The Evening Blues - 12-3-18



eb1pt12


The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Big Joe Turner

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Kansas City blues shouter Big Joe Turner. Enjoy!

Big Joe Turner - Feeling Happy

“In my travels, which have been wider than ever man yet accomplished, I have seen many, many wild beasts of Arabia and India; but this beast, that is commonly called a Tyrant, I know not how many heads it has, nor if it be crooked of claw, and armed with horrible fangs.”

-- Apollonius of Tyana


News and Opinion

A trip down memory lane:

The Ignored Legacy of George H.W. Bush: War Crimes, Racism, and Obstruction of Justice

In the age of Donald Trump, it isn’t difficult for hagiographers of the late President George H.W. Bush to paint a picture of him as a great patriot and pragmatist; a president who governed with “class” and “integrity.” It is true that the former president refused to vote for Trump in 2016, calling him a “blowhard,” and that he eschewed the white nationalist, “alt-right,” conspiratorial politics that has come to define the modern Republican Party. He helped end the Cold War without, as Obama said, “firing a shot.” He spent his life serving his country — from the military to Congress to the United Nations to the CIA to the White House. And, by all accounts, he was also a beloved grandfather and great-grandfather to his 17 grandkids and eight great-grandkids. Nevertheless, he was a public, not a private, figure — one of only 44 men to have ever served as president of the United States. We cannot, therefore, allow his actual record in office to be beautified in such a brazen way. ...

Consider:

He ran a racist election campaign. The name of Willie Horton should forever be associated with Bush’s 1988 presidential bid. ... As Bush campaign director Lee Atwater bragged, “By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’s running mate.” Bush himself was quick to dismiss accusations of racism as “absolutely ridiculous,” yet it was clear at the time — even to right-wing Republican operatives such as Roger Stone, now a close ally of Trump — that the ad had crossed a line. “You and George Bush will wear that to your grave,” Stone complained to Atwater. “It’s a racist ad. … You’re going to regret it.” Stone was right about Atwater, who on his deathbed apologized for using Horton against Dukakis. But Bush never did.

He made a dishonest case for war. Thirteen years before George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq, his father made his own set of false claims to justify the aerial bombardment of that same country. The first Gulf War, as an investigation by journalist Joshua Holland concluded, “was sold on a mountain of war propaganda.” He committed war crimes. Under Bush Sr., the U.S. dropped a whopping 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, many of which resulted in horrific civilian casualties. ... U.S. bombs also destroyed essential Iraqi civilian infrastructure — from electricity-generating and water-treatment facilities to food-processing plants and flour mills. This was no accident. As Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported in June 1991: “Some targets, especially late in the war, were bombed primarily to create postwar leverage over Iraq, not to influence the course of the conflict itself. Planners now say their intent was to destroy or damage valuable facilities that Baghdad could not repair without foreign assistance. … Because of these goals, damage to civilian structures and interests, invariably described by briefers during the war as ‘collateral’ and unintended, was sometimes neither.” Got that? The Bush administration deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure for “leverage” over Saddam Hussein. How is this not terrorism? ...

He refused to cooperate with a special counsel. The Iran-Contra affair, in which the United States traded missiles for Americans hostages in Iran, and used the proceeds of those arms sales to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua, did much to undermine the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Yet his vice president’s involvement in that controversial affair has garnered far less attention. “The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete,” wrote Special Counsel Lawrence Walsh, a former deputy attorney general in the Eisenhower administration, in his final report on the Iran-Contra affair in August 1993.

Why? Because Bush, who was “fully aware of the Iran arms sale,” according to the special counsel, failed to hand over a diary “containing contemporaneous notes relevant to Iran/contra” and refused to be interviewed in the later stages of the investigation. In the final days of his presidency, Bush even issued pardons to six defendants in the Iran-Contra affair, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger — on the eve of Weinberger’s trial for perjury and obstruction of justice. “The Weinberger pardon,” Walsh pointedly noted, “marked the first time a president ever pardoned someone in whose trial he might have been called as a witness, because the president was knowledgeable of factual events underlying the case.” An angry Walsh accused Bush of “misconduct” and helping to complete “the Iran-contra cover-up.” Sounds like a Trumpian case of obstruction of justice, doesn’t it?

[Considerably more detail at the link. - js]

George H.W. Bush’s Ignored Legacy: War Crimes, Racism and Obstruction of Justice

Dems are finding it harder to avoid impeachment talk after the latest Trump-Russia revelations

Michael Cohen’s guilty plea Thursday is bringing back among the progressive wing of the Democratic party a topic that its senior leaders would wish it would forget: impeachment. While the Democratic leadership has largely stifled overt calls for impeachment, revelations that Donald Trump was working on a potential Moscow business deal while the Kremlin was actively trying to tilt the presidential election his way is bringing the calls back, once again revealing divisions between the progressive and centrist wings of the party. ...

Earlier this year, over the protest of now Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) forced a vote on the House floor over articles of impeachment, and 66 Democrats supported it. That was roughly one-third of the party before voters sent 66 new, more progressive Democrats to Washington this fall.

Democrats were coached by Pelosi, veteran lawmakers and Washington political consultants to avoid discussing impeachment on the trail (in fact, Republicans largely raised its specter more than they did), but many signaled a willingness to go down that path and their base wants it. Exit polls revealed that 77 percent of Democratic voters support impeaching Trump.

Now that Democrats will soon control the gavels in the House, the calculus has changed for some members who already supported that impeachment resolution. “That was a message that someone has to hold this administration accountable,” Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) told VICE News just off the House floor. Grijalva’s a former chair of the House Progressive Caucus, and he’s trying to temper the incoming wave of progressives who are anxious to dislodge Trump. “This is a delicate and serious thing that the Congress should undertake; ideally bipartisan,” Grijalva said.

