The Evening Blues - 8-21-18



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Lizzie Miles

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Creole blues singer Lizzie Miles. Enjoy!

Lizzie Miles - A Good Man Is Hard To Find

"Capitalism needs to end. It needs to end because it has failed the climate change problem: it didn’t deal with a problem so catastrophic it will forseeably kill a billion or more people and which might end in human extinction. Capitalism knew this was likely to happen, capitalism didn’t just not deal with it, but capitalist institutions fought (and are still fighting) to conceal that it would happen and against doing anything.

So capitalism needs to die or be heavily modified. It was clear by the 90s that this was so, and we did nothing. This won’t stop it from dying. It will, however, make its death throes and what comes immediately afterwards much worse."

-- Ian Welsh


News and Opinion

Saying Goodbye to Planet Earth

The spectacular rise of human civilization—its agrarian societies, cities, states, empires and industrial and technological advances ranging from irrigation and the use of metals to nuclear fusion—took place during the last 10,000 years, after the last ice age. Much of North America was buried, before the ice retreated, under sheets eight times the height of the Empire State Building. This tiny span of time on a planet that is 4.5 billion years old is known as the Holocene Age. It now appears to be coming to an end with the refusal of our species to significantly curb the carbon emissions and pollutants that might cause human extinction. The human-induced change to the ecosystem, at least for many thousands of years, will probably make the biosphere inhospitable to most forms of life.

The planet is transitioning under our onslaught to a new era called the Anthropocene. This era is the product of violent conquest, warfare, slavery, genocide and the Industrial Revolution, which began about 200 years ago, and saw humans start to burn a hundred million years of sunlight stored in the form of coal and petroleum. The numbers of humans climbed to over 7 billion. Air, water, ice and rock, which are interdependent, changed. Temperatures climbed. The Anthropocene, for humans and most other species, will most likely conclude with extinction or a massive die-off, as well as climate conditions that will preclude most known life forms. We engineered our march toward collective suicide although global warming was first identified in 1896 by the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius.

The failure to act to ameliorate global warming exposes the myth of human progress and the illusion that we are rational creatures. We ignore the wisdom of the past and the stark scientific facts before us. We are entranced by electronic hallucinations and burlesque acts, including those emanating from the centers of power, and this ensures our doom. Speak this unpleasant truth and you are condemned by much of society. The mania for hope and magical thinking is as seductive in the Industrial Age as it was in pre-modern societies.

“We’re probably not the first time there’s been a civilization in the universe,” Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and the author of “Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth,” told me when we met in New York. ... Civilizations probably have risen elsewhere in the universe, developed complex societies and then died because of their own technological advances. Every star in the night sky is believed to be circled by planets, some 10 billion trillion of which astronomers such as Frank Drake estimate are hospitable to life. “If you develop an industrial civilization like ours, the route is going to be the same,” Adam Frank said. “You’re going to have a hard time not triggering climate change.” ...

“Climate change is not a problem we have to make go away, in a sense that you don’t make adolescence go away,” Frank said. “It is a dangerous transition that you have to navigate. … The question is are we smart enough to deal with the effects of our own power? Climate change is not a pollution problem. It’s not like any environmental problem we’ve faced before. In some sense, it’s not an environmental problem but a planetary transition. We’ve already pushed the earth into it. We’re going to have to evolve a new way of being a civilization, fundamentally.”

Fifteen Years of Forever Wars

Fifteen years ago on May 1, 2003, speaking in Kabul, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld declared that, in Afghanistan, “we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities.” Later that same day, standing on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, President George W. Bush proclaimed that “…major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” He described the U.S. overthrow of the Iraqi government as “one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001,” adding that our “war on terror is not over, yet it is not endless.”

But, evidently, it is indeed endless. Secretary Rumsfeld defined success in this war as not creating more terrorists than we kill. That seems a fair standard. But, by this criterion, what we have done is clearly counterproductive. In 2003, we invaded Iraq to prevent weapons of mass destruction that did not exist from falling into the hands of terrorists who also did not exist until our arrival and subsequent misconduct begat them. In 2003, we were engaged in military operations in two West Asian nations – Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2018, the Cost of War Project at Brown’s Watson Institute documents American involvement in some level of combat in seventy-six nations. For at least the past fifteen years, we have been creating more terrorists than we kill.

Anti-American terrorists with global reach and home-grown terrorists alike explain that they are over here because we are over there. Our political leaders keep saying that they can’t possibly have that right. Surely, they hate us because of who we are, not what we’ve done and where. But the kith and kin of the roughly four million Muslims we have been responsible for killing in the post-Cold War era say otherwise. ...

Today our homeland is shabbier and we are less – not more – secure than we were before we began our rampage through the Muslim world. Placing Russia and China at the top of our roster of enemies and preparing to go to war with them will make our military-industrial complex feel better by justifying the procurement of super-expensive weaponry. But it will not improve our position in the wars we are currently losing and it could lead to a devastating nuclear exchange that our country could not survive. We need to make an effort to extract the lessons of our misadventures in West Asia and North Africa so as not to repeat them.

