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“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”

-- John Lennon

News and Opinion

Worth a full read, Patrick Cockburn checks in with a sound and reasonable analysis.

Ignore the howls of protest – Trump's Syria withdrawal is a simple reflection of foreign policy realities

President Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from Syria is being denounced by an impressive range of critics claiming that it is a surrender to Turkey, Russia, Syria and Iran – as well as a betrayal of the Kurds and a victory for Isis. The pullout may be one or all of these things, but above all it is a recognition of what is really happening on the ground in Syria and the Middle East in general.

This point has not come across clearly enough because of the undiluted loathing for Trump among most of the American and British media. They act as a conduit for the views of diverse figures who condemn the withdrawal and include members of the imperially-minded foreign policy establishment in Washington and terrified Kurds living in north-east Syria who fear ethnic cleansing by an invading Turkish army. ... It is worth spelling out the state of play in Syria because this is being masked by anti-Trump rhetoric, recommending policies that may sound benign but are far detached from political reality. This reality may be very nasty: it is right to be appalled by the prospects for the Syrian Kurds who are terrified of a Turkish army that is already massing to the north of the Turkish-Syrian frontier.

There is a horrible inevitability about all this because neither Turkey nor Syria were ever going to allow a Kurdish mini-state to take permanent root in north-east Syria. It existed because of the Syrian civil war in which Assad withdrew his forces from the Kurdish-populated regions in 2012 in order to concentrate them in defence of strategically vital cities and roads. Isis attacked the Kurdish enclave in 2014 which led to a de facto alliance between the Kurds and the US air force whose devastating firepower enabled the Kurds to capture a great swathe of Isis-held territory east of the Euphrates. Turkey was never going to accept this outcome. Turkey had escalated its pressure on the US to end its protection of the Kurds and this finally paid off. A telephone conversation with Erdogan a week ago reportedly convinced Trump that he had to get US soldiers and airpower out of Syria. Keep in mind that Trump needs – though he may not get as much as he wants – Turkey as an ally in the Middle East more than ever before. His bet on Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and Saudi Arabia as the leader of a pro-American and anti-Iranian Sunni coalition in the Middle has visibly and embarrassingly failed. The bizarre killing of Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi team in Istanbul was only the latest in a series of Saudi pratfalls showing comical ineptitude as well as excessive and mindless violence.

Critics of Trump raise several other important questions in opposing his withdrawal decision: is he not letting Isis off the hook by prematurely announcing their defeat and thereby enabling them to make a comeback? There is something in this, but not a lot. The Islamic State, that once held territory stretching from the Tigris River in Iraq to Syria’s Mediterranean coast, is no more and cannot be resurrected because the circumstances that led to its spectacular growth between 2013 and 2015 are no longer there. Isis made too many enemies because of its indiscriminate violence when it was at the peak of its power.

European powers condemn Trump’s withdrawal from Syria

The withdrawal of US troops from Syria announced by US President Donald Trump and the subsequent resignation of his defence secretary, James Mattis, have provoked a fierce response from European leaders. After the initial shock, the European ruling elites reacted overwhelmingly with calls for a more independent European foreign and defence policy. In Germany, in particular, leading politicians and the media are outdoing one another with demands for an even faster rearmament of the German army (Bundeswehr) and the establishment of a European military force. Trump's decision evidently came as a complete surprise to European governments. In their official statements they condemn the move and urge a continuation of the war against the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria. “The decision of the White House is cause for concern,” reads an official statement of the German defence ministry. IS was “territorially under control, but by no means defeated.” One hopes that “the Americans will not withdraw in an overly hasty manner, but are aware of their responsibilities, not only to their own troops but also to others.”

The governments in London and Paris also condemned Trump's plans and announced they would continue their military intervention in Syria. ... There are several reasons for the fierce European reaction to Trump's withdrawal order. In the first place the European powers are angered that the withdrawal of US troops from Syria endangers their own war plans. Unlike the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Libyan war in 2011, all the major European powers were, from the outset, part of the imperialist offensive against Syria. They supported the goal of overthrowing the regime of Bashar al-Assad and replacing it with a pro-Western puppet regime. In 2012, the German foreign office, together with the German SWP think tank and part of the Syrian opposition, initiated the project “The Day After” and published a “Vision for a post-Assad order.” Now the European powers fear complete victory for Assad and, consequently, of his allies in Moscow and Tehran.

