The Evening Blues - 11-15-16



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: TV Slim

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features television repairman and blues singer TV Slim. Enjoy!

TV Slim and his Heartbreakers - Flatfoot Sam

“To cheapen the lives of any group of men, cheapens the lives of all men, even our own. This is a law of human psychology, or human nature. And it will not be repealed by our wishes, nor will it be merciful to our blindness.”

-- William Pickens


News and Opinion

I wonder if Trump or anybody else will be somewhat surprised if it turns out that Trump, too, is "really good at killing people."

Obama will not restrict drone strike 'playbook' before Trump takes office

Trump administration will inherit Obama’s signature counter-terrorism tactic, known as ‘targeted killing’

Barack Obama will not tighten the rules governing US drone strikes ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Guardian has learned.

Trump will inherit the apparatus for what Obama calls “targeted killing” – the so-called drones “playbook” formally known as the 22 May 2013 Presidential Policy Guidance or PPG – that has turned drone strikes into Obama’s signature counter-terrorism tactic.

While the White House considers its standards for drone strikes to be scrupulous, much of the rest of the world considers them to represent an arbitrary, secret and dangerous apparatus of secret killing that Trump will soon have at his disposal.

“Maybe on the left no one would believe that Trump has a steady hand, but Obama has normalized the idea that presidents get to have secret large-scale killing programs at their disposal,” said Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA.

Begun under George W Bush, drone strikes were vastly accelerated and codified by Obama beyond officially declared war zones. Official estimates claim they have killed nearly 2,600 “terrorists”, though human rights activists consider that to be an undercount.

The footprint of the drones has become increasingly widespread, situated in airfields from Tunisia to Niger to Cameroon, they represent the outgrowth of a legal theory which was embraced by both presidents Bush and Obama, who considered the war on terrorism’s battlefield to be global.

For the 1st time, ICC set its sights on the United States' action in Afghanistan and elsewhere

US army and CIA may be guilty of war crimes in Afghanistan, says ICC

Prosecutors to decide ‘imminently’ whether to investigate reports that detainees were tortured in Afghanistan and elsewhere

US armed forces and the CIA may have committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan, the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor has said in a report, raising the possibility that American citizens could be indicted even though Washington has not joined the global court.

“Members of US armed forces appear to have subjected at least 61 detained persons to torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity on the territory of Afghanistan between 1 May 2003 and 31 December 2014,” according to the report issued by prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s office on Monday.

The report adds that CIA operatives may have subjected at least 27 detainees in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania to “torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity and/or rape” between December 2002 and March 2008.

Most of the alleged abuse happened in 2003-04, the report says.

Prosecutors said they would decide “imminently” whether to seek authorisation to open a full-scale investigation in Afghanistan that could lead to war crimes charges.

Even though the US is not a member of the court, Americans could still face prosecution at its headquarters in The Hague if they commit crimes within its jurisdiction in a country that is a member, such as Afghanistan, and are not prosecuted at home.

So far, all of the ICC’s trials have dealt with crimes committed in Africa.

Prosecutors say investigations also are reportedly under way in Poland, Romania and Lithuania, which are all signatories to the Rome statute, into possible crimes at CIA detention facilities in those countries.

Obama Claims Trump Will Remain Committed to NATO

Following a solid week of NATO officials demanding President-elect Donald Trump commit to supporting the alliance, irrespective of his calls during the presidential campaign for Europe to pay more of the cost of their own defense, President Obama has now come out to claim Trump will do what NATO wants.

Obama claimed the question of NATO had come up during their brief meeting, and that Trump had told him that he is committed to a “strong and robust” NATO and will keep US strategic relationships intact. ...

Perhaps even more problematic to the status quo is Trump having already agreed to normalize relations with Russia. NATO’s military buildups against Russia in the past couple of years have been presented as their main raison d’etre, and if US-Russia ties warm, it will clearly undermine the alliance’s talking points.

