and interaction as components of twitter-fiction (working within the limitations of the classic tweet, you could say), I came up with this 140-character, short story:
On the desiccated, recalescent planet, barren at last, the desolated creature, a cockroach, grief-maddened, devoured the corpse of its mate.Hemingway won the bet, by the way. As the story goes (and the anecdote itself may be fiction), he scribbled “For sale: baby shoes, never used” to take home the pot.
Reading list:
✓ Nanoism is an online publication for twitter-fiction: stories of up to 140 characters.
✓ Craig Taylor, Charlotte Mendelson, Louise Doughty, John Niven, Victoria Hislop, Val McDermid...Top writers try their hand at writing a story with only Twitter's 140-character limit to play with (Guardian).
✓ Well-known writers – from Ian Rankin and Helen Fielding to Jeffrey Archer and Jilly Cooper – come up with a tweet-length story: 21 authors try their hand at 140-character novels (Guardian).
✓ 13 Beautiful Pieces of Twitter Fiction Remind Us How Powerful Reading Can Be by Anne Charlton (Mic).
✓ Twitter Fiction: "No Constraints, No Joy" by Isaac Fitzgerald (Buzzfeed).
✓ Twitter Fiction Reveals The Power Of Very, Very Short Stories by Maddie Crum (HuffPost).
✓ Consider Twitter Fiction by Anthony Santulli (The Review Review).
Switzerland has a lot of guns.
So why don't they have a lot of shootings?
Because, unlike us, they have universal weapons' training from a young age and mandatory universal military service, so everyone is familiar with the proper handling of weapons. All guns are registered and almost all guns require permits. The police conduct background checks and make psychological assessments before issuing permits: by law, anyone who "expresses a violent or dangerous attitude" is not permitted to own a gun and people who've been convicted of a crime or have an alcohol or drug addiction problem aren't allowed to buy guns. A gun owner who wants to carry for "defensive purposes" has to prove s/he knows how to load, unload, and shoot their weapon properly and must pass a test to get a license. Also, though they have a lot of guns compared to most countries, they have about 1/4 the number per capita that we do.
All this before you consider that their social services head off the kind of alienation and desperation so widespread in the US.
Worst Things First
The thing I fear about the anti-gun campaign -- which I support wholeheartedly -- is that it will distort our national priorities. Universal affordable health care would save countless more lives than gun control, for example, as would social programs addressing malnutrition, educational deficiencies, homelessness, joblessness, drug addiction, mental health and suicide (any and all of which also would have positive impacts on gun violence if they were to be addressed). I hope the federal legislature comes to grips with the gun problem. But if they do, we mustn't allow that accomplishment to obscure all that remains to be done.
Headline O' The Day:
"Stormy Daniels says Trump told her 'you remind me of my daughter' after she spanked him with a magazine" -- Business Insider
From the What-Could-Possibly-Go-Wrong Desk:
Four nuclear waste canisters with a potentially defective design have been loaded with spent fuel and buried in a “concrete monolith” yards from the beach at the shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. With the seas rising, it shouldn't be long before Southern Californians won't need to rely on the sun to get a tan. (The Orange County Register)
Rhythm and Jews:
"Catholics basically believe the same teachings that Baptists believe. We just do it without the rhythm. But we try. We are not as without rhythm as some of our Jewish brothers and sisters." ~ Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Roman Catholic, speaking ecumenically at a Baptist church in Harlem.
Trump's immigration crackdown was supposed to be good for American workers.
Trump's immigration crackdown was supposed to be good for American workers. But on California farms, it's creating a desperate labor shortage.
Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don’t want the job by Natalie Kitroef and Geoffrey Mohan (Los Angeles Times)
Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don’t want the job by Natalie Kitroef and Geoffrey Mohan (Los Angeles Times)
Don't think we need a radical change in political leadership?
Consider this:
The US House of Representatives voted Thursday afternoon to approve the federal budget for the current fiscal year, including a record $695 billion for the Pentagon, the largest amount ever, and more than half the total. The budget passed by a bipartisan vote of 256-167, with majorities of both Republicans and Democrats supporting it.
Ask not what your country can do for you?
The primary political questions are societal and aspirational; not how high are my taxes going to be or what benefits I can grab. Not, what's in it for me?
But:
What kind of country do I wish to live in?
Certainly not one where millions are imprisoned for petty crimes then denied reentry to society when their penalty has been paid; not one where people are put at a crippling disadvantage for the color of their skin, their beliefs, or the place they came from; not a country where the common wealth of the people is despoiled and pirated so that a fractional minority can prosper.
No, we want to live in a country where no one is forced to live in squalor; where if you work hard you can afford a decent life, where a worker receives a living wage; where no one suffers and dies because there is no affordable health care; where people have a reasonable prospect of advancing their own lives and where the lives of their children can be even better than their own.
The United States has been on the wrong road for forty years. Before our decline is irreversible, we must decide what kind of country we want to be. Freedom is meaningless without opportunity.
But:
What kind of country do I wish to live in?