Another reason for the anger of European powers stems from domestic political considerations. Like the ruling class in the US, European governments have used the guise of the “war on terror” to curtail democratic rights and establish veritable police states. The imperialist intervention in Syria has created terrorist networks that served as a pretext for far-reaching attacks on democratic rights. Under conditions of growing social and political opposition across Europe, Paris, London and Berlin want to intensify this reactionary campaign. Trump's claim that IS in Syria is “defeated” undermines these plans. ...

The megalomaniacal plans of the ruling class being discusses behind the backs of the population is illustrated by a recent article by Jan Techau, head of the Europe Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin. Under the title “Strategic ability and world-weariness, German foreign policy through 2030,” he demands that Germany must “recognise its size, power and relevance for Europe and humbly accept it. It has to take up its leading role.” And further: “It must be communicated to [Germany] that the maintenance of order will entail maximum effort and entail enormous costs.” All this would “have to be explained to the population, again and again, by politicians, even at the risk of their mandates ... And if that is not popular, then leading state players have to risk their political lives for it. The same applies to the financial and human resources of the Bundeswehr. Two percent of defence spending is not needed for Trump, but rather against him, because these investments are supposed to strengthen exactly the multilateral, rule-based order he wants to abolish.”

German army considers recruiting other EU citizens

German defence chiefs are considering recruiting from other EU countries to fill a chronic shortage of skilled workers in the armed forces. Eberhard Zorn, the army general inspector, said in an interview the armed forces had little choice but to look beyond Germany for new recruits.

“We’re talking here about doctors or IT specialists,” Zorn told the Funke newspaper group, calling the idea to search for such workers beyond Germany “an option” among several being considered as the army “pushes hard for a suitable new generation”. He said at a time of a general skilled worker shortage the armed forces had to look in every direction to find suitable newcomers.

According to the Funke report, the military has already consulted its EU partners, including several countries in eastern Europe such as Poland and the Czech Republic as it looks to increase its personnel by 21,000 in the next seven years. It has reportedly received a lukewarm response, amid fears in Warsaw and Prague that the German military is looking to poach its highest qualified military personnel by luring them with better pay.

Hilary Pushes For More War In Syria

Turkey-backed Syrian fighters prepare to replace U.S. forces

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters are preparing to deploy in eastern Syria alongside Turkish troops once American forces withdraw, a spokesman said Monday, adding that his forces have begun massing on the front line of a town held by Kurdish-led forces.

Meanwhile, a Syrian Kurdish official said her group is reaching out for help to protect the Kurdish-administered areas against a possible Turkish offensive following the U.S. withdrawal. "We will deal with whoever can protect the good and stability of this country," said Ilham Ahmed, a senior Kurdish official. Ahmed said her group is discussing with the Russians, the Syrian government and European countries ways to deal with the U.S. withdrawal. She didn't elaborate.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said the withdrawal from Syria will be slow and coordinated with Turkey, without providing a timetable. Turkey said the two countries are coordinating to ensure there is no "authority vacuum" once the U.S. troops leave.

On Monday, Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency reported that Turkey-backed Syrian forces had moved closer to Manbij, equipped with heavy weapons and armored vehicles. Manbij was at the center of an agreement the U.S. and Turkey reached in June under which Kurdish forces were to withdraw. In recent weeks Turkey had said the U.S. was dragging its feet in implementing the deal and had vowed to launch a new offensive against the Kurds.

President’s first visit to a war zone comes a week after he announced he would withdraw troops from Syria

Nearly two years into his presidency, Donald Trump has made his first visit to a war zone with a surprise trip to Iraq. The unannounced visit a day after Christmas came after the US president faced growing pressure to spend time with troops on the frontline. It also comes a week after the president stunned his national security advisers by announcing that he would withdraw US troops from neighbouring Syria, where they have been fighting Islamic State militants, prompting the resignation of the defense secretary, Jim Mattis. ...

The president spent around three and a half hours at al-Asad airbase in western Iraq but did not visit Baghdad. He met US military leaders and addressed hundreds of troops. A scheduled in-person meeting with Iraq’s prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, was cancelled. ... In a speech lasting roughly 20 minutes, Trump reportedly said he has “no plans at all” to remove American troops from the country. But he defended his decision to withdraw all 2,000 US troops from Syria.