Trump and Putin are already talking about Syria

President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed a “settlement for the crisis in Syria” over the phone Monday, according to a statement released by the Kremlin. The statement also said Putin and Trump agreed that current relations between their two countries were “unsatisfactory.” ...

Though Trump’s presidential transition team was less forthcoming on the details of Monday’s call, they released a statement that the president-elect was “very much looking forward to having a strong and enduring relationship with Russia and the people of Russia.” ...

As of late Monday, it was unclear who initiated the call.

Aleppo airstrikes resume as Russia announces major Syria offensive

Pro-Assad forces have launched a fierce air bombardment on rebel-held areas of eastern Aleppo after several weeks of relative calm and as Russia announced that its aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov would anchor a major operation in Syria.

People inside the city reported a heavy pace of attacks, and rights groups confirmed at least three people had died within a few hours.

“Regime aircraft launched strikes and dropped barrel bombs on a number of neighbourhoods in the east of Aleppo for the first time since 18 October,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. ...

The attacks on Aleppo came just hours after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, discussed Syria with the US president-elect, Donald Trump. They agreed on the need to combine their fights in the battle against “international terrorism and extremism”, Putin’s office said in a statement.

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, said Russia had launched new missile strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria, using missiles and jets flying from the Admiral Kuznetsov, which made a much-publicised trip from Russia to Syria last month.

‘Moderate’ Syrian Rebels Battle Each Other North of Aleppo

Any claim of cohesion within the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the so-called “moderate” rebels in Syria, is clearly falling apart today, as two factions, both of them flying FSA flags, fought one another in a pitched battle over the city of Azaz, north of Aleppo.

Both of the FSA factions involved as Turkish-backed groups, with the Levant Front FSA fighters clashing with the Ahrar al-Sham FSA forces in Azaz, a valuable border crossing into neighboring Turkey. Ahrar al-Sham forces reported seized several checkpoints in the fighting. ...

Fighting amongst rebel factions in Syria is nothing new, of course, but to see two groups both flying the FSA banner, both taking part in Turkey’s anti-ISIS push, and both taking time out of their busy schedule to fight one another is extremely irregular.

Syria's food production edging nearer to collapse, UN warns

Food production in Syria is edging nearer to collapse with wheat production having halved since the start of the war and the area of fields planted now at an all-time low, according to the UN.

The World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned of grave consequences for the availability of food in the warn-torn region unless immediate assistance is provided to farmers. Lack of food could add to the 11 million Syrians already displaced by five years of conflict, they said.

Already there is a shortfall of a fifth in wheat supplies, with more than 9.4 million Syrians needing food aid. The situation is especially acute for almost 600,000 people living in besieged and hard-to-reach areas, where they largely rely on delivered food.

The fighting has led to lack of access to land, markets and essential farming materials, such as fertiliser, seeds, veterinary medicines and fuel for machinery. This has also hit Syria’s livestock, which was once exported to other countries.

Now, there are 60% less poultry - which was the most affordable source of animal protein - 40% fewer sheep and goats and 30% fewer cattle, the agencies said, as many herding families have been forced to sell or slaughter their animals.

“Today, we see almost 80% of households across Syria struggling with a lack of food or money to buy food and the situation is only going to become worse if we fail to support farmers so they can maintain their lands and livelihoods,” said Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, FAO assistant director-general.

Chelsea Manning makes appeal for release before Trump takes office

Chelsea Manning has made a last-ditch appeal to Barack Obama to commute her sentence for leaking state secrets to time served, calling on him to release her from military prison so that she can have her “first chance to live a real, meaningful life”.

With the clock running down on the current presidency, the US soldier is making her last, and what her supporters hope will be the most promising, stab at persuading Obama to set her free after more than six years in custody. Their assumption is that the prospects of incoming president Donald Trump showing her leniency rank as slim, to none.

Manning has already served considerably more time behind bars than any other official leaker in recent US history. In a letter that accompanies the petition, her lawyers, Nancy Hollander and Vincent Ward, liken the soldier’s plight to the many other criminal offenders that have already been given a second chance by Obama through his clemency powers.