'Yellow vest' protests knock wind out of French economy

Worst Riot in a Decade Engulfs Paris; Macron Vows Action

France’s most violent urban riot in a decade engulfed central Paris on Saturday as “yellow jacket” activists torched cars, smashed windows, looted stores and tagged the Arc de Triomphe with multi-colored graffiti. Protesters angry about rising taxes and the high cost of living clashed with French riot police, who closed off some of the city’s most popular tourist areas and fired tear gas and water cannon as they tried to quell the mayhem in the streets.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the violence from the G-20 summit in Argentina, saying those who attacked police and vandalized the Arc de Triomphe will be “held responsible for their acts.” He said he will hold an emergency government meeting Sunday on the protests.

“(Violence) has nothing to do with the peaceful expression of a legitimate anger” and “no cause justifies” attacks on police or pillaging stores and burning buildings, Macron said in Buenos Aires. He refused to answer any questions from journalists about the situation in Paris.

It was the third straight weekend of clashes in Paris with activists dressed in the fluorescent yellow vests of a new protest movement and the worst urban violence since at least 2005. The scene contrasted sharply with other protests in France, where demonstrations and road blockades elsewhere on Saturday were largely peaceful. ...

In addition to rising taxes, the demonstrators are furious about Macron’s leadership, saying that his government does not care about the problems of ordinary people. The grassroots protests began with motorists upset over a fuel tax hike, but now involve a broad range of demands related to France’s high cost of living.

France fuel protests: What do the 'Yellow Vests' want?

Paris riots: PM to meet protest groups after worst unrest in decade

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has instructed his prime minister to hold talks with protest groups after anti-government demonstrations led to the worst violence in central Paris in a decade, with more than 100 people injured as cars and buildings were set alight. Macron is facing his biggest crisis since taking office 18 months ago after the violence erupted on Saturday following weeks of street protests that began against fuel taxes and have turned into an anti-government movement.

The Élysée and key ministers appeared to rule out imposing any kind of state of emergency after thousands of masked protesters from the gilets jaunes – named for their fluorescent yellow jackets – fought running battles with riot police, torched cars, set fire to banks and houses and burned makeshift barricades. A presidential source told Reuters that the meeting discussed how to adapt security forces and tactics to contain future protests.

Macron, who had said he would “never accept violence”, instructed the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, to meet what he has called legitimate protest groups and opposition politicians this week in an effort to calm tensions and stop “professional” rioters from infiltrating street demonstrations. The Paris prosecutor Remy Heitz said 378 people were in custody, including 33 under the age of 18. He said many of those arrested in battles with police were men aged between 30 and 40, often from regions far from Paris, who had “come to fight police while claiming to be part of the gilets jaunes movement”. ...

Macron flew back from the G20 summit in Argentina on Sunday and went straight to inspect damage at the Arc de Triomphe. Graffiti all over the base of the 19-century monument read: “We’ve chopped off heads for less than this” and “Topple the Bourgeoisie.” Scores of used teargas canisters filled the gutters. Near the Champs Élysées there were splashes of paint on buildings after protesters had paint-bombed police. Used bottles of eye-drops on the ground indicated that some protesters – many of whom wore ski-masks and breathing equipment – stood their ground despite the teargas fired from rows of police behind shields.

Students blockade schools as French protests spread

The French prime minister, Edouard Philippe, has met opposition party leaders as nationwide protests continue to spread across France, with students blockading about 100 schools. After thousands of masked protesters fought running battles with police and burned cars, buildings and barricades in the most affluent areas of Paris on Saturday, the gilets jaunes – or yellow vests – citizens’ protest movement continued on Monday with peaceful anti-government demonstrations at barricades on roads and at fuel depots across France.

High-school students – who have been protesting against changes to colleges and the university system – also seized on the mood of protest and stepped up their blockades. About 100 high schools were fully or partially blockaded around the country, including in the southern city of Toulouse and in Créteil in the Paris area. Seven teenagers were arrested after riot police were called to the Jean-Pierre Timbaud high school in Aubervilliers in the northern Paris suburbs where a car was overturned and bins were set alight. French authorities traditionally fear high school students joining protests because their demonstrations often spread fast. An official at the education authority in Créteil said: “Pretexts are clearly being used to commit urban violence.” ...

An opinion poll for Harris Interactive taken after Saturday’s violence in Paris found 72% of French people still supported the protest movement that began last month in response to a rise in environmental taxes on fuel and has morphed into opposition to the government of the centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, amid a sense that the tax system is unfair and favours the rich.

The prime minister is expected to meet protesters’ representatives on Tuesday, but the grassroots movement, which emerged on social media, has no leadership nor a defined structure. One Paris representative said he had received death threats warning him not to meet the government. Jacline Mouraud, one of the protest movement’s prime instigators, said scrapping the fuel tax was a “prerequisite for any discussion” with the government.

'It Is Time for Progressives of the World to Unite': Sanders-Varoufakis Issue Open Call for New Global Movement

With fascist movements on the rise and controlling the levers of power in the United States and across the world, the U.S.-based Sanders Institute and Europe's DiEM25—the groups founded by Jane Sanders and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, respectively—announced the launch of Progressive International on Friday with the goal of beating back right-wing forces with an organized "grassroots movement for global justice."

"There is a global war being waged against workers, against our environment, against democracy, against decency," declares the Progressive International's open call to join the movement, which was unveiled Friday evening by Varoufakis and Sanders, wife of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), during The Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlington, Vermont.

"A network of right-wing factions is collaborating across borders to erode human rights, silence dissent, and promote intolerance. Not since the 1930 has humanity faced such an existential threat," the call continues. "To defeat them, we cannot simply go back to the failed status quo of the last few decades. Unfettered globalization promised peace and prosperity. But it delivered financial crisis, needless war, and disastrous climate change, instead."

Hmmm... perhaps Corbyn will not be able to overcome the nasty infestation of Blairites in Labour.

Corbyn Isn’t Seizing the Moment – Because His Labour Party Simply Isn’t Radical Enough

This should be the moment for Corbyn’s Labour. They face a divided, incompetent Tory Government. A party that has lost nine Cabinet ministers in the last year, which has no domestic agenda to speak of, and is not even bothering with the pretence of a Queen’s Speech. The Government has no direction or purpose, no credo beyond continuing limpet-like in existence, clinging onto office and pursuing the project of Brexit. And yet at this moment of decision, when Labour should be harrying this government and holding them to account on Brexit and more, despite everything it is the Tories who consistently lead Labour in the opinion polls, rather than the other way round.