“We’re no longer the suckers, folks,” he told the troops. “We’re respected again as a nation.” Trump continued: “I made it clear from the beginning that our mission in Syria was to strip Isis of its military strongholds. Eight years ago, we went there for three months and we never left. Now, we’re doing it right and we’re going to finish it off.” Trump argued that the US presence was never intended to be “open-ended” and that Turkey had agreed to eliminate remnants of the Isis terror group still remaining in the country. Earlier, Trump took questions from reporters. He described how he gave “the generals” multiple six-month “extensions” to get out of Syria. Trump said of the generals: “They said again, recently, can we have more time? I said, ‘Nope.’ You can’t have any more time. You’ve had enough time. We’ve knocked them out. We’ve knocked them silly.”

The US cannot continue to be the policeman of the world, he added. “In Syria, [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan said he wants to knock out Isis, whatever’s left, the remnants of Isis. And Saudi Arabia just came out and said they are going to pay for some economic development. Which is great, that means we don’t have to pay. We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.”

Trump congratulates troops on a “big pay raise” they’re not getting

Santa didn’t visit U.S. troops in Baghdad this Christmas, but Donald Trump did, in a surprise presidential stopover that Iraqi lawmakers denounced as a violation of their country’s sovereignty, Reuters reported. ...

“Trump’s visit is a flagrant and clear violation of diplomatic norms and shows his disdain and hostility in his dealings with the Iraqi government,” read a statement from the Bina parliamentary bloc, led by militia leader Hadi al-Amiri. Bina’s rivals, the Islah bloc, also condemned the trip, calling it a “blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty,” adding that Trump “should know his limits: The U.S. occupation of Iraq is over.” The parties even called for a special session to discuss evicting U.S. forces from the country.

The office of Iraq’s prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, told Reuters they’d been forewarned about the visit shortly before, but a face-to-face between the leaders was cancelled because Trump wanted to meet at the U.S. military base and Abdul-Mahdi did not.

Trump’s trip was his first visit to a combat zone since taking office, and he told the troops he wanted to personally thank them for defeating the Islamic State group. ... After signing autographs and posing for selfies, Trump claimed he had personally secured the troops a “10 percent” wage boost after a decade without an increase. “Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got?” he asked. “You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.”

According to the Department of Defense, U.S. military personnel have received a pay raise in each of the last 10 years — and a bill signed by the president in August will give them a 2.6 percent increase -- not 10 percent — in 2019.

Early elections called in Israel as coalition agrees to dissolve Knesset

Amid a series of coalition crises and deliberations over a possible indictment against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coalition leaders announced Monday that Israel will head to the polls within four months, with a general election set for April.

“Out of national and budgetary responsibility, the leaders of the coalition parties decided, by unanimous agreement, to dissolve the Knesset and go to new elections at the beginning of April after a four-year term,” the heads of the five coalition parties said in a joint statement. ...

Opposition politicians said Netanyahu was going to the polls so as to be in a stronger position, as a re-elected prime minister, to battle possible indictments for corruption, as the attorney general weighs three corruption cases against him. Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit is thought unlikely to decide on the cases ahead of the vote.

State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan said Wednesday he was wrapping up recommendations on three cases against Netanyahu for Mandelblit, which reportedly include recommendations that the premier be indicted on bribery charges over an affair in which he is accused of kicking back regulatory favors in exchange for positive media coverage. Mandelblit is expected to convene his legal team to begin working on the hundreds of pages of testimony and other evidence in the three cases on Monday, the Ynet news site reported.

Netanyahu Remains Election Favorite, Despite Scandals

A day after snap elections were called in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emerged as the overwhelming early front-runner Tuesday, with rivals and commentators alike pinning their primary hopes of unseating him on a potential corruption indictment.

With Netanyahu holding a commanding lead in the polls, all eyes are on Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and whether he will decide before April’s elections on whether to press charges against the longtime leader on a series of corruption allegations.

“Avichai Mandelblit needs to tell us before the elections if there is an indictment or not,” Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, one of Netanyahu’s primary challengers, told the YNet news site. “People need to know what they are voting for.”

For now, Israelis seem to be sticking with Netanyahu, with the first poll since early elections were called showing him cruising to an easy re-election.