In the Trump Era, Leaking and Whistleblowing Are More Urgent, and More Noble, Than Ever

For the past 15 years, the U.S. government under both parties has invented whole new methods for hiding what it does behind an increasingly impenetrable wall of secrecy. From radical new legal doctrines designed to shield its behavior from judicial review to prosecuting sources at record rates, more and more government action has been deliberately hidden from the public.

One of the very few remaining avenues for learning what the U.S. government is doing — beyond the propaganda that it wants Americans to ingest and thus deliberately disseminates through media outlets — is leaking and whistleblowing. Among the leading U.S. heroes in the war on terror have been the men and women inside various agencies of the U.S. government who discovered serious wrongdoing being carried out in secret, and then risked their own personal welfare to ensure that the public learned of what never should have been hidden in the first place. ...

Donald Trump has not yet been inaugurated, but all the signs point to a presidency that will be deeply hostile to basic precepts of transparency. During the campaign, he repeatedly violated long-standing norms of disclosure, including even a refusal to make his income tax returns public, and already has broken with tradition by refusing during the transition to provide basic information about his whereabouts or activities.

Beyond that, the institutions of the executive branch are well-trained to resist transparency as much as possible and have been vested with countless tools to conceal their most important activities. Institutional inertia by itself, let alone once exacerbated by Trump’s own anti-transparency impulses, all but guarantees the Trump presidency will be aggressively antagonistic to basic public accountability.

Keiser Report: Trumponomics

Trump adviser linked to Turkish lobbying

Donald Trump wants to forbid his officials from lobbying for foreign governments, but one of his top national security advisers is being paid by a close ally of Turkey's president.

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a vice chair of the Trump transition who is in the running for a top national security post in the new administration, runs a consulting firm that is lobbying for Turkish interests, an associate told POLITICO. Asked if Flynn's firm was hired because of the general's closeness to Trump, the associate, Robert Kelley, said, "I hope so."

Kelley told POLITICO that the client, a Dutch consulting firm called Inovo BV, was founded by Kamil Ekim Alptekin. Alptekin is chairman of the Turkish-American Business Council, known as TAIK, an arm of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey, whose members are chosen by the country's general assembly and economic minister. In that role, Alptekin was involved in organizing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's visit to Washington earlier this year. ...

Kelley said he didn't know if the client presented a conflict of interest. A spokesman for Flynn said he was too busy to answer questions. The Trump transition didn't answer a request for comment.

The "contract with the American voter" released by the Trump transition pledges to instate "a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government."

Mohamed Morsi death sentence overturned

An Egyptian court has overturned a death sentence against the deposed president Mohamed Morsi, and ordered a retrial.

The Muslim Brotherhood leader was sentenced to death in June 2015 in connection with a mass jail break during Egypt’s 2011 uprising.

The first president to be democratically elected after the revolution, Morsi was overthrown in mid-2013 by general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi during mass protests against his rule, and immediately arrested.

Barack Obama on Brexit, Trump victory: "suspicion of elites, and governing institutions"

Violence against Muslims increased in 2015

Hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. surged in 2015 in the biggest increase since 9/11, according to FBI data released Monday. The increase from 2014 to 2015, as a racially charged presidential campaign got under way, was second only to the increase experienced after 9/11.

There were 301 anti-Muslim offenses in 2015, compared to 178 in 2014, a 69 percent increase. Anti-Muslim hate crimes soared by 1,554 percent in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks, from 33 offenses in 2000 to 546 the following year. That figure dropped back to 170 in 2002, and then steadily decreased throughout the 2000s, reaching an eight-year low of 123 in 2008, and have been slowly rising ever since.

Teachers describe dealing with the election in America's classrooms

Teachers in classrooms across the U.S. are facing a new challenge in the wake of Tuesday’s surprise election of Donald Trump: how to cultivate civil discussion after a rancorous campaign season, and create a safe space for students — some as young as elementary-school age — who’ve come to fear the president-elect.