As profoundly, the intellectual climate has turned against mainstream Conservatism, as well as moderate social democracy, opening up the terrain for Corbyn’s Labour. The zeitgeist of the age has finally turned against the assumptions that have dominated British politics for so long. The assertions that markets should be left unfettered, that deregulation is a good thing, that government and the state should just get out of the way of private initiative and believe in the super-rich, that making things doesn’t matter, and that ownership is ultimately just an irrelevance, have all been shown to be bogus. Such dogmas were taken to breaking point, with no area of British public life left unchallenged by it. It resulted in such ridiculous ideas becoming government policy as the belief that it does not matter who owns the key strategic assets of your country – whether nuclear power, nuclear weapon research establishments (Aldermaston), the electricity grid, water in England and Wales, and much more.

It took a long while for such a grotesque set of ideas to finally fall apart. It did so on results. After decades of pursuing this dogma modern Britain has been made in its image: the fawning of the super-rich, huge inequalities socially and regionally, average living standards stalling over the last decade, and the trashing of public sector values and ethos. To give an example on the last point the expansion of the university sector on the back of student tuition fees in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has dramatically changed higher education. It has made life good for a new class of super-remunerated Vice-Chancellors, but in England less than half the extra monies have been reinvested in student resources, while UK university borrowing has risen to £12 billion since the financial crash, not withstanding the £105 billion student debt which the state will end up writing off.

The evolving Corbyn project has captured some of the anger, rage and discontent which has flowed from this. The party is the largest in Western Europe in membership; it has energy, dynamism and sense of possibility in its younger activists. The party has also disrupted the complacent cosy elite order which emerged post-Thatcherism: the Blair, Brown, Cameron (BBC) consensus which explicitly said this is the way things have to be: that little people outside of the elites have no choice but to knuckle down and show deference at the altar of the market and finance capitalism. ...

Yet for all the advantages that Labour has going for it: Tory troubles, the political climate of ideas changing, the bankruptcy of the economic orthodoxies of recent decades, and a mass membership party, something critical is clearly missing in Labour. With the wind blowing in Labour’s sails, what is the nascent Corbyn programme for revitalising Britain – economically, socially and democratically? On the economy, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell talks a radical talk, and occasionally the odd revolutionary soundbite, dreaming of overthrowing capitalism. Reality is somewhat different. McDonnell has supported Tory tax cuts and welfare cuts for the poor. And there is at the core of this – Labour’s economic prospectus – there sits a vacuum.

Khashoggi murder: Pompeo says 'no direct evidence' implicates Saudi prince

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, insisted on Saturday that “no direct evidence” linked the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Pompeo is a former director of the CIA, which has reportedly concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the murder.

On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal reported that according to the CIA, Prince Mohammed “sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who oversaw the team that killed … Khashoggi, in the hours before and after the journalist’s death”. ...

Pompeo spoke to CNN on Saturday, on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Buenos Aires beset by diplomatic embarrassment over the presence of the prince. ... Pompeo said he would not comment on “intelligence matters or CIA conclusions” and said “reports in the media … often are untrue”.

But he added: “I have read every piece of intelligence that is in the possession of the United States government, and when it is done, when you complete that analysis, there’s no direct evidence linking [Prince Mohammed] to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. That is an accurate statement, it is an important statement, and it is the statement that we are making publicly today.”

Yemen's Humanitarian Nightmare Be Damned, Pompeo Doubles Down on US Support for Saudi Coalition

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doubled down on continued U.S. support for Saudi Arabia to continue its devastating war on Yemen.

Pompeo's comments to CNN on Saturday come days after the U.S. Senate advanced legislation to bring an end to U.S. involvement in the 3-year war, as a United Nations official warned that "Yemen is on the brink of a major catastrophe," and as the Wall Street Journal reports on a CIA assessment strongly implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Speaking to Wolf Blitzer on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Pompeo said the administration was intent on keeping "the strategic relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

Asked by Blitzer about dwindling support within Congress for participation in the war and whether the U.S. would continue to support the kingdom's bombing campaign of Yemen, Pompeo replied, "The program that we're involved in today we intend to continue."

Police recommend indicting Benjamin Netanyahu on bribery charges

Israeli police have recommended indicting Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, on bribery charges related to a corruption case implicating the country’s telecom giant, prompting immediate calls for his resignation. On Sunday police said their investigation had established an evidentiary foundation to charge Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, with accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust.

The case revolves around suspicions that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bezeq telecom company in exchange for positive coverage of the prime minister on Bezeq’s subsidiary news website, Walla.

Police have already recommended indicting Netanyahu on corruption charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends, and the second revolves around alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a newspaper in return for positive coverage.

The prime minister has denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the accusations as a witch-hunt orchestrated by the media.

Far right wins seats in Spanish region for first time since Franco

A far-right party has won seats in a Spanish regional parliament for the first time since the country returned to democracy following the death of longtime dictator Francisco Franco in 1975. With 99% of the votes counted in Andalucía, the small Vox party took 12 seats in the 109-member regional parliament.

The Socialists won the election, but saw their support plummet to just 33 seats, compared to 47 in 2015 – far from the majority of 55 seats needed to govern. The result means that Vox, which opposes illegal immigration and Catalan independence, has exceeded even the most optimistic poll predictions which had forecast a possible five seat win. The party’s platform includes restricting abortion and rolling back domestic violence laws. ...

Andalucía has been a Socialist bastion for 36 years, but the party could lose control of the government if parties on the right join forces to oust regional leader Susana Diaz, though that would require that they join forces with Vox. “Despite winning the election it is a sad night for the Socialist Party,” Diaz said. “There has been a real loss of ground for the Left. But the worst thing is that the extreme right, a phenomenon that has appeared in the rest of Europe, has arrived here.”