Trump is “worst perpetrator of false information” in America, U.N. official monitoring freedom of expression says

President Donald Trump is “the worst perpetrator of false information” in the United States, according to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion. David Kaye, a law professor tasked by the United Nations with researching freedom of expression and online content regulation in at least six countries, told Digital Rights Monitor in an interview published Thursday that governments are often responsible for widespread disinformation — and the United States is no exception.

“Governments are real offenders when it comes to disinformation,” Kaye said. “You know, governments are putting out false information. I mean, in my own country, the United States, the worst perpetrator of false information is the President of the United States.” ...

Politifact, which tracks politicians’ truthfulness, lists the majority of Trump’s political assertions as false.

Yanis Varoufakis | The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic

Dow up more than 1,000 points in biggest one-day gain ever

US stock markets staged a post-Christmas rally on Wednesday, soaring sharply higher after their worst ever performance on Christmas Eve. After wobbling at the open the S&P 500 Index, the DowJones and Nasdaq had all recorded significant gains by the end of the day. The Dow added over 1,080 points (4.9%), its biggest points gain in history, the S&P rose 4.9% and the Nasdaq, which has suffered the most in recent falls, closed 5.8% up.

Asia Pacific markets followed Wall Street’s lead with the Nikkei up 3.5% in Tokyo on Thursday lunchtime. In Sydney, the benchmark ASX200 index was up 1.4%.

The Dow and S&P 500 dropped more than 2.5% on Christmas Eve, their worst ever pre-holidays performance. Worries about rising interest rates, Donald Trump’s attacks on the Federal Reserve for raising those rates, a government shutdown and the continuing trade tensions between the US and China have all rattled investors and the major indices were on the brink of a bear market – a 20% fall from their most recent high.

US stock markets have enjoyed a record-breaking run, rising steadily since March 2009, the low point of the financial crisis. And the wider economy appears robust with unemployment low and inflation in check. But despite evidence that the US economy remains robust, this year could still mark the first bear market in close to a decade.

US stocks tumble again after day of record-breaking gains

US stock markets fell again on Thursday after a record-breaking day of gains gave way to selling once again. By lunchtime all the major US markets were in the red, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1.4%, the S&P 500 losing 1.5% and the Nasdaq off 1.9%.

After a series of often wild swings the US stock markets are now on course to end the year in bear market territory – triggered when markets fall 20% from their most recent high. A bear market would be the first in close to a decade.

Michael Antonelli, managing director, institutional sales trading at Robert W Baird in Milwaukee, said he expected more dramatic days aheads. “There’s only two more sessions left before the end of the year. I would expect volatility to reign. It’s dug in like a tick,” he said.

Stocks had fallen for four consecutive days through Monday. Wednesday’s rally – with the Dow adding close to 5% and a record 1,080 points – could have signaled a turning point. Markets closed up in Japan and Australia but European markets sank again on Thursday, with the FTSE closing down 1.5% in London, Germany’s DAX down 2.3% and France’s CAC losing 0.6%

Without Notifying Anyone, ICE Dumps Hundreds of Migrants at El Paso Bus Station Around Christmas

This radical history of the Haitian Revolution was just published after 32 years

A dissertation about slave communication networks in the Caribbean is finally being formally published — 32 years after it was written. Last month, Verso Books published The Common Wind : Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. It’s a radical work by the historian Julius Scott that shows how Haiti became the first country founded by formerly enslaved people.

In academia, The Common Wind is the book of the moment. But Scott actually finished it, as his PhD dissertation, in 1986. “I really didn't quite understand for a long time how much my dissertation was having an impact and an influence,” Scott said. “I saw people would cite it. Books came out where people acknowledged the impact my dissertation had had on the way they thought. It was all kind of a big shock to me.”

In 1986, Scott was a graduate student at Duke University. The Common Wind was his magnum opus, a "history from below” focusing on the disenfranchised rather than the powerful. Specifically, the book details how underground communication networks helped bring about the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, a rebellion in which enslaved people successfully rose up against the French, who had colonized their island as a stop in the Atlantic sugar trade.

The real power broker behind Trump’s shutdown

President Trump's stalemate over border wall funding has been intellectually and emotionally fueled by conservative talking heads like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity. But inside Washington, the real power broker behind the shutdown, whipping enough House opposition to kill any compromise, is the chair of the Freedom Caucus, North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows. Last week, Meadows succeeded in getting 217 of his GOP colleagues to side with Trump in his $5 billion demand for wall funding. But that bill can’t pass the Senate, which wants to give him $1.3 billion for border security — not a wall. ...