Murphy Amendment Would Defund US Involvement in Yemen War

Recently signed by President Trump, the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) sought to place limits on US involvement in the Yemen War, and mandated new reports to Congress regarding involvement. President Trump said in his signing statement he won’t honor those limits, arguing that the war limits violate his role as commander in chief, and the reports put an undue burden on the Pentagon.

This week, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is taking another crack at defunding the war, with an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Act of 2019, which is coming up for debate in the Senate. This amendment withdraws all funding, prohibiting the Pentagon from spending any money on the Yemen War.

This is the only realistic recourse Congress has to President Trump’s refusal to abide by NDAA limitations. The power of the purse allows Congress to defund conflicts, and Sen. Murphy says it is particularly vital in this case, because the war is unconstitutional and never authorized by Congress.

Venezuela’s New Economic Program: Will it Stop Hyperinflation?

China defies U.S. pressure as EU parts ways with Iranian oil

China, seeking to skirt U.S. sanctions, will use oil tankers from Iran for its purchases of that country’s crude, throwing Tehran a lifeline while European companies such as France’s Total are walking away due to fear of reprisals from Washington.

China, which has cut imports of U.S. crude amid a trade war with Washington, has said it opposes unilateral sanctions and defended its commercial ties with Iran. On Monday, sources told Reuters Chinese buyers of Iranian oil were beginning to shift their cargoes to vessels owned by National Iranian Tanker Co (NITC) for nearly all their imports.

The shift demonstrates that China, Iran’s biggest oil customer, wants to keep buying Iranian crude despite the sanctions, which were reimposed after the United States withdrew in May from a 2015 agreement to halt Iran’s nuclear program.

Accused Russian in U.S. faces 'borderline torture'

Russia accused the United States of trying to break the spirit in jail of Maria Butina, a woman U.S. authorities say is a Russian government agent, and complained she was being subjected to “borderline torture.” ...

Russia’s U.S. embassy said in a statement on Sunday that Butina had been transferred from a prison in Washington to one in Virginia on Friday without notice or explanation and that her personal belongings had also been confiscated. She had been subjected to a strip search and shackled during the transfer, it alleged, before being held in a cell for 12 hours without food and with the lights on. She now faced a solitary confinement regime, it said.

“Her situation is getting worse. It’s obvious that attempts are being made to ‘break’ Maria using additional humiliation and psychological pressure,” the embassy said.

“We have more and more questions for the U.S. justice system. Should Maria really be doomed to suffer such borderline torture before a court verdict on the allegations against her? This lawlessness must stop.”

Microsoft says it stopped a Russian attack on two U.S. conservative think tanks

Microsoft said Tuesday it had stopped a fresh Russian attack that targeted two U.S. conservative think tanks critical of Moscow. ... Microsoft said it had identified fake websites purporting to be from two conservative think tanks — the International Republican Institute and the Hudson Institute — and taken them offline last week.

Both groups have taken a strong stance in opposition to Russia in recent months, calling for sanctions against Moscow, exposing its human rights abuses and decrying oligarchs. ...

Microsoft also took offline two websites designed to mimic those used by Senate staff. Microsoft said all websites were taken offline before they could trap anyone, and linked the fake sites to a hacking group it identifies as Strontium, but is also known as Fancy Bear or APT 28 — a group strongly linked to Russia’s foreign military intelligence unit, known as the GRU, and believed to have hacked the DNC in 2016. ...

Following the 2016 election it was discovered that hackers had spoofed the websites of multiple institutions, including the Council on Foreign Relations, the Eurasia Group, the Center for a New American Security, Transparency International, and the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Declaring Free and Open Internet 'Critical' for Democracy, 23 State AGs Call on Court to Reinstate Net Neutrality

Arguing that the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) deeply unpopular repeal of net neutrality rules is both unlawful and poses real safety hazards for Americans, 23 state attorneys general asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the regulations. "A free and open internet is critical to New York—and to our democracy," said New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who led the filing of Monday's brief. "By repealing net neutrality, the FCC is allowing internet service providers to put their profits before consumers while controlling what we see, do, and say online."

The brief was submitted as part of the lawsuit Underwood—along with her counterparts from states including California, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi, as well as the District of Columbia—filed weeks after the FCC repealed the rules last December. ...

The FCC's decision—made along party lines with chairman and former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai leading the attack on net neutrality—went against the wishes of 83 percent of Americans, according to polls taken at the time. Since the decision, six state governors have filed executive orders while three states have passed legislation to protect net neutrality at the state level.

In their brief, the states also argued that the FCC's order "unlawfully purports to preempt state and local regulation of broadband service."

"The rollback of net neutrality will have a devastating impact on millions of New Yorkers and Americans across the country, putting them at risk of abusive practices while undermining state and local regulation of the broadband industry," said Underwood.