A report from the Southern Poverty Law Center this past spring found that the rhetoric of the election cycle was having a profound impact on students across the country. Racial tension and anxiety among students increased, and many students worried about deportation. And now that Trump has been elected, schools are stepping up to respond to the range of reactions. ...

But some teachers — particularly in low-income districts — have seen Trump’s victory take a toll on their students. The most dramatic impact has centered on Hispanic students and students who are Muslim, because of Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S. and promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. ... Brittany Clark, a high school English teacher at a public school in Brooklyn, New York, says that those fears have been augmented since Election Day. “There seems to be this sentiment that our students no longer know how to interact around each other,” says Clark. “There appears to be internal and external tension rising: Do minority students have to mistrust white students? Do minorities have to mistrust anyone who sympathizes with Trump if they have felt attacked by Trump?” ...

“It was hard to cope with — there was a lot of disappointment… and honestly, fear, too,” says Lauren Capra, a teacher at a high school in Maryland. Capra’s school is in a low-income neighborhood, and many of her students are immigrants or have immigrant parents. “Before the election, [the students] were expressing concern and coming to me and saying, ‘I’m worried. Am I going to be deported?’”

Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportation can’t compete with migrants’ desperation

While President-elect Donald Trump was renewing his campaign vows over the weekend to build a border wall and deport up to 3 million people, U.S. immigration officials were taking steps to deal with thousands of Central American children and families arriving in Texas.

Speaking to CBS’ “60 Minutes” news show on Sunday in his first interview since the election, Trump said his administration would prioritize going after undocumented immigrants with criminal records. ...

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.; fact-checkers say Trump’s claim that at least 2 million of them are serious criminals is based on “very bad math.” Last year, for instance, Immigration and Customs Enforcement identified 64,197 crimes committed by fewer than 20,000 “criminal aliens placed in a noncustodial setting.” Nearly a third of those offenses were traffic violations.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced plans on Saturday to deploy 150 additional agents to Texas in response to a surge of Central American migrants arriving at the border. Johnson said 46,195 people were detained at the southwest border in October, up from 39,501 in September and 37,048 in August. Overall this year through September, 408,870 people have been apprehended along the southwest border, a 23 percent increase from the same period last year.

Immigration officials have said most of the people caught in the recent influx are families and unaccompanied minors. According to advocates working on the ground in Central America, these are mainly refugees fleeing violence in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

A Look at the Other Morocco: From Protests Against Austerity to Occupation of Western Sahara

Rust-belt romantics don’t get it: the middle class is being wiped out too

Rapacious capitalism has all of us - not just the working class - in its sights

At least now you know who to blame. Since Brexit and especially after Donald Trump, the quack analysts have been out in force, holding aloft their quack explanations. It is apparently all the fault of the white working classes. They got left behind and cast aside in the past two decades of globalisation – now they’re making the rest of us pay.

Like all good quack analysis, it is instantly digestible, it makes little demands of its audience: no scouring of footnotes nor leafing through history. It is toxically simple. Never mind actual facts – such as the ones that prove Asian and black people are around twice as likely to be unemployed as white people. Never mind that such quackery, while pretending to be rooted in economics, merely turns the “white working class” into just another branch of identity politics. ... Poor sods: unlike the rest of us, they just couldn’t keep up.

However seductive this is as explanation, as analysis it’s off economically and it’s off politically because it misses the point. The Trump vote contained rednecks and inhabitants of the rust belt, just as south Wales and Sunderland turned out for Brexit – but in neither case was that the whole story. It also seeks to turn a larger and wider economic process into a smaller and more trivial culture war. It pits the middle classes against the working classes, and the poor whites against the poor blacks. All the while, since 2008 the single biggest economic story across Britain and the US and other rich countries has been achingly slow growth and austerity for the masses, alongside state-subsidised riches for the very wealthiest.

Put bluntly, if you think that what has happened to the advanced countries’ working classes – how over four decades they have sunk from semi-prosperity into pauperism – was a one-off event driven by the magical, unanswerable forces of globalisation, then you’ve missed the point. This is a process that’s swallowing up the middle classes too. Indeed, it’s happening now. And the political implications will, I think, make Trump come to seem as benevolent as a greasepaint baddie at a Christmas panto. ...