“I can tell you: This is not a Freedom Caucus position. This is really a GOP conference position,” Meadows told VICE News after meeting with Trump at the White House over the weekend. “There’s no way we would have gotten this done without moderates and other conservatives supporting the position.” The Republicans lose control of the House in a matter of days, but until then conservative House Republicans led by Meadows see the shutdown as their last, best chance to deliver on a campaign promise to their base, and possibly the make-or-break fight for 2020.

Over the weekend the White House told Democrats they would take $2.1 billion in wall funding, an offer rejected by Democrats. But the fight shows how badly the White House wants something, anything, to show the base they’re serious about the wall.

It’s not even 2019, and Republicans have written at least 17 abortion restrictions for next year

Over the last several weeks, Ohio lawmakers tried to pass one of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, one that would ban the procedure after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, about six weeks into a pregnancy. That's before most women even know they're pregnant. Now, other state legislatures are trying to do the same.

Lawmakers in Kentucky, Missouri, and South Carolina have pre-filed bills for consideration in next year’s legislative session that would also ban abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. In fact, at least 17 bills that would somehow restrict abortion have already been pre-filed or introduced in state legislatures, according to the Guttmacher Institute — even though most legislatures are shut down until 2019. All 17 were proposed in states where Republicans will control both the state legislature and the governorship in 2019.

“Like five, six years ago, you would see pre-files for ‘fetal personhood’ or some kind of abortion ban, and it just wasn’t something that rose to a large concern,” said Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute. “Now, they have traction. People are talking about them. People are organizing for and against them.”

The Guttmacher Institute didn’t maintain a tally of the number of anti-abortion bills pre-filed ahead of the 2018 and 2017 legislative sessions, but newly minted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has utterly transformed the fight over abortion rights. Kavanaugh generally refused to divulge his own beliefs about abortion during his tumultuous confirmation hearings in October. But advocates on both sides of the fight over abortion are confident that, should a case involving an abortion restriction come before the Supreme Court, he’ll cast the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

As Nash put it, “Conservatives are starry-eyed over the potential of Brett Kavanaugh.”

Could Expanding Employee Ownership Be the Next Big Economic Policy?

Two likely Democratic presidential contenders in 2020 have made quiet strides in recent years to bring into vogue a little-known policy that could reduce economic inequality — one that harnesses current law to expand workers’ ability to become owners in their place of employment. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., have worked to advance legislation on employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs, which are retirement vehicles that allow a business owner to sell their company stock to a trust co-owned by the company’s employees. The company typically purchases the owner’s shares with a loan, divides the shares among the staff, and then repays the debt annually with pre-tax payments from the company’s profits. When a worker leaves or retires, the company buys back that worker’s stock at fair market value, giving them a slice of the company’s capital earnings.

A bipartisan group of legislators first took up ESOPs in Congress in 1974, but when that generation of lawmakers retired, their successors did not embrace employee ownership with the same enthusiasm. ... Last year, however, Sanders took up the mantle. He introduced legislation to expand state centers that provide training and technical support for establishing cooperatives and ESOPs, modeled off the successful Vermont Employee Ownership Center in his home state. Gillibrand also signed onto that legislation, which never made it through Congress.

This past summer, for the first time in more than two decades, Congress passed a pro-ESOP piece of legislation. Introduced by Gillibrand in the Senate and Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., in the House, the Main Street Employee Ownership Act makes it easier for small businesses to establish ESOPs and co-ops. It was included in the defense bill that President Donald Trump signed in August. (Another likely 2020 presidential contender, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced legislation this year for a different type of employee ownership. Known as co-determination, it would require companies with revenue over $1 billion to allow workers to elect at least 40 percent of their board of directors.)

Unlike conservatives, who have defended employee ownership on the grounds that it’s most certainly not socialism — indeed, it turns laborers into capitalists — liberals have taken to ESOPs because they strengthen worker power, boost worker income, and increase corporate transparency. Workers, the arguments goes, care as much about their employment as they do about corporate profitability, so they won’t advocate for a strategy that leaves them jobless, even if it is better for the short-term bottom line. “Simply put, when employees have an ownership stake in their company, they will not ship their own jobs to China to increase their profits; they will be more productive, and they will earn a better living,” Sanders said last year.