National Prison Strike Begins: Prisoners in 17 States Demand End to “Slave Labor” Behind Bars

200 people knock over Confederate statue “Silent Sam” at UNC

More than 200 protesters knocked over a divisive Confederate monument at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill called “Silent Sam” ahead of the school’s first day of classes. ... The statue — a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909 — represents the “sons of the University who died for their beloved Southland,” according to UNC’s website. And he’s silent “because he carries no ammunition and cannot fire his gun.”


The protest started at 7 p.m. and included students, university faculty, and residents carrying banners condemning white supremacy, according to the university’s student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel. Carol Folt, the university’s chancellor, called the protest “unlawful and dangerous” in a tweet and said that local authorities are investigating the vandalism. ... Gov. Roy Cooper said in a statement posted to Twitter that the “violent destruction of public property has no place in our communities.”

Students have been protesting “Silent Sam” in various ways since last year, according to the Tar Heel. Last spring, a graduate student, Maya Little, was arrested for covering the statue with her own blood and red paint. She faces charges of defacing a public monument. During that protest, Little read aloud from a speech Ku Klux Klan supporter Julian Carr gave during the state’s unveiling in 1913. He said during that address that he “horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings,” according to the Washington Post.

Medicare for All Fact Check From Hell Persists as Sanders Rebukes CNN for Putting 'Blind Faith' in Right-Wing Economist

After CNN posted a slightly corrected version of its falsehood-riddled Medicare for All fact check on Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thanked network anchor Jake Tapper for admitting that his earlier video "was not factual," but added that the updated version is still full of "errors peddled by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center."

Pointing to the table in the Mercatus Center analysis that shows Medicare for All would save the American people $2 trillion over ten years—while also providing healthcare for everyone—Sanders accused CNN and other corporate media outlets of putting "blind faith" in Chuck Blahous, the right-wing author of the Mercatus study who deceptively insists that his numbers are being taken out of context.

"What Tapper and others have done is say we're wrong because Blahous didn't actually intend to find that Medicare for All would be a great deal for Americans," Sanders noted in a series of tweets. "The problem is: Blahous did find it would save $2 trillion—he just doesn't like that people are celebrating it."

In response to Sanders' tweets on Monday, Tapper stood by his thoroughly discredited fact check by pointing to other thoroughly discredited fact checks—including his own—for validation. Among the articles Tapper linked to was a "fact check" by the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, which had to be corrected multiple times after People's Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig highlighted the number of blatant factual mistakes it contained. ...

The Intercept's Jon Schwarz argued that Tapper's tactic of pointing to articles that all relied on the same ideologically motivated source—the Mercatus Center—to justify spreading a false narrative bears a striking resemblance "to the media's performance on Iraq" and alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Keiser Report: Financial Terrorism

Elizabeth Warren Unveils Radical Anti-Corruption Platform

Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping set of reforms that would radically restrict and publicly expose corporate lobbying in Washington. In a major speech at the National Press Club, she laid out the parameters of what she is calling the “Anti-Corruption Act.” If just half of it were implemented, it could transform the political economy of Washington and fundamentally upend the lawmaking process as it currently exists.

In broad strokes, Warren is attempting to take the profit motive out of public service by making it extremely difficult for former lawmakers and government officials to cash in on their government experience, while simultaneously giving Congress and federal agencies the resources needed to effectively govern without the motivated assistance of K Street. ... Warren proposes much stricter restrictions on the revolving door between public service and lobbying, but, more fundamentally, flat-out bans on any lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, an industry that has come under increased scrutiny as a result of the trial of Paul Manafort, who made his fortune carrying water for foreign governments in Washington, often whose interests ran against those of the U.S. ...

Her bill would also mandate that the IRS release tax returns for candidates, and that the president and vice president be subject to conflict-of-interest laws. She would create a new Office of Public Integrity to enforce the new ethics laws.



the horse race



Author of Trump-Russia dossier wins libel case in US court

The former MI6 officer Christopher Steele has won a legal battle in the United States against three Russian oligarchs who sued him over allegations made in his dossier about the Trump campaign and its links with Moscow.

The oligarchs – Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan – claimed that Steele and his intelligence firm, Orbis, defamed them in the dossier, which was leaked and published in early 2017. The Russians own stakes in Moscow-based Alfa Bank. All are billionaires.

On Monday, a judge in the District of Columbia, Anthony C Epstein, upheld a motion by Steele to have the oligarchs’ case thrown out. Epstein did not determine whether the dossier – which Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed as “fake” – was “accurate or not accurate”.

But the judge concluded that it was covered by the US first amendment, which protects free speech. He ruled that the oligarchs had failed to prove a key part of their case: that Steele knew that some information in the dossier was inaccurate, and had acted “with reckless disregard as to its falsity”.



the evening greens


'We Are Climbing Rapidly Out of Humankind's Safe Zone': New Report Warns Dire Climate Warnings Not Dire Enough

Offering a stark warning to the world, a new report out Monday argues that the reticence of the world's scientific community—trapped in otherwise healthy habits of caution and due diligence—to downplay the potentially irreversible and cataclysmic impacts of climate change is itself a threat that should no longer be tolerated if humanity is to be motivated to make the rapid and far-reaching transition away from fossil fuels and other emissions-generating industries.