The answer isn’t further to isolate one tribe as having special attributes that need to be mollified or tamed. It’s to look at the process that isolated them economically and politically and to be aware that we are on the verge of doing the same. If the rich countries are only now dealing with the electoral fallout of a socioeconomic process that began 40 years ago, then ask yourself: what does a Marine Le Pen for the middle classes look like?

The cost of globalisation: 30% of French workers are now disposable

Protests won't stop Trump

The astonishing triumph of Donald Trump can be traced to the bitter defeat of Occupy Wall Street, a pro-democracy movement that transcended left and right, sparking unrest in hundreds of cities and rural towns in 2011. Occupy’s consensus-based encampments demanded that President Obama get money out of politics. Instead, we got mercilessly smashed by his progressive administration. Now the dark irony of history is bashing back. ...

Despite the excitement of seeing militants marching in the cities, leftist activist networks are buzzing with the painful realization that contemporary protest is broken. ... Nominally democratic governments tolerate protest because elected representatives no longer feel compelled to heed protest. ... Activists who rush into the streets tomorrow and repeat yesterday’s tired tactics will not bring an end to Trump nor will they transfer sovereign power to the people. There are only two ways to achieve sovereignty in this world. Activists can win elections or win wars. There is no third option.

Protest can play an important role in winning elections or winning wars but protest alone is insufficient. Just think of the three years many activists spent on Black Lives Matter versus the 18 months it took Trump to sweep into power. It is magical thinking, and a dangerously misguided strategy, for activists to continue to act as if the masses in the streets can attain a sovereignty over their governments through a collective manifestation of the people’s general will. This may have been true in the past, but is not true today.

What is to be done now? American activists must move from detached indignation to revolutionary engagement. They must use the techniques that create social movements to dominate elections.

Realizing that new forms of social protest are better equipped to win elections than disrupt elections, many of the indignados transformed themselves into Podemos, a hybrid movement-party that is now winning elections and taking power. A similar story can be told of the Pirate party in Iceland, or the 5 Star Movement in Italy or the pan-European Diem25. Focus on the form, not the content, of these hybrid movement-parties: their organizing style is the future of global protest. ...

In any case, avoid falling for the exhausting delusion of endless urban protest or the nihilistic fantasy of winning an insurrectionary war.

An interesting essay, worth a peek. Here's a taste:

So This is How the US Revolution Will Unfold

In late 2012, Peter Turchin, a professor at the University of Connecticut made a startling claim. Based on an analysis of revolutionary upheavals across history, he found that there were 3 social conditions in place shortly before all major outbreaks of social violence: an increase in the elite population; a decrease in the living standards of the masses; and huge levels of government indebtedness. The statistical model his team developed suggested that, on this basis, a major wave of social upheaval and revolutionary violence is set to take place in the US in 2020. His model had no way to predict who would lead the charge; but this week’s election gives an indication of how it is likely to unfold.

Let’s take the first condition, which Turchin calls “elite overproduction”, defined as “an increased number of aspirants for the limited supply of elite positions”. The US has clearly been heading in this direction for some time, with the number of billionairres increasing more than tenfold from 1987 (41 billionairres) to 2012 (425 billionairres). But the ruling class split between, for example, industrialists and financiers, has apparently reached fever pitch with Trump vs Clinton. As Turchin explains, “increased intra-elite competition leads to the formation of rival patronage networks vying for state rewards. As a result, elites become riven by increasing rivalry and factionalism.” Indeed, based on analysis of thousands of incidents of civil violence across world history, Turchin concluded that “the most reliable predictor of state collapse and high political instability was elite overproduction”.



the evening greens


Slashed Budgets and Toxic Chemicals: Planning for Environmental Carnage Under Donald Trump’s EPA

Environmentalists who were hoping that somehow a Donald Trump presidency wouldn’t be as catastrophic as they feared had those hopes dashed on Friday, when the president-elect announced Myron Ebell as his choice to oversee the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell, head of both the right-wing think tank the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition, has spent most of his career tossing out industry-funded nonsense bombs about climate change.