As G20 summit opens, US political establishment brays for trade war and military escalation

US President Donald Trump’s trip to the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina has been accompanied by an outpouring of jingoism throughout the US political establishment, targeting not just Russia, but with ever-greater belligerence, China. The summit takes place after Russian forces fired upon and captured three Ukrainian Navy ships that had entered waters claimed by Russia in a deliberate provocation likely to have been coordinated with Washington. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has begun massing troops on the Ukrainian border and has declared martial law in substantial sections of the country.

At the beginning of the week, the US press was filled with denunciations of Russia, whose response to the Ukrainian incursion was condemned as a violation of international law. This media campaign, combined with the aptly-timed release of supposedly damaging information about Trump’s personal ties to Russia, led the president to backtrack on his plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This was a partial concession to dominant factions within the American state that have demanded he take a more aggressive anti-Russian stance.

After Trump’s announcement on Thursday, the US media turned to demanding that Trump continue and intensify his hardline stance against China. Summing up the growth of anti-Chinese sentiment throughout the entire US political establishment, the Washington Post wrote in an editorial published Friday, “Where there was once a bipartisan consensus in favor of broad engagement with China, now there is almost equally widely shared disappointment with China’s failure to reciprocate as expected.” While the Post calls for a “temporary truce,” underlying the newspaper’s belligerence is the fact that China has emerged as a competitor to the United States in the fields of high-value manufacturing, directly competing for a shrinking pool of global profits with American companies. The Post continues, “Mr. Trump’s bluntly hostile approach to China represents only an extreme manifestation” of “emerging national sentiment.”

“Risky as it is,” the newspaper declares, Trump’s policy “at least puts China fully on notice that U.S. tolerance for its mercantilist policies… has run out.” ... Trump’s trade war with China is now lauded by even his most bitter factional opponents as not merely “normal,” but rational and even democratic. As the Post writes, “Chinese policymakers must understand that he won the presidency in large part because of American dismay—especially in the industrial heartland—with the results of China’s behavior, and what the public perceived as a failure of U.S. leadership to check it.”

These words are a confirmation, from one of the house organs of the Democratic Party, that Trump’s trade war measures are not the ravings of a madman but represent the efforts of the American ruling class to secure US global hegemony through military threats and trade war.

Trump claims China has agreed to “remove” tariffs on U.S. cars — but Beijing is saying nothing

Donald Trump tweeted late Sunday that China has agreed to “reduce and remove” tariffs on U.S. cars exported to China — but Beijing refused to confirm the president’s claims. The tweet gave no details of the supposed car deal, apparently struck at the G20 Summit in Argentina over the weekend, during which Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to a 90-day pause in the trade war to allow for further talks. ...


He followed up with another Tweet Monday morning hailing an “extraordinary” meeting that will help relations with China take “a BIG leap forward!”

He even suggested that he and Xi could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt "what has become a major and uncontrollable Arms Race."


When asked about Trump’s comment Monday, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang declined to comment.

Rejecting Israel Lobby’s Influence Over Congress, Rashida Tlaib Plans to Lead Delegation to Palestine

Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic representative-elect from Michigan, belongs to a cohort of incoming members of Congress who’ve vowed to upend the status quo — even on third-rail issues in Washington like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To that end, Tlaib is planning to lead a congressional delegation to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she told The Intercept. Her planned trip is a swift rebuke of a decades-old tradition for newly elected members: a junket to Israel sponsored by the education arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby group. The AIPAC trips are among the lesser-known traditions for freshman members of Congress. They’re typically scheduled during the first August recess in every legislative session and feature a weeklong tour of Israel and meetings with leading Israeli figures in business, government, and the military. ...

Tlaib, who is the first Palestinian-American woman to be elected to Congress, hopes to draw on her roots in the region to offer her fellow incoming representatives an alternative introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She said her group will focus on issues like Israel’s detention of Palestinian children, education, access to clean water, and poverty. She may even take them to Beit Ur al-Foqa, the village where Tlaib’s grandmother lives, in the northern West Bank.

It is unclear who will join Tlaib on the trip. She is still working out the details of when it will take place and what advocacy organizations she will partner with to fund the delegation. But Tlaib is clear about one thing: She wants her delegation to humanize Palestinians, provide an alternative perspective to the one AIPAC pushes, and highlight the inherent inequality of Israel’s system of military occupation in Palestinian territories, which Tlaib likens to what African-Americans in the United States endured in the Jim Crow era. She is not planning any meetings with the Palestinian Authority or with Israeli government officials, a mainstay of the AIPAC trips.

“I want us to see that segregation and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region,” Tlaib said in an interview. “I don’t think AIPAC provides a real, fair lens into this issue. It’s one-sided. … [They] have these lavish trips to Israel, but they don’t show the side that I know is real, which is what’s happening to my grandmother and what’s happening to my family there.” Tlaib’s challenge to AIPAC isn’t limited to leading a separate trip to the region. In her interview with The Intercept, she for the first time came out in support of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, the movement known as BDS that seeks to punish Israel over its human rights abuses.

Chicago charter school teachers plan to walk out in first major strike

Chicago teachers are planning to walk out on Tuesday in what’s believed to be the country’s first major charter school teacher strike. Teachers and their union argue the independent schools are overcrowded and underfunded and have been used to create a “second tier in the teaching profession”. The strike comes as negotiations for higher wages, more resources and smaller class sizes have hit an impasse.

Caroline Rutherford, who has worked at Donald J Marquez Elementary in Chicago said the charter schools were struggling to retain staff. Her school is run by the for-profit charter operator Acero Schools, one of Chicago’s largest charter networks. “We’ve had turnover at the teacher, apprentice and administration level. So I’ve had six or seven different principals since I’ve started, and I’ve had nine master teachers, a new one every year,” Rutherford said.

A study published in the Social Science Journal in September 2018 found teachers at for-profit charter schools are 38% more likely to leave the teaching profession than teachers at regular charter schools, and even teachers at not-for-profit charter schools are leaving the profession at higher rates than public schools.