In the new report—titled What Lies Beneath: The Understatement of Existential Climate Risk (pdf)—authors David Splatt and Ian Dunlop, researchers with the National Centre for Climate Restoration (Breakthrough), an independent think tank based in Australia, argue that the existential threats posed by the climate crisis have still not penetrated the collective psyche of humanity and that world leaders, even those demanding aggressive action, have not shown the kind of urgency or imagination that the scale of the pending catastrophe presents. ...


"Climate change is now reaching the end-game," reads the forward to the report by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, "where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences."

"It is no longer possible to follow a gradual transition path to restore a safe climate," write Spratt and Dunlop in an op-ed published in the Guardian on Monday. "We have left it too late; emergency action, akin to a war footing, will eventually be accepted as inevitable. The longer that takes, the greater the damage inflicted upon humanity."

Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record

The oldest and thickest sea ice in the Arctic has started to break up, opening waters north of Greenland that are normally frozen, even in summer. This phenomenon – which has never been recorded before – has occurred twice this year due to warm winds and a climate-change driven heatwave in the northern hemisphere.

One meteorologist described the loss of ice as “scary”. Others said it could force scientists to revise their theories about which part of the Arctic will withstand warming the longest. The sea off the north coast of Greenland is normally so frozen that it was referred to, until recently, as “the last ice area” because it was assumed that this would be the final northern holdout against the melting effects of a hotter planet.

But abnormal temperature spikes in February and earlier this month have left it vulnerable to winds, which have pushed the ice further away from the coast than at any time since satellite records began in the 1970s.

Trump administration scraps Obama-era regulation on coal emissions

The Trump administration has put forward a greenhouse gas emissions plan that could boost output from coal-fired power plants rather than push them towards closure and result in as many as 1,400 premature deaths each year. Amid outcry from activists and a promise to sue from the attorney general of New York, one prominent environmentalist called the plan “a disaster for public health and the climate”.

The proposal, crafted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), dismantles Barack Obama’s signature climate change policy and replaces it with a system that relies on states to come up with ways to make power plants more efficient. “The era of top-down, one-size-fits-all federal mandates is over,” said Andrew Wheeler, acting EPA administrator.

The new approach is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by up to 1.5% by 2030, the EPA said, should all states implement effective plans. That is well below the 32% reduction target by 2030, from 2005 levels, set by Obama’s clean power plan. The Trump administration said the reductions would be “comparable” due to changes in the energy market. ...

Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, said there were “very aggressive” programs to ensure Americans are not harmed by air pollution, adding that the Obama policy was an “overreach” that exceeded EPA authority.

Decline in Insects Threatens Some Bird Species

Birds’ hunger for insects may be unsustainable. The dwindling insect numbers available in parts of the world may not be enough for avian appetites, threatening the survival of some bird species, including ones which are essential for controlling pests. ...

“Birds are an endangered class of animals because they are heavily threatened by factors such as afforestation, intensification of agriculture, spread of systemic pesticides, predation by domestic cats, collisions with man-made structures, light pollution and climate change,” said Martin Nyffeler of the University of Basel in Switzerland.

“If these global threats cannot soon be resolved, we must fear that the vital ecosystem services that birds provide – such as the suppression of insect pests – will be lost.” ...

Other studies have tried to zoom in on insect life ... and then estimate how insects are coping with change. And the answer is: not well. One study found that insect species face a calamitous habitat loss, another that even ubiquitous insects could be put at risk by climate change, and a third that the sheer mass of flying insects could be in severe decline, at least in one European country. Many of the world’s birds, too, could be about to fly into oblivion, as climates shift and food sources dwindle.

Flint water crisis: Michigan's top health official to face trial over deaths

A judge has ordered Michigan’s health director to stand trial for involuntary manslaughter over two deaths linked to legionnaires’ disease in the Flint area, the highest-ranking official to face criminal charges as a result of the city’s tainted water scandal.

Nick Lyon is accused of failing to issue a timely alert about the outbreak. District court judge David Goggins said deaths probably could have been prevented if the outbreak had been publicly known. He said keeping the public in the dark was “corrupt”. Goggins found probable cause for a trial in Genesee county court, a legal standard that is not as high as beyond a reasonable doubt. Lyon also faces a charge of misconduct in office.

Some experts have blamed legionnaires’ on Flint’s water, which was not properly treated when it was drawn from the Flint river in 2014 and 2015. Legionella bacteria can emerge through misting and cooling systems, triggering a severe form of pneumonia, especially in people with weakened immune systems.