A non-scientist whose funders have included ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and coal giant Murray Energy Corporation, Ebell has been a consistent taunter of both scientists and environmentalists. As a talking head on TV news, he has for years offered false balance on climate change in the form of views so far outside of the mainstream as to be downright bizarre. For Ebell, Al Gore is “an extremist” who “lives in a fantasy world,” the Pope’s encyclical on climate change is “diatribe against modern industrial civilization,” and current climate patterns indicate an imminent ice age rather than a warming planet.

Since we were already falling short of our climate goals before the election, and since the potential consequences of inaction may be irreversible, Ebell’s leadership in this realm seems to pose the gravest danger. ...

But there is much more to the EPA than the protection of the climate. And Ebell also runs a pro-chemical industry front group from the website saferchemicalpolicy.org, where you can read about the “life-enhancing value of chemicals” and the absurd idea that man-made toxic chemicals couldn’t possibly cause cancer because the average human lifespan has increased since 1950.

Indeed, Ebell’s hostility seems to extend to all scientific fact and the entire cause of environmentalism, and he will have a range of opportunities to inflict harm on human health and the environment. Still, certain protections of the earth, water, and land will be harder for him to reverse than others.

[See article for an analysis of the range of damage that a Trump administration may be able to wreak on the environment and what is safe, for now. - js]

U.S. State Dept. Science Envoy on Trump's Climate Denialism & Why Sanders Could Have Beaten Him

Obama kicking the can down the road to allow Trump to take the blame?

Completion of Dakota Access pipeline delayed as army calls for more analysis

The US army corps of engineers has completed its review of the Dakota Access pipeline and is calling for “additional discussion and analysis”, further delaying completion of a project that has faced massive opposition from indigenous and environmental activists.

The statement comes amid heightened tensions between Native American activists and the surrounding community over the pipeline, which the Standing Rock Sioux tribe says could contaminate its water supply and destroy sacred sites. On Saturday, a man brandished a gun during a confrontation with protesters and fired his weapon into the air.

The Dakota Access pipeline operator announced on election day that it had completed construction of the pipeline up to Lake Oahe – a reservoir that is part of the Missouri River – and was preparing to begin drilling under the river. But the company still lacks permission from the army corps of engineers to perform the drilling.

Assistant secretary of the army Jo-Ellen Darcy cited the history of “repeated dispossessions” of the Great Sioux Nation in a letter to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and the pipeline company. She wrote that the corps wanted to begin talks with the tribe about “potential conditions in an easement” that would allow the pipeline to cross the Missouri river but lessen the risks of a spill.

“While these discussions and analysis are ongoing, construction on or under Corps land bordering or under Lake Oahe cannot occur because the Army has not made a final decision on whether to grant an easement,” the letter concludes.

President-Elect Trump's Pro-Oil Stance Looms Over #NoDAPL Day of Action

One day after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers again delayed construction of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL)—and one week after the election of Donald Trump all but ensured the project's eventual completion—actions are taking place in hundreds of cities across the United States and around the world on Tuesday calling for the crude oil pipeline to be rejected.

With rallies, marches, and acts of civil disobedience taking place in all 50 states and beyond, organizers called the day of action and the movement that inspired it "one of the most courageous stands against a fossil fuel project this country has ever seen." ...

Participants in Tuesday's actions acknowledged in a frank statement: "[W]e don't know what the effect of our protest will be."

"We need the Obama administration to act, and act decisively—not to simply run out the clock on their responsibilities," said movement leaders in a call-to-action. "Even if he does so, his successor may undo his work and grant the permit. But many things may happen after January 20, and we had best get in the practice of resistance, or at least of bearing witness."



Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Fisk: The Middle East is Now All About Putin

Muslims in Trump’s America: Fearful but Defiant

Chuck Schumer: The Worst Possible Democratic Leader at the Worst Possible Time

It’s Class, Stupid, Not Race

Break Up the Democratic Party: It’s Time for the Clintons and Rubin to Go – and Soros Too

Protesters Target Senator Chuck Schumer’s Office Along With Trump Tower

Sanders’ Democrats Call for Change

Goodbye
globalization

India’s attempt to replace billions of dollars of currency is not going well

How Self-Appointed Guardians of “Sound Science” Tip the Scales Toward Industry


A Little Night Music

TV Slim & His Heartbreakers - Flatfoot Sam Met Jim Dandy

T.V. Slim - To Prove My Love

T.V. Slim - Juvenile Delinquent

TV Slim - Don't Knock The Blues

T.V. Slim - Can't Be Satisfied

TV Slim - You Can't Love Me

TV Slim - My Heart's Full of Pain

T.V. Slim - Darling Remember

T.V. Slim - Don't Reach Across My Plate

T.V. Slim - My Baby is Gone

TV Slim - Hold Me Close To Your Heart

T.V. Slim - Gravy Round Your Steak

TV Slim - TV Man


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divineorder's picture

Jakkalbessie in teh kitchen pre-cooking dinner so that we can go participate with New Energy Economy in the Nationwide support for the Sioux action here in Santa Fe. We will be out front encouraging people to boycott Bank of America and then trundle over to do the same in front of Wells Fargo. Both banks have put millions into the Dakota Pipeline fail.

Will check back in to get our EB Blues fix when we return. Have a good one!

Wanted to share some good news I found on Twitter, even if it was put there by OR.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

i hope that you guys have a great time raising hell at the behemoth banks.

thanks for the good news about the scrapped pipeline!

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enhydra lutris's picture

memory as to the state of pipelineistan preliminary to Drumpf taking office. Since he is a creature of the FIRE economy, he will be in over his head for at least a year to 18 months. That may be a very good thing for the US and the world at large.

Pure brute and blind power, like drones, however, are right up his alley, as are fascist instrumentalities like the NSA. AFAIK, nobody has anything resembling a decent game plan on those fronts either. Ah well ...

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

it'll be interesting to see whether trump and his merry minions are able to take it all in and rise to the opportunities to straighten out the american tendency to get embroiled in stupid resource wars rob the planet blind.

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I saw this in the "Break Up the Ds" link:

The ethnic card did work with many black voters (although not so strongly; fewer blacks voted for Hillary than had showed up for Obama). Under the Obama administration for the past eight years, blacks have done worse in terms of income and net worth than any other grouping, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s statistics. But black voters were distracted from their economic interests by the Democrats’ ethnic-identity politics.

Can you imagine posting that at TOP? We can predict who would show up to shout "Privilege!, Racist!"

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joe shikspack's picture

i can attest from personal experience that the denizens of dkos don't care to hear about the shortcomings of the chosen one. my experience tells me that they are democrats first and, well, not really progressives.

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turned out for HRC," but rather, which african americans turned out?

during the primaries we pointed out that sweeping the southern african american vote wasn't going to mean a damned thing come november, and of course we were right -- and we were accused of racism for suggesting that primary success in regions that would never go Dem in november was perhaps a dangerously self-defeating proposition. well guess what? those conservative southern african americans fucked over all of us, including the urban black populations of the upper midwest.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

joe shikspack's picture

heh, i'd call it an extra slim chance, or perhaps a vanishingly small chance. Smile

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elenacarlena's picture

we marched for NoDAPL at the courthouse and over to the Army Corps of Engineers. Pretty good crowd. Hope it helps! Can't get photos to post, but here's a Facebook page with lots of photos from today's event for any interested. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gene-Snyder-United-States-Courthouse/1031...

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Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.

joe shikspack's picture

thanks for going and participating! i hope that it helps, too. if nothing else, though, having people out in the streets in 300 towns across america has got to make a mark.

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elenacarlena's picture

2-4 years to have any hope of survival, I think.