“It’s a practice for the charters to hire really young, inexperienced teachers and work them like crazy, pack as many kids as they can in front of them, in my school it’s 32 a class, and not give them a lot of tools to work,” said Rutherford. “After a couple years, they’re burnt out from either the charter system or the teaching practice altogether.” ...

The threatened walkout comes as the Chicago Teachers Union and charter school operators appear deadlocked over new contract negotiations. The union and charter school operators were unable to come to an agreement on a new contract during several bargaining sessions over the past week. The strike is the first against a charter school operator in the United States and was authorized in a union membership vote by 98% of members.



the horse race



In Democrats’ First Bill, There’s a Quiet Push to Make Public Campaign Finance a Reality

The first bill Democrats plan to move in January when they take control of the House will mark a major step forward on a longstanding progressive goal: public financing of congressional campaigns. The provision is a largely overlooked part of a sweeping anti-corruption bill Democrats plan to start the year with and will be bestowed with the symbolic designation of HR1. The program, based on Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes’s “Government By the People Act of 2017,” would offer subsidies for individuals who want to make small contributions to political candidates. And eligible candidates would qualify for matching contributions that vary based on a candidate’s agreement to restrictions on how they finance their campaigns.

Combined with the broad surge of small-dollar contributions — Democrats alone raised more than $1 billion that way in 2018 — the public financing system would dramatically reshape the political economy of federal politics. Of course, it stands no chance of being passed by a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, but it sets the stage for potential passage in 2021 if Democrats retake control of Congress and the White House.

HR 1, led in large part by Sarbanes, would revamp for the first time since the 1970s the Watergate-era model for public financing of presidential campaigns and establish a national pilot program to fund congressional campaigns. The measure intensifies pressure to stop rewarding candidates with the most money from large donors and corporate PACs, or outside dark-money groups propping them up, the status quo in a post-Citizens United electoral system. The idea driving HR 1 is to fight and end the dominance of big money in politics.

Interview: Bernie Sanders on Ending Yemen War, Medicare for All, Green New Deal & the Stop BEZOS Act



the evening greens


'We are last generation that can stop climate change' – UN summit

The UN climate change summit begins on Monday with a warning that today’s generation is the last that can prevent catastrophic global warming, as well as the first to be suffering its impacts. Almost 200 nations were set to meet in Poland for two weeks, aiming to hammer out a vital agreement to turn the carbon-cutting vision set in Paris in 2015 into reality. Moves to rapidly ramp up action would be another key goal, with current pledges leaving the world on track for a disastrous 3C of warming. ...

The political backdrop contains challenges as well, with climate change denial from the US president, Donald Trump, and attacks on the UN process from Brazil’s incoming Bolsonaro administration. The hosting of the summit by a coal-friendly Polish government further worries some observers. But the EU’s new intention to become climate neutral and the plummeting cost of renewable energy have been positives, while a year of extreme weather was anticipated to focus minds.

“We are clearly the last generation that can change the course of climate change, but we are also the first generation with its consequences,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the CEO of the World Bank. The bank announced on Monday that its record $100bn (£78bn) of climate funding from 2021-2025 would for the first time be split equally between projects to cut emissions and those protecting people from the floods, storms and droughts that global warming is making worse. In recent years, just 5% of global funding has gone on protection, but 2018 has seen climate impacts hit hard, with heatwaves and wildfires in Europe and California and huge floods in India, Japan and east Africa. “We are already seeing the devastating impact of climate change,” Georgieva told the Guardian. “We strongly believe that action ought to go both on mitigation and on adaptation.”

“Climate extremes are the new normal,” said Prof Patrick Verkooijen, the CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation, in the Netherlands. “The climate debate can no longer only be about the causes – it also needs to focus on how billions of people at risk can rapidly adapt.

Naomi Klein Interviews Bernie Sanders on Climate Change

David Attenborough: collapse of civilisation is on the horizon

The collapse of civilisation and the natural world is on the horizon, Sir David Attenborough has told the UN climate change summit in Poland. The naturalist was chosen to represent the world’s people in addressing delegates of almost 200 nations who are in Katowice to negotiate how to turn pledges made in the 2015 Paris climate deal into reality.

As part of the UN’s people’s seat initiative, messages were gathered from all over the world to inform Attenborough’s address on Monday. “Right now we are facing a manmade disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change,” he said. “If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

“Do you not see what is going on around you?” asks one young man in a video message played as part of a montage to the delegates. “We are already seeing increased impacts of climate change in China,” says a young woman. Another woman, standing outside a building burned down by a wildfire, says: “This used to be my home.”

Attenborough said: “The world’s people have spoken. Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now. Leaders of the world, you must lead. The continuation of civilisations and the natural world upon which we depend is in your hands.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Leads Opposition to Coal Puppet Joe Manchin for Top Senate Energy Slot

Incoming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is troubled by the prospect of West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a staunch ally of the fossil fuel industry, becoming the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I have concerns, and that’s why I say that our issues are not just left and right, but that they’re top and down,” Ocasio-Cortez said at a Friday press conference held outside the Capitol. “I have concerns over the senator’s chairmanship just because I do not believe that we should be financed by the industries that we are supposed to be legislating and regulating and touching with our legislation.”

Ocasio-Cortez added that the vast majority of Americans agree that lawmakers should not be taking money from the industries they regulate, and the fact that they continue to do so contributes to the disconnect between everyday people and Washington. “But in D.C., that’s a controversial opinion,” she said. “I don’t believe it’s just a party issue. It’s really about an issue of independence, it’s really about an issue of objectivity in our legislation,” she continued.

Manchin has the inside track to take over the ranking member slot, currently held by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, but liberal and environmental groups are horrified and would like “anyone but Manchin” to get the position, Politico reported this week. ... According to OpenSecrets.org, Manchin’s 2018 re-election campaign received $156,240 from the oil and gas industries. Manchin also reports earnings each year from Enersystems Inc., a coal brokerage company he helped run before entering politics, in his Senate financial disclosures.