At least 90 cases of legionnaires’ occurred in Genesee county, including 12 deaths. More than half of the people had a common thread: they spent time at McLaren hospital, which was on the Flint water system.


Also of Interest

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

As U.S. Pushes Tehran, Iran Recalls American-Backed Coup of 1953

Israeli Peace Activist Uri Avnery Dead at 94

A ‘Regime’ Is a Government at Odds With the US Empire

Ben Carson’s Drive to Further Segregate Housing Gets a Boost in Court

The Creation Of New Worlds Examined Thru Myth


A Little Night Music

Lizzie Miles - Some of These Days

Lizzie Miles - Electrician Blues

Lizzie Miles - You're Such a Cruel Papa to Me

Lizzie Miles - Sweet Smellin' Mama

Lizzie Miles - Get up off Your Knees

Lizzie Miles - Louisiana

Lizzie Miles - Eh la bas

Lizzie Miles - Ballin the Jack

Lizzie Miles - Darkness on the Delta

Lizzie Miles - Basin Street Blues No. 70


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smiley7's picture

woke to good news of the students at Chapel Hill pulling down the statute of Silent Sam.
Story link with vid worth watching is here:https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article217035815.html

I've mixed feelings about this, not for presumed reasons; the statute belongs in a museum of history, not on display, but conflicted by the violence in the video, student-against-student and the pigs getting rough; this bothers me greatly that students at my beloved alma mater can't protest in peace.

During the school-year 69-70, we students, ten-thousands strong, occupied South Building and closed the University down for weeks, making the late evening CBS news doing so. The police left us alone and i don't recall any students objecting in any way, much less being violent.

Our protests continued daily on campus when UNC re-opened and we went to mess halls, cafeterias, through lines of blue-helmeted police everyday as the workers of the university were protesting for their rights and better pay at the same time.

Next year, we closed the university down, again. Kent State didn't stop us from protesting.

Years later when i returned to work on the Hill, i sat dreaming out my theatre office windows which looked directly at Silent Sam; so, this brings back additional memories as well.

So long and good riddance Sam, keep on protesting students, much work to do!

And may freshmen find a a better 'daring' place to have sex than under Silent Sam, an old matriculating ritual. Smile

Cheers for the OT, joe!

Have a great evening, everyone!

edit for explanation

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joe shikspack's picture

@smiley7

yeah, i had some conflicting thoughts, too as i watched video of silent sam's demise.

generally speaking, i am not in favor of the destruction of works of art. like you i would prefer to see these sorts of monuments in a museum. context is important for artworks, and a prominent placement in the yet to be constructed "museum of bad ideas and deprecated beliefs," would be perfect for silent sam.

other cultures have managed to place their deprecated public art into a useful context, we should be able to do the same.

on the other hand, i can't say that i am heartbroken that a symbol of oppression has been demolished in an act of community performance art. so, there you go.

have a great evening!

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smiley7's picture

@joe shikspack @joe shikspack @joe shikspack
history again and again; more apt to pave over significance than ask why; the pie in the sky of manifest destiny still ruling.

It is the video of students grabbing gas masks of fellow students that disturbs me--in a deep way.

Demonstrating the failure of elementary education to produce young people capable of critical thinking and so have become subjects to and products of propaganda and of course religious persuasions.

Secondary to that, is the brute force visible, the militarization of our police.

Chapel Hill was the Berkeley of the East, perhaps more important at the time because of its southern geography.

From reading, the administration is calling this vandalism; the admin is a product of Republican complete control of the legislature since 2010.

The KKK hold open picnics on Bear creek each weekend, now, the water where i spent my childhood fishing, swimming and exploring unheard of seven decades ago.

Students fighting students on Franklin Street drives a stake into my soul and so i scream.

Scream for a sea-change for a universal protest that's way past time.

Cheers

edit to remove not and correct spelling

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I am going to post a comment and as I scanned Joe's list it seemed that climate was the main issue.

I started making a list of the topics but failed. The reason is that they are so entangled.

Iran sanctions - oil, politics, international relations, war etc.

Jail protest - economics, politics, health care, jobs,

Say good by to earth ..econ, politics, non humans, and the Earth

How about this quotations from an article I will link below

We are completed alienated from everything alive

“‘Environmentalism’ is still under the umbrella of a kind of humanism: we say we should manage our resources better.

and the sentence continues

What I was taking seriously for the first time in this book was: they’re not our resources; and we won’t be well until we realise that.”

The article is an interview with the author of a novel.

...Powers is calling on the relatives who populate his latest work, The Overstory. As a botanist in his story explains, trees and humans share a common ancestor, and a quarter of their genes. “For five years I’ve been telling people I’m writing a novel about trees,” he says, with a smile, “and they’ve said: ‘Really?

Powers hadn’t particularly considered trees until his first encounter with a giant redwood a few years ago, while he was in California teaching on Stanford’s creative writing fellowship course. “When they’re as wide as a house and as tall as a football pitch you don’t have to be particularly sensitive to be wowed by it,” he says. “But once I started looking, I realised it’s not about the size and scale … it’s that I’ve been blind to these amazing creatures all the time.”