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Crider's picture

Thanks, Joe. There's a tremendous amount of leaking out of the Trump transition teams. It makes for Reality TV-like news. I think Ryan Seacrest should have been President, and Donald Trump could have been Commerce Secretary or something like that. Each Secretary could have their own reality shows in the Government Network. Anyway, I thought this one was amusing, though I lost the link: Donald Trump’s “angry, arrogant” transition team axes every one of Chris Christie’s appointees.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L0k2-kO_yc]

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joe shikspack's picture

heh, it may be that life under trump may take on the hallmarks of a cheezy teevee reality show. on the other hand, that movie idiocracy seems to have potential as a model.

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Odd tidbit: as of yesterday, HRC has not spoken with Bernie. He campaigned for her in 15 states and when she invevitably loses....crickets?

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joe shikspack's picture

it didn't appear that there was any great love between them. given one of the leaked podesta emails that suggested that the clinton campaign use their "leverage" (which was not specified) on sanders to rein in his criticisms of clinton, my guess would be that their "relationship" was strictly for the cameras.

great albert king tune, thanks!

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You thank someone who helps you, whether you like them or not, or whether it all turns out well or not.
More than any policy position or speech, these little moments are clues to a public person's private position. In this case confirmation, not revelation.+
Anyway, love your show.

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snoopydawg's picture

He said that he didn't want to run a negative campaign, but when is telling people what the other opponent did become negative campaign?
He didn't say much about her destruction of Libya, her backing the coups in Honduras or Ukraine and he was totally hands off about the corruption of her foundation, the pay for play when she sold one of the most repressive regimes billions in weapons which they are using on Yemen.
And Bernie, it's a good thing that other people did want to hear about her emails.
From them we learned how she screwed you over. Why you didn't fight back against the election fraud is beyond me and I, disappointed in you.
even before the emails offered proof that the election was stolen from you, why didn't you question why so many people who probably were going to vote for you had been kicked off the voting rolls, had their party affiliation changed, fought back against the Nevada caucus debacle, the Clintons breaking election laws by going to poling places and the other things they did to prevent you from winning?
I'm more disappointed in you letting those things slide then you endorsing and campaigning for her.
You owed your supporters to fight back against that.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

earthling1's picture

Liked the side of 'Pirate Party'. Has nice ring to it .
Seriously though, we do need a Pan-American umbrella organization focused on obvious commonality ( climate change , renewable energy, healthcare, and minimum wages) with people everywhere.
Once again, people in other countries lead the way.
American exceptionalism. HUMPH.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

joe shikspack's picture

i'm kinda fond of the pirate party myself. Smile

given our inability to break out of the grip of the 1% on our election system, we may have to rely on other countries to apply the discipline needed to force our government into dealing with climate change and perhaps other things as well.

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joe shikspack's picture

down with the grim reaper!

my favorite mose allison tune:

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Just back from the Standing Rock protest asking people that use Band of America and Wells Fargo to help support Standing Rock by moving their money. There was a nice turnout of about 300 people. There were four of the pueblos from New Mexico there as well as some young people from Standing Rock that read some of their poetry about their feelings about what was happening. Two of the groups from the Pueblos did some drumming and chanting that is always interesting.

There was lots of traffic support out on the street in front of the two banks which happen to sit side by side on a busy street in Santa Fe. There were also the Black Snake Dancers, a dragon like snake symbolizing the oil pipeline. Was a powerful demonstration and presentations. The entire rally was being watched by a drone overhead, several times the crowd lifted their hands in a defiant salute.

On another note, feedback from the teachers about how to deal with the election, and the tensions that are manifesting.

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

joe shikspack's picture

i'm glad that things went well at the demo and that there was good turnout. thanks for standing with standing rock!

i hope you and do have a great evening.

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divineorder's picture

at Bank of America and Wells Fargo for investing millions and not working to stop the violence being done the water protectors at Standing Rock.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

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snoopydawg's picture

And for going to the protest both of you.
Why people still have money in the big banks is beyond my understanding.
Credit unions
Why keep rewarding the banks that crashed the global economy?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.