Also of Interest

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

George H.W. Bush, the CIA and a Case of State-Sponsored Terrorism

The Bushes: Fathers and Sons ( With Apologies to Turgenev)

Words on the street: graffiti of the Paris protests – in pictures

Never before have I seen blind anger like this on the streets of Paris

The Guardian/Politico Psyop Against WikiLeaks

Homeland Security Will Let Computers Predict Who Might Be a Terrorist on Your Plane — Just Don’t Ask How It Works

U.S. Military Says It Has a “Light Footprint” in Africa. These Documents Show a Vast Network of Bases.

Pundits Policing Protest at Tucker Carlson’s House

Naomi Klein on the Urgency of a ‘Green New Deal’ for Everyone

What ads in the New Yorker magazine tell us about the American oligarchy

Challenge to Trump's Environmentally Disastrous Plan to 'Wreak Havoc Along the Border' Blocked by Supreme Court


A Little Night Music

Big Joe Turner - Well All Right

Big Joe Turner - Ooh Ouch Stop

Joe Turner - Things That I Used To Do

Big Joe Turner - My Little Honeydripper

Big Joe Turner - I Don't Dig It

Big Joe Turner - Bump Miss Susie

Big Joe Turner - Lipstick, Powder & Paint

Big Joe Turner - In The Evening

Big Joe Turner - Boogie Woogie Country Girl


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Azazello's picture

Neoliberalism is one of those words, like plutocracy and oligarchy, that you won't see or hear very often in the mainstream, corporate media. But they had to cover the new Presidente's inaugural speeches on Saturday and he used the n-word. Here's they handled it in the AP story that ran in my local paper: Mexico gets leftist leader after decades of technocrats

Lopez Obrador was clear in blaming extreme market-oriented policies he calls neoliberalism for Mexico's problems.
"Mexico's crisis originated not only with the failure of the neoliberal policies applied over the last 36 years," he said in his inaugural speech, "but also in the prevalence of the filthiest corruption."

They seem to think AMLO invented the term when, in fact, those policies are called neoliberalism in every country in the world except the US.
Reuters did a little better, but they put the word in quotes too.

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

divineorder's picture

@Azazello

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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

@Azazello

heh, the msm wouldn't want the rubes catching on to the fact that the us is caught up in the same, global, neoliberal conspiracy that the rest of the nations of the world are being strangled by.

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shaharazade's picture

@joe shikspack the US is the 'super power' behind neoliberalism. I found this quote from the Paris riot story "The violence in Paris, however, suggests that some protests appear to have been taken over by more radical far-right or far-left groups." to be quite obnoxious. I live in Portland OR. where all public demonstrations are characterized by the media (the so called left included) are reduced to the meaningless political divide of 'far left" vs.'far right'. This reduces every movement of people into the long gone political divisions that lumps anybody who says enough is enough as radical extremists.

I also have a bone to pick with Ive's piece on the Labour Party under Corbyn. Hey it's the only show in town and they are after all pols. So one story bemoans the rads, left and right, in Paris and the other says Corbyn's Labour isn't radical enough? WTF. Maybe we all need to stop viewing what's going down through the eyes of the past political breakdown. I do agree with this...

'Corbynistas had better wake up to what the Blairites eventually did: that winning the party is one thing, but changing the country is something entirely different.'

So anyway thanks for the news stew. Better then facebook is. Think I'll tune in to The Evening Blues for my news. I found it ironic that all this shit going down globally is set against the backdrop of G-20. lol. These rat bastards that rule the world have a lot of nerve blaming ordinary people for getting out in the streets or refusing to go along with theier insane Great Game.

Speaking of games me and Eric listened to R&B music last night featuring hits from our long gone youth years. Her's one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxZ8rwN8Wrk

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@shaharazade
For sure. And refusing to go along with the insane game. Serious confrontations ensue.

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joe shikspack's picture

@shaharazade

heh, the powers-that-be are quite eager to blame any sort of dissent on extremist (far-direction) movements. the next step, of course, is to blame it on russia and to provoke violence in the streets to scare off dissenters.

yeah, i thought that the nc article on corbyn's labour was a mixed bag. i felt like they came down pretty heavy-handed on corbyn who (imo) seems to be doing the best he can with a party chock-full of blairite elected officials who will do anything they can to undermine him. perhaps he will be unable to overcome the neoliberal faction in english politics, but he is certainly putting decent ideas out there which will live on past his leadership.

anyway, great to see you! my best to shahryar, too! thanks for the mickey and sylvia. mickey baker was one fabulous guitarist.

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snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

After I read comments here my next stop was Twitter and the French protests.

Jazus! Seriously, Macron?

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

and what the public perceived as a failure of U.S. leadership...

Ha, utter BS by the white washington post. Who perceived what again? Because how? Does anyone smell a lie?

Sheesh.

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joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

heh, it's a good thing that we can't smell lies. in the current post-truth environment it could burn out all of our olfactory senses.

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The event, titled “Solving Our Climate Crisis,” will be held in front of a live audience at the Capitol Visitor Center's Congressional Auditorium in Washington from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. and live streamed on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

trump-climate-quote.png
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divineorder's picture

@QMS @QMS

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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.

@divineorder
Funny MSN won't touch it.

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mimi's picture

@divineorder [video:https://youtu.be/8ESu3nBh1iE]

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joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

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divineorder's picture

Last night Jb and I attended the Santa Fe Watershed Association’s winter fundraiser and learned some very interesting history and status of Colorado River water distribution. Long time journalist John Fleck and now Director of Water Resources at UNM. Title of his talk was : “Bracing for Troubled Waters: Climate Change Risk to Santa Fe’s Colorado River Water.

Did not know that based on a decades old pact NM gets Colorado River water from a canal through tunnels from the San Juan/Chama area, and if it had not come last year the Rio Grande and other rivers would have been completely dry by mid July! Let that sink in.

We were told that this is ‘marginal’ water, only a small amount of the total water used in NM, but still the speaker argued, it is very important to maintain.

People last night were expressing gratitude for the snow. We can see snow on mountains east and west from our tiny balcony today, a rare sight last winter.