The result was, in his own words, a “religious conversion”: not in the theistic sense, but in the sense of “being bound back into a system of meaning that doesn’t begin and end with humans”. He had addressed environmental issues before in The Echo Maker, but this time was different. “‘Environmentalism’ is still under the umbrella of a kind of humanism: we say we should manage our resources better. What I was taking seriously for the first time in this book was: they’re not our resources; and we won’t be well until we realise that.”

Interview Richard Powers: 'We're completely alienated from everything else alive' After writing novels on artificial intelligence, neuroscience and genetics, Powers’ has turned to trees. While on a hike through the Great Smoky Mountains, he talks about environmentalism and not having children

There are several interviews and reviews of this book. I can post more if anyone is interested.

Here is just one more

To what degree (if any) do you consider your work to be a moral or didactic project? Am I mistaken in feeling that The Overstory isn’t just a novel, but maybe a blueprint for being inducted into the “shimmering council” of the trees—something like a viable evangelism? Or does this idea just piss you off?
Goodness—what better way to start an interview than plunging into one of the most highly charged questions in the history of literature! Centuries of great writers have filled volumes exploring the proper position of the literary author along the spectrum of moral detachment and commitment. In the mid-19th century, the warring camps had their spokespeople in Tolstoy, who advocated for fiction that would raise consciousness and make readers into better people, and in Flaubert, who preached a moral detachment, urging writers to be like a remote, objective, hands-off God—“present everywhere and visible nowhere.”

In the last century, when I was growing up, the American version of this war was playing out between John Gardner and Gore Vidal. Vidal was the champion of aesthetic, belletristic freedom—the author who was above the fray, committed only to the free play of exploration and possibility. Gardner, in his controversial and influential book On Moral Fiction, wrote that fiction ought “to test human values, not for the purpose of preaching or peddling a particular ideology, but in a truly honest and open-minded effort to find out which best promotes human fulfillment.” Here’s the interesting thing: Don’t both these positions sound attractive and defensible?

If I were to name the prevailing aesthetic of the present concerning literary fiction, I’d say it leans toward the belletristic. Moral passion hasn’t been cool for some time; much better to gird yourself in irony and fatalistic detachment. Or to put it more sympathetically, contemporary literary fiction strives for the dialogical, where the conflicting moral positions of all the characters in the story are both defensible and flawed. But look at the standout books—the great war novels and postcolonial novels and novels of politics, social showdown and human abuse—and you’ll see a different story. These books know what’s wrong with the world and what it would take to better minister to the human condition.

RICHARD POWERS The biggest questions in literature

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@DonMidwest This Overstory was the first Powers novel I have read. I found it very entertaining. I wish more people could arrive at the understandings he describes. Taking our role as caregivers to the planet more seriously is an important concept.

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@QMS @QMS and I ordered all of them from Thriftbooks

I first read The Overstory from the library and that was a new book at retail, the others are old paperbacks but just what I need.

A friend is a musician who taught a humanities seminar for a number of years, I am going to read a book with him (he is on the other side of the country) and see if he agrees how incredible Richard Powers is. Many reviewers say that he is and I have read so little fiction that I can't tell if it is not just a infatuation.

He provides insights almost on every page.

(As an aside, Powers is well versed on Bruno Latour's work. And Bruno makes the case that art is needed to see what is going on -- not to escape, but to see what is happening.)
Here is another interview

Here’s to Unsuicide: An Interview with Richard Powers

a taste

RICHARD POWERS: If anything, the intervening dozen years have deepened my desire to close the gap between people and other living things. The Echo Maker dealt in the strange intelligence of birds, an intelligence deep and foreign enough to be invisible to many of us. But it was also a story of forgotten kinship with creatures who have stunning navigational and problem-solving skills, who keep a complex and shared calendar, who gather in great communities and dance together and mate for life and sacrifice themselves for their young.

The Overstory may present an even greater challenge to the sense of exceptionalism we humans carry around inside us. It’s the story of immense, long-lived creatures whom many people think of as little more than simple automatons, but who, in fact, communicate and synchronize with each other both over the air and through complex underground networks, who trade with and protect and sustain their own and other species. It’s about immensely social beings with memory and agency who migrate and transform the soil and regulate the weather and create a breathable atmosphere. As the great Le Guin put it, the word for world is forest.

Our kinship with trees seems, at face value, much more distant and abstract, but we share a considerable amount of our genes with them, and they (trees come from many different families in their own right) represent several large branches of the single, ramifying experiment called life on earth, a big-boled thing on which we humans occupy just one small and remote branch. Trees exhibit a flexibility in the face of change and challenge that we used to think was exclusively animal in nature. We have depended on trees not just for the invention of civilization but for our very existence. Without them, no us.