Some progressives have criticized ESOPs, with the argument that they are little more than tax breaks for corporations that don’t give workers real ownership of a company or a meaningful say in its management. ESOPs can also create tensions with traditional labor unions, as the latter seeks to organize workers, while ESOPs tend to blur the relationship between workers and owners.

The DNC Is Putting Its Thumb on the Scales Again — This Time in the Right Direction

Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez is setting a kind of cover charge to get onstage for the Democratic presidential primary debates, but not just any money will do. In addition to the usual polling metrics required to join the debate, candidates will also have to meet a to-be-determined criteria for “grassroots fundraising.” Including small-dollar fundraising as a necessary element for debate participation would have two effects. First, it incentivizes candidates to invest — strategically, financially, and emotionally — in growing a small-donor base. Second, it will force potential billionaire self-funders like Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and Howard Schultz to demonstrate some level of popular enthusiasm for their campaigns, meaning they can’t just flash their own cash and buy their way onstage. ...

A word of caution before getting too excited about the idea of “grassroots fundraising” being a new standard for whether Democratic Party sanctions candidates: The only way it will be a meaningful metric is if the party defines it as how much of a candidate’s money comes from people donating $200 or less, which is the federal definition of an “unitemized,” or small-dollar, contribution. This dividing line is a useful way to understand the amount of money a candidate can raise from people who don’t necessarily have $200 of disposable income for political contributions, but who still feel compelled to donate.

Of course, candidates try to use a looser definition to make their grassroots support seem more impressive than it actually is, most commonly by touting how many of their contributions came from $200 or less. A candidate can say that 90 percent of their contributions came from small-dollar donors, but that means 90 people contributed $1 each and 10 people contributed $2,700 each, then 99.6 percent of the candidate’s money came from big-dollar donors. That may seem like an extreme example, but take New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 2018 campaign. In his July campaign finance report, eager to blunt the grassroots credentials of challenger Cynthia Nixon, Cuomo touted that 57 percent of his campaign’s contributions came from people giving $250 or less. Seems pretty good, until you look at the money coming from those contributions, which amounts to only 1 percent of Cuomo’s $6 million haul from that reporting period. Sixty-nine of Cuomo’s contributions came from a single individual, almost all in $1 increments — and the donor just happened to be the roommate of a campaign staffer.

In order for the “grassroots fundraising” metric to be meaningful, the DNC must focus on the amount of small-donor money rather than the number of small-donor contributions raised, and even setting the bar as low as 15 or 20 percent of their total cash raised could force candidates to focus on small dollars.

After Back-to-Back Hurricanes, North Carolina Reconsiders Climate Change

After North Carolina was hit by two major hurricanes within two years and flooding rainfall from a third, the state that once spurned the science of sea level rise in its zoning rules is starting to take climate change more seriously. A new governor has a different policy agenda that incorporates the risks from climate change, and polls suggest a growing number of North Carolina residents are concerned about climate change and want policies that help protect them from extreme weather. There are new efforts to get homes and hog-waste lagoons out of floodplains before the next big storm. Gov. Roy Cooper has committed North Carolina to cut its heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2025, consistent with the Paris climate accord. He also instructed state agencies to incorporate climate science into their decision-making, a shift for a state where lawmakers just six years ago passed legislation to prevent North Carolina officials from basing coastal policies on projections of sea level rise.

Some residents hadn't yet recovered from 2016's Hurricane Matthew when Hurricane Florence stalled over the state in September and dumped more than 30 inches of rain. The deluge turned interstates into rivers, made the port city of Wilmington almost an island, and flooded tens of thousands of homes. A few weeks later, the remnants of Hurricane Michael brought even more rain to North Carolina, knocking out power to thousands and causing flooding. North Carolinians are starting to think about extreme weather in new ways, said Geoff Gisler, a Chapel Hill-based attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, which works on coastal protection, clean energy and other issues. "It's something we're seeing not only from the governor's office but also on the ground," Gisler said. "Some folks, maybe five years ago, that were saying that climate change doesn't exist are now realizing when you have several 500- or 1,000-year storms in a couple of years, that's not normal."