Still big problems remain:

###

Still thinking about the Navajo after driving through their lands again recently on our annual camping trip to Wahweap and Zion. Did not realize extensive uranium mining had gone on there, and the extent of health and other impacts that still remain. Wikipedia and the EPA have a great deal of info for those interested.
...

....
One tweet I saw said something to the effect of ‘fix Flint’s water, yes, but don’t forget about the Navajo suffering from uranium contamination.’

...

Heh. had I known all this, I would not have drank tap water at a fast food place in Gallup.

Have a good evening!

Edited for post of wrong tweet.

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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

@divineorder

i remember some decades ago going to a presentation from some ecologists who were pretty exercised about the colorado river delta. they were particularly upset that the water didn't make it all the way to the ocean as it had for 6 million years, endangering a vast number of species. it appears that for a few years recently it has reached the sea of cortez thanks to an agreement between the us and mexico to stop a certain amount of water diversion.

i would guess, though, in this era of "'murica first" water diversions upstream will intensify in order to offset the decline of precipitation.

yep, the navajo nation has been royally screwed by unscrupulous capitalist mining corporations (and equally unscrupulous dept of interior agents who failed to act in the interest of natives) who have engaged in unethical, discriminatory practices and strewn the area with radioactive mine wastes.

this is a pretty good article.

Decades of uranium mining have dotted the landscape across the Navajo Nation with piles of contaminated mine waste. The EPA has mapped 521 abandoned uranium mines on the reservation, ranging from small holes dug by a single prospector into the side of a mesa to large commercial mining operations. The Navajo people did not have a word for “radioactivity” when mining outfits looking for vanadium and uranium began moving onto their land in the 1940s, and they did not understand that radiation could be dangerous. They were not told that the men who worked in the mines were breathing carcinogenic radon gas and showering in radioactive water, nor that the women washing their husbands’ work clothes could spread radionuclides to the rest of the family’s laundry. ...

In just over a decade, Navajo miners were being diagnosed with lung cancer, a relatively rare disease in this largely nonsmoking population.15 Beginning in 1950, workers with the U.S. Public Health Service led by Duncan Holaday and Victor Archer began following uranium miners in the Southwest, both Navajo and white, to measure their exposures and assess their specific cancer risks. To get access to the workers, the researchers had to strike a Faustian bargain with the mining companies: They could not inform the miners of the potential health hazards of their work. Seeing it as the only way to convince government regulators to improve safety in the mines, the researchers accepted.16 By 1965, the investigators reported an association between cumulative exposure to uranium and lung cancer among white miners and had definitively identified the cause as radiation exposure.

In 1984 another team published results of a case–control study that further implicated uranium mining as a cause of lung cancer in Navajo men. The team analyzed 96 confirmed cancer cases from the New Mexico Tumor Registry, 32 lung cancer cases and 64 cases of other cancers. Of the 32 Navajo men who developed lung cancer, 72% had worked as uranium miners, compared with none of the controls. Furthermore, the median age of miners with lung cancer was 44 years, compared with 63 years for nonminers with other cancers. Decades after their exposure ended, standardized mortality ratios and relative risks for lung cancer and other respiratory problems were still nearly four times higher in Navajo miners than in nonminers.

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divineorder's picture

@joe shikspack

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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.

enhydra lutris's picture

@joe shikspack
Colorado River is barely maintaining the delta where it meets the Sea of Cortez. Guess what is keeping the Sea of Cortez from flowing north into the Colorado River channel.

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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 --

Azazello's picture

@enhydra lutris
It's organic material too, the stuff that made the Sea of Cortez such a rich fishery, big shrimp and all that. One time I was down at CEDO in Rocky Point. I asked one of the docents about it. I told him that I could about jump the Colorado where it empties into Mar de Cortez and asked what's feeding the marine life now. He said that the sea is living off its savings. That's why the sea is slowly dying.

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

janis b's picture

@Azazello

That explains, tragically, so much of the state of every natural thing, including us. It's awful.

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dystopian's picture

@joe shikspack RIP Colorado River Delta. Great to see y'all hep to the plight of the Colorado River Delta, JS, Azaz, DO, EL. Old scientist accounts of it describe it as being incredible, and my understanding is that it just not exist as it was 50 years ago. Especially the riparian corridor that followed the river to the Sea of Cortez, but also the typical main Delta itself, is not likely reparable. It was starved for water for decades. I think the situation with Vaquito says it best. It is a dying sea, or at least changing into something else other than what Steinbeck wrote about, due to this lack of freshwater and nutrient inflows. I hear the industrial pollution at Guaymas is bad now too (nafta). It killed the tubifex worm industry they had.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

janis b's picture

@dystopian

Yet it did encourage me to explore a little of things unknown - like the tubifex worm and pollution in the gulf of california.

That part of the gulf must be incredibly toxic, if too toxic for tubifex worms who flourish in sewage in NC. And why would anyone want to feed their fish with food that lives off pollution and sewage anyway? It is a wonder, but they must be there for a reason. So, is this an indication of the earth’s destiny, that even organisms that evolve to ingest pollution for a purpose are defeated by the ever increasing degree of toxicity in the environment?

The first time I became acutely aware of the horror of pollution was in a convertible driving from manhattan to CT. In the distance was an unfamiliar haze of a very unappealing colour, and it looked totally unnatural. That was almost 40 years ago, and the presence of pollution was becoming more common knowledge. Why did we not do more earlier? What a fucking shame.

It sounds like sardine production also has something to do with the gulf dying ...

“They made the mistake of building the fishmeal processors inside the bay.”

Isn't there some kind of saying that advises one not to shit where they live? I think I need to puke, but I'll probably look for something to make me laugh or inspire me instead.

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dystopian's picture

@janis b

And why would anyone want to feed their fish with food that lives off pollution and sewage anyway? It is a wonder, but they must be there for a reason.

>>>I think originally it was organic detritus they fed on. Every fish store in America in the 60's-some time in 80's had pounds in the frig for sale. Thousands of fish stores. You flush them with water for a few days and they were clean, and great fish food. Now it is blackworms which are much much larger and dirtier, and not as good as tubifex was. Until they chemically poisoned it with industrial runoff straight into the river there. Why the exceptional American oligarch class wanted nafta, no pesky environmental laws.