If I could have managed it, I would have tried to write a novel where all the main characters were trees! But such an act of identification was beyond my power as a novelist, and it probably would have been beyond the imaginative power of identification of most readers. As one of the characters in the book laments, we are all “plant blind. Adam’s curse. We only see things that look like us.” My compromise was to tell a story about nine very different human beings who, for wildly varying reasons, come to take trees seriously. Between them, they learn to invest trees with the same sacred value that humans typically invest only in themselves. And in doing so, they violate one of individual-centered capitalism’s greatest taboos.

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joe shikspack's picture

@DonMidwest

thanks for the link! i was glad to see that somebody else locates the root cause of our problem preserving our habitat in the same place that i do - religion:

“One hundred per cent of all forests would be removed if there was no consensual agreement to protect them,” says Powers. “It’s not about economics, it’s about ideology: we were told that the proper destination for mankind was domination. ‘Stop putting handcuffs on us. Let’s drain the swamp!’ That political metaphor is what they want to do to the landscape.”

The modern human assumption that trees, plants and all other wildlife are “just property” is, to Powers, the root of our much greater species problem. ... “We are incredibly good at psychological and political dramas, but there’s another kind of drama – between the humans and the non-humans – that disappeared in the late 19th century, once we thought we had dominion over the Earth. Because we won that battle."

“But now we know we didn’t, actually. And until you resolve that question, how do we live coherently at home on this planet, the other two kinds of stories are luxuries.”

here's the troublesome text that is deeply and transparently embedded in many peoples minds:

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

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@joe shikspack Dominion over the earth? Who loses? This is not a game. There are no winners when we all lose. Just saying.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

Got a bone stimulator today. It's supposed to help heal the fracture in my foot. I hope it works. I feel hopeful.

I also found out today that the plant, comfrey, is a bone healer. I got a recipe for a poultice and will put a compress on it tonight. I hope it works. I feel hopeful.

Thanks for the great tunes. Dance 4

Have a beautiful evening, folks! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

joe shikspack's picture

@Raggedy Ann

a friend of mine broke his collarbone and was given a bone stimulator as part of his treatment. it seemed like a kinda goofy idea, but he's been happily playing bass with the strap (which carries the weight) slung over where the break was for a couple of decades since. Smile

good luck with your recovery and have a great evening. comfrey makes a nice tea, too, btw.

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Azazello's picture

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

it's always good to see that at least a faction within the broader conservative movement has figured out some useful things. Smile

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I mean for god's sakes, for over two years now, they can't even handle a simple phishing operation without being caught.

Oh by the way, lookie here, a MS product agaisnt Russians invading your Word files.

‘Faith-based attribution': Microsoft unable to identify those behind pre-midterm hacking – experts
https://www.rt.com/usa/436519-microsoft-russian-hacking-assumption/

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joe shikspack's picture

@MrWebster

heh. the hackers were competent. we can't catch them at it. they must have been russians.

Well it must have been the devil
You know it must have been the devil, baby
You know it had to be the devil
You know it must have been the devil, baby
You know it must have been the devil
Changing my baby's mind

Well you know I heard a mighty rumbling
You know I heard a mighty rumbling, baby
You know I heard a mighty rumbling, baby
You know I heard a mighty rumbling
You know I heard a mighty rumbling deep down in the ground

You know it sound like my baby
You know it sound like my baby
You know it sound just like my baby
You know it sound like my baby
You know it must have been the devil turning my baby 'round

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@joe shikspack

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ggersh's picture

Capitalism is a killer alright

https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

Sweet tunes, thanks!

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

heh, great illustration!

i like this one, too.

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ggersh's picture

@joe shikspack did you catch the Russian version
don't show it to Madcow, she'll flip out.

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Unabashed Liberal's picture

a lengthy comment, apparently. So, for now, I'll post a portion of it--a CNN transcript, in which David Gergen lets the cat out of the bag in regards to the Deep State's feelings about the Russia Ruse. IOW, they feel very pressured to see Muller's report before the midterms, since predictions aren't as favorable for Dems, as they were months ago.

Here's what Gergen blurted out to Anderson Cooper:

COOPER:

David, I mean, you see the president throwing out some of the most loaded terms in American history in the attacks of the Mueller probe, McCarthyism, the idea that John Dean was a rat in the Nixon administration, he's calling, you know, people on the Mueller team thugs, the idea that Paul Manafort is getting it tougher than Al Capone.

Does that serve the president well?

GERGEN:

No. No, I don't think so. What it may serve the president is just contributing to an exhaustion factor. I think people have so tired of this, this torrent of insults and barbs and doing everything except being president. This is all so unpresidential.

But, you know, Anderson, even so, the clock is ticking now. You remember Rudy Giuliani has said, you know, we're not going to go and testify at all to Mueller after Labor Day. And we don't think Mueller should do anything after Labor Day, because it's too close to the midterm elections.

That's only two weeks away. And Mueller doesn't have much tame to act, otherwise this thing could all be put off until after the first of the year.