In the wake of Florence, Cooper, a Democrat, broke sharply with his predecessor, Republican Pat McCrory, who had downplayed climate change, and issued an executive order aimed at mitigating and adapting to climate change. State agencies must now evaluate climate change effects and integrate mitigation and adaptation into their programs and operations. And a new council will develop a state clean energy plan. ... Republicans still control the North Carolina statehouse, but they no longer have a power-gripping supermajority. Some environmental advocates are more optimistic about action from the state than they have been in years. "We think the executive order is a breakthrough," said Molly Diggins, state director of the Sierra Club. "For the first time, there is a comprehensive structure and framework to discuss these issues."

But politics moves slowly, warned Andrew Coburn, the associate director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. And economic and political pressures will mount to rebuild damaged communities as they were, without recognizing the precarious nature of the state's coast.

After year of deadly wildfires, who will pick up the tab for natural disasters?

As crews continue to sift through the rubble in the aftermath of California’s deadly November fires, another battle is just beginning. Now that the flames have been extinguished, officials are trying to figure out how to pay for the enormous costs – and who will pick up the tab. Thousands are still without housing across the state, hundreds of whom have spent the rainy weeks hunkered down in parking lots, waiting for Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) trailers to arrive, and crews are beginning the long process to remove the toxic debris, a process that costs more than $1,000 a parcel.

In the weeks since the fires were put out, more than $180m in grants and loans have been made available by state and federal agencies to survivors across the state, and more than 24,100 families have applied for federal disaster assistance. The number is likely to be a fraction of what the agencies will spend in the coming years on the disaster. For the 2017 California fires, which were considered the most destructive on record until this year, Fema allocated roughly $1.4bn – and is still paying. ...

But as climate-driven disasters across the US grow in number and intensity, putting a strain on resources available for both preparedness and response, the federal government may be increasingly absent in financing the recovery for future fires. For the last eight years, California’s department of forestry and fire protection has had to take millions more out of the state’s emergency fund to put out the worsening wildfires – and expenditures have gone from $90m in 2010 to more than $947m in the last season. Federal fire suppression costs have increased just as sharply, with more than a 562% jump over the last 20 years.

But even though more is spent on stifling the flames, fires continue to become more destructive – and accordingly, recovery has become more pricey. Seven of the top 10 most destructive wildfires on record in the state have occurred in the last two years. And this year alone, more than 6,200 fires burned through 876,200 acres –nearly triple the five-year average. ...

The US Government Accountability Office has cited the disasters as a “key source of federal fiscal exposure” that will continue to worsen with climate change, and the federal government has been looking for ways to redistribute the financial burden. States and localities may soon be increasingly on their own to finance the recovery.

Australia's extreme heatwave spans five states with high of 49C forecast

Australia’s post-Christmas heatwave continues to sweep across the country, with a near record-breaking 49C forecast for Western Australia, and fire danger, health and air quality warnings issued across the nation.

On Thursday morning, the bureau of meteorology forecast a scorching 49C maximum for Marble Bar and Pannawonica in the Pilbara region of WA – only 2 degrees below the highest temperature ever recorded in Australia, which is 50.7C at South Australia’s Oodnadatta airport in 1960. ...

On Thursday NSW Health issued an air quality warning for Sydney as ozone levels began to rise with the extreme heat. NSW Health’s executive director, Jeremy McAnulty, said ozone exposure irritated the lungs, so people with asthma and other sensitivities should take extra care. Severe to extreme fire danger warnings have also been issued for large parts of WA, SA and Victoria. And, according to the bureau’s latest forecasts, there is no end to the heatwave in sight.

Also of Interest

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

Two Medicare for All Plans: HR676 and S1804

Could This Be Our Best Hope of Removing Trump From Office?

Resistance to US laws censoring criticism of Israel goes mainstream

'Gifts for fascist friends': Mussolini's calendar comeback

Corporate Democrats Are Already Punching Left Ahead of 2020

Ultra-Deep Life Forms May Survive Climate Change, Even If We Don't

U.S. border wall no match for Mexican girl's Santa wish list

hat tip azazello:

The Steele Dossier and the perils of political insurance policies

Notes On The Withdrawals

In the Valley of Fear

A Little Night Music

Don and Dewey - Justine!

Don & Dewey - Farmer John

Don & Dewey - Big Boy Pete

Don & Dewey - Bim Bam

Don and Dewey - My Heart Is Aching

Don & Dewey - A Little Love

Don & Dewey - Jungle Hop

Don & Dewey - Soul Motion

Don & Dewey - The Letter

Don & Dewey - Leavin' It All Up To You

Don & Dewey - Sweet Talk