So, is this an indication of the earth’s destiny, that even organisms that evolve to ingest pollution for a purpose are defeated by the ever increasing degree of toxicity in the environment?

>>> Yes, one animal and one place and one species at a time. Many many things are gone from many places in my lifetime. Burrowing Owls were common around L.A. in the 60's. And so it goes for populations or whole species everywhere. The deforestization from suburbanization has been catalclysmic in those habitats. We drained our wetlands, fill our marshes, called it improved and development. And are encouraging the same worldwide like insatiable maniacs for money. As if preservation and conservation is the evil enemy. Nothing is like it was environmentally. And the gov. and its owners can't wait to get their hands on the little teeny bits we and our parents and their parents and their parents generations signed off on saving.

The first time I became acutely aware of the horror of pollution was in a convertible driving from manhattan to CT. In the distance was an unfamiliar haze of a very unappealing colour, and it looked totally unnatural. That was almost 40 years ago, and the presence of pollution was becoming more common knowledge. Why did we not do more earlier? What a fucking shame.

>>> The air in LA was infinitely improved in the 1990's, from the 1960's. The difference was leaded gas. It still sucks if you aren't on the coast, if you are inland up against the mountains, it is brown, it burns, unless the wind has blown it all away. But overall the air was worst in the late 60's and early 70's I'd say, at least there. That lead was killin us.

It sounds like sardine production also has something to do with the gulf dying ...
“They made the mistake of building the fishmeal processors inside the bay.”

>>> thanks I'll check this out.

Isn't there some kind of saying that advises one not to shit where they live?

>>> Don't piss in your own well has been popular in many parts of the country.

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

janis b's picture

@dystopian

I appreciate your insight and knowledge of the natural world and the influences that define it.

Long ago, when living in an exceptionally beautiful and still relatively natural CT environment I tried to save some wetlands. Most was actually saved eventually, and became a National Historic Site, thanks partly to Senator Joseph Lieberman, believe it or not!

I can still hear (in my imagination) the frogs singing from those wetlands, and I'm happy that part of their territory has been preserved.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@janis b

Isn't there some kind of saying that advises one not to shit where they live?

Corporations don't really live in any particular place and for many, their address of notice is little more than a mailbox, a couple of flunkeys, and an attorney. They are perfectly portable.

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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 --

janis b's picture

@enhydra lutris

but no matter where they are living they must also be experiencing some degree of the degradation they have caused.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

joe shikspack's picture

@The Aspie Corner

while i'm not sure that i'd agree with all of the details - particularly the idea of antifa being the shock troops of the democrats (the democrats have their own shock troops that they share with the republicans and pay for with our tax dollars) - the idea of divide and conquer is a tried and true method that the oligarchs are quite adept at using. perhaps the fact that our culture is so riven is a measure of their worry that we will get out of control and come after them.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

Check out Okilly Dokilly, a Simpsons themed metal band with band members in full Ned Flanders garb.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZT-Kj5Syp8&index=4&list=RDV8RgxxRzZVs]

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Town hall takeaway ~~ spend the trillion spent on war to fund the clean energy needs of the world ~~ that's pretty bold. A good discussion of the social and economic considerations of climate action by his panel. Hope the word is spread.

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divineorder's picture

@QMS

jakkalbessie and I watched it and thought it was time well spent.

Lots of innovation going on out there....

HT to US Senator Bernie Sanders FB page for this dramatic example:

The Nanticoke Generating Station in Ontario, Canada used to be the world's largest coal power plant. Now they're turning it into a solar plant.

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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.

divineorder's picture

@QMS

He was remembering 'climbing that hill' with Obama, and getting thrown under the bus. (not his words.)

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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.

@divineorder
Star eyed speacher. Van Jones spoke to the soul. The kid was amazing with his rap. Got teary eyed myself a couple times. What we can do.

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divineorder's picture

@QMS She said that she decided to run at Standing Rock.

She is articulate, has a vision, results oriented. Don't mean she will save the world.

Bernie is impressed with her. Van Jones was impressed as well. As I said, he teared up after her talk. But fine for you not to be. Great story about how the media is treating her. Bernie even cracked a funny haha about it.

The rap was very cool.

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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.

@divineorder
She's young and feels like she's talking to the world. Good moral fiber as you say. The rest of the panel were talking to each other more. All good.

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janis b's picture

@QMS

So far I wished that AOC sounded more like Xiuhtezcatl Martinez. What different voices they have.

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divineorder's picture

@janis b

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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.

janis b's picture

@divineorder

I still have only heard the first 45 min. and it was the first time I listened to AOC. I was just struck, literally, by the contrast between what sounded to me like a mature and deep voice, and one that sounded somehow inexperienced.

I will listen more for the content than the sound.

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joe shikspack's picture

@QMS

i hope that he has some ideas as to how to wean the u.s. government off of its military obsession.

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@joe shikspack
A map of a few concrete steps to that goal would help frame the discussion better.

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dystopian's picture

Boy those French sure know how to protest! Macron who exudes 'wimp' must be shatting. Sure good to see some places making sure GHWB gets remembered for something besides the fairytale being constructed, by the liberal media. Thanks for the news and blues...

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

lotlizard's picture

Any popular movement that gets off the ground here is immediately labelled Nazi, no matter what the actual concrete local concerns are.

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mimi's picture

@lotlizard
folks don't realize what they are doing by shouting Nazi at everyone and everything they don't want to see. Black out realities - a favorite past time of the lazies, who simply are tired of all the shit there is.

People turn off from that in the end. If they don't see solutions, they crawl back and do nothing, which might be not that bad either.

Greeting and be well.

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It takes me back to my childhood... My step dad owned a nightclub in Topanga Canyon CA called the Topanga Corral. For a spell in the 70s, Big Joe played Monday nights. I was too young to be in the joint, but my old man let me hang at the back door with the bouncer. Pretty much everybody you can think of played there at some point. I was blessed to see/hear it all.

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