And I think that -- I think it would drive a lot of us crazy. We want to see a resolution.

Whoah! Sounds to me like Mr Gergen's in panic mode! Biggrin

He's much more than just a passive talking head--he's totally embedded in the Deep State that he so avidly defends.

I'm guessing that Gergen's wanting Mueller's report out before the midterms, partly, because of predictions of some top analysts and pollsters. Nate Silver recently gave Dems a 75/25 chance to take the House. I'd say that under the circumstances, it's extraordinary that Repubs could even have a 1 in 4 chance. And, another pundit/pollster says,

This is salient, because Gergen is one of the founders of an organization that's recruited many of the fiscally conservative Dem Party 'veteran' candidates who are winning primaries in droves this election cycle. Without a doubt, if Dems take the House, it will be one of (if not the most) conservative Dem Party House to be seated in my lifetime. Also, at least two PACs that I know of--aside from the No Labels PAC--have been established to fund these right-wing vets/candidates.

(Next week I'll post a couple of links and excerpts to his organization, and to a couple of PACs.)

Also, wanted to leave you Guys with another 'Golden' Tweet that made me smile.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Pleasantry

Thanks for tonight's edition of EB, Joe! Everyone have a nice evening--stay cool!

[Edited: Actually, after a second look, think that might be a Lab pup, instead of a English Creme Golden. A Golden would probably have a longer coat/hair. Whatever--a cutie! Wink ]

Bye

Blue Onyx

"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong."
~~W. R. Purche

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."~~Lao Tzu

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

heh, apparently gergen didn't get the memo that mueller has bupkis and the best chance for the dem/deepstate alliance to make electoral headway is to drag out the period before they announce that they don't really have anything until after the elections.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

I keep remembering what happened in 2006 when we gave them the house so that they could "roll back the Bush abuses." Long story short. They didn't.

I'm sure that I don't have to remind anyone what Pelosi said when she got the gavel. And she has been saying that "I don't think that now is a good time for impeaching Trump." But that's what the kos kids are thinking is going to happen. Plus I don't understand how they can be so blinded to not see how the democrat's Resistance has turned into the Assistance because they have not stopped one piece of legislation except for rolling back the ACA. 'Just enough' turn taking democrats have voted with the republicans on everything else. Sheesh. "Go Blue Dawgs!"

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

Unabashed Liberal's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg

[Apologize in advance for typos/poor syntax, since I'm very pushed, and not going to have time to carefully proofread this comment.]

~ ~ ~ ~

particularly comparable to today's situation. I say that because it's probably fair to say that it was the activist Base--not the entire bipartisan Establishment/Deep State--that wanted to see impeachment proceedings filed against the sitting President in 2006. (At least, as I remember it.)

I probably shouldn't have even posted the transcript excerpt, because, in light of today's events, folks like Gergen aren't as concerned today, as they were last evening, about a lack of evidence (from recent polling) of a massive "blue wave."

Which is to say, from what I've been able to hear today, and it's been limited, they (Establishment figures/Deep State folks, like Gergen) think that today's events may turn things around for them, regarding the likelihood of articles of impeachment being filed. Guess, in a sense, the transcript I posted was outdated news.

I must say, in light of all the fiscally conservative ('bipartisan') veterans that the Dems recruited for the conservative and toss-up districts--a sort of 'military' No Labels roster of candidates--if/when Dems take the House, and they follow through on the "Speakers Project," folks can count on a Grand Bargain getting passed.

That's the goal of the 'No Labels' proposal to select a 'bipartisan' tool lawmaker as Speaker Of The House. And, let's not forget--destroying Social Security is one of their primary goals.

Hey, gonna be traveling much of this week, but next week, I'll try to post a link and excerpt about one of the organizations that's orchestrating this radical takeover of Congress. It's being done to nullify the Freedom Caucus, so that they can get 'bipartisan support' to pass numerous corporatist bills--including entitlement reform.

Apparently, these folks (fiscal conservatives) never went away--they just dug in, reorganized, and got smarter, regarding building a more bipartisan approach and/or consensus. Oh, it's not by accident that the so-called 'women's wave' of Dem Party candidates is mostly made up of fiscal conservative former/retired military women, who've taken the 'bipartisan' pledge to reach across the isle (if elected).

Help

As if that's not bad enough, since Ryan and SO MANY fiscally conservative lawmakers from both Parties are leaving at the end of this year, we could very well be in for a Grand Bargain during this year's Lame Duck Session. If anything, taking votes to dismantle the Social Safety Net would only burnish their conservative credentials.

Can't remember the Repub lawmaker's name (from the excerpt that I posted last evening), but he was quite upfront about it--there will be a Grand Bargain struck when lawmakers can pass it on a 'bipartisan' basis. I hope I'm wrong, but it looks like that day is fast coming.

Hey, have a good one!

[Edited: To correct syntax.]

Blue Onyx

"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong."
~~W. R. Purche

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.