Certainly not one where millions are imprisoned for petty crimes then denied reentry to society when their penalty has been paid; not one where people are put at a crippling disadvantage for the color of their skin, their beliefs, or the place they came from; not a country where the common wealth of the people is despoiled and pirated so that a fractional minority can prosper.
No, we want to live in a country where no one is forced to live in squalor; where if you work hard you can afford a decent life, where a worker receives a living wage; where no one suffers and dies because there is no affordable health care; where people have a reasonable prospect of advancing their own lives and where the lives of their children can be even better than their own.
The United States has been on the wrong road for forty years. Before our decline is irreversible, we must decide what kind of country we want to be. Freedom is meaningless without opportunity.
Our Feckless Democrats
Ten Democrats thwarted the (albeit mild) effort of Sen. Bernie Sanders and his allies to tap the brake on the permanent war machine.
Note that the celebrated Alabama Dem Doug Jones is on this list of shame, so that was a big win. And look what the people of Rhode Island contributed to this defeat. The ten warmongers are
On the other hand, five Republicans voted for the bill -- Collins (Me), Daines (Mont), Lee (Utah), Moran (Ks) and Paul (Ky), so there's that.Menendez (NJ)
Coons (Del.)
Masto (Nev.)
Donnelly (Ind.)
Heitkamp (N.D.)
Manchin (W.V.)
Nelson (Fla.)
Reed (R.I.)
Jones (Ala.)
Whitehouse (R.I.)
quote unquote: Bill Hicks
...All drugs should be legal.
The rich get richer.
The poor get poorer.
Thank you.
I'll be here all week. -- Bill Hicks
What's gonna take to get rational gun control?
This student spoke in front of the Capitol today during the National School Walk Out, slamming Congress for their lack of action on gun control.
"Their right to own an assault rifle does not outweigh our right to live."
"Their right to own an assault rifle does not outweigh our right to live."
Lucy Aharish: Humanity Made Irrelevant
“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” ~ Albert Einstein
quote unquote: John Quincy Adams
On the the search for "monsters to destroy."
"And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others,
"[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice."
John Quincy Adams in 1821,
presciently warning against the Long War.
presciently warning against the Long War.
Saturday Catchup 2018-03-03
After a long absence, Saturday Catchup is back!
Social democracy is all the rage in the U.S. (and neoliberalism under assault) since Sen. Bernie Sanders' late run for president. In this video, radical journalist, author and film-maker Paul Mason; Dr. Faiza Shaheen, economist, writer, activist and director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies; writer Anthony Barnett, co-founder of openDemocracy; economist Dr. Johnna Montgomerie; and Laurie Macfarlane, senior economist at the New Economics Foundation discuss whether radical social democracy offers a way out of the crisis of neoliberalism, and what this means for economic policy over the next decade. The debate is part of a new series of essays by Paul Mason exploring what radical social democracy means during the next decade:
Extra credit:
The word has become a rhetorical weapon, but neoliberal properly names the reigning ideology of our era -- one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human: Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world by Stephen Metcalf (Guardian).
The mission of radical social democracy must be to rekindle hope in a simple idea -- that life in your community will get better: Neoliberalism has destroyed social mobility. Together we must rebuild it by Paul Mason.
I’m not a neoliberal. Maybe you aren’t either. by Laurie Macfarlane (Medium).
Eljeer Hawkins is a community, labor and antiwar organizer, and for 23 years has been a member of Socialist Alternative, the US affiliate of the Committee for a Workers' International, a global Trotskyist
Aestheticist Adolph Hitler doesn't care for gentrification:
"The right to be heard is crucially important. But I want to think more generally about how we have learned to look at women who exercise power, or try to; I want to explore the cultural underpinnings of misogyny in politics or the workplace, and its forms (what kind of misogyny, aimed at what or whom, using what words or images, and with what effects); and I want to think harder about how and why the conventional definitions of ‘power’ (or for that matter of ‘knowledge’, ‘expertise’ and ‘authority’) that we carry round in our heads have tended to exclude women." -- Mary Beard, Women in Power.
For the text of this talk, go to Women in Power by Mary Beard (London Review of Books).
The resemblance of zoos to prisons aside: At the Stock Island Detention Center, a jail in Florida, prisoners care for a zoo of their own. Curator Jeanne Selander runs the prison zoo with the inmates, who benefit not only from the responsibility, but also from experiencing reciprocal love and care --often for the first time. Operations like this one shouldn't be news, they should be standard.
Sign up for a weekly email from 60 Second Docs, for videos that are uplifting without recourse to freak accidents or weird animal friendships.
A song-story from country singer-songwriter Paul Overstreet
Finally, in a spirit of resistance not nostalgia, here is the last installment of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, never broadcast at the time. The brothers, Tommy and Dick Smothers, waged a war against network censorship for a couple of years in the late 1960s, a fight they lost when they were fired for inviting comedian David Steinberg back on the show, despite complaints from some viewers over a previous booking. Nancy Wilson and Dan Rowan were also guests.
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