Supply Side Economics Hasn't Worked As Promised

Unfortunate Trending

Authoritarian Politics in the age of Social Illiteracy - Henry Giroux at Tikkun

"The emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations." - Chris Hedges

Our cultural illiteracy is our inability to act from a position of thoughtfulness, informed judgment, and critical agency. It is a social formation that extends from the mainstream broadcast media and Internet to a print culture, all of which embrace the spectacle of violence, legitimate opinions over facts, and revel in a celebrity and consumer culture of ignorance and theatrics.

Literacy is now regarded with disdain, words are reduced to data, and science is confused with pseudo-science. Thinking is now regarded as an act of stupidity, and ignorance a virtue.

Chris Hedges is right in stating that “the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idiom of mass culture.”

Words such as love, trust, freedom, responsibility, and choice have been deformed by a market logic that narrows their meaning to either a relationship to a commodity or a reductive notion of self-interest.

We don’t love each other, we love our new car. Freedom now means removing one’s self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-indulgence.

This has been a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives.

The full article is available here

Album Review: Bob Mould - Patch The Sky - AV Club

Bob Mould is undeniably in the midst of a ferocious late-career tear. 

Bob Mould might have been having a self-deprecating chuckle at himself when he named his 2012 record Silver Age, but the alternative-rock torchbearer is undeniably in the midst of a ferocious late-career tear.

Having explored subtler, more experimental musical terrain through most of the 2000s, his recent run alongside drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Jason Narducy has been nothing short of pure guitar-rock TNT.

At 55, Mould has come full circle, returning to his love for massively melodic alt-punk, and his music continues to undercut his age by a sizable margin.

His third record in almost as many years employs the same muscular sonic approach of Silver Age and 2014’s Beauty And Ruin, but it also doubles down on the emotional angst. In true Bob Mould fashion, the record’s most kinetic moments come when sound and subject matter crash head-on. When he contemplates the end of the world on “The End Of Things,” Narducy and Wurster are there to give noisy support to his vision. The same goes for the riff-heavy “Daddy’s Favorite” and the sub-two-minute screamer “Hands Are Tied.”

More than 35 years into the game, Mould is still hard at work on the tense, dynamic soundscapes some would argue he perfected long ago. But it’s his refusal to rest on his laurels that still makes his songs worth the listen. It’s fair to wonder how many more runs through the alternative-rock mill one guy will get, but if Patch The Sky is any indication, Mould’s still a long way away from being on the clock.

The full article is available here

Not In Trump’s List Of Charitable Giving: Own Personal Cash - Washington Post

His giving appears narrowly tied to his business and, now, his political interests.  

Since the first day of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has said that he gave more than $102 million to charity in the past five years.

To back up that claim, Trump’s campaign compiled a list of his contributions — 4,844 of them, filling 93 pages.  But, in that massive list, one thing was missing.

Not a single one of those donations was actually a personal gift of Trump’s own money.

Many of the gifts on the list came from the charity that bears his name, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which didn’t receive a personal check from Trump from 2009 through 2014, according to the most recent public tax filings. Its work is largely funded by others, although Trump decides where the gifts go.

His giving appears narrowly tied to his business and, now, his political interests.  

His foundation, for example, frequently gave money to groups that paid to use Trump’s facilities, and it donated to conservatives who could help promote Trump’s rise in the Republican Party. 

The foundation’s second-biggest donation described on the campaign’s list went to the charity of a man who had settled a lawsuit with one of Trump’s golf courses after being denied a hole-in-one prize.

The full article is available here

Some Perspective On Islamic Extremism - The Other 98%

Some History on Nominating Justices In Election Year

Similar SJC Appointment Situation in 1988

A Mob = Insecurity Shouting To Cover Fears - Parker Palmer

Congress Honors Selma Marchers, Won't Restore Voting Rights Act - Southern Poverty Law Center

Debunking Voter Fraud Myth - Southern Poverty Law Center

It’s the year 2016!! How can someone like Donald Trump be gaining the support of so many people?!? - Jeff Wiersma

This is the $1 million question lately, isn’t it?

We’ve progressed as a society beyond some dark chapters in our history; periods of virulent of xenophobia, nativism, segregation, and the hatred and violence of the KKK.

Yet, how is possible that in the year 2016, someone like Donald Trump, who has refused to disavow the support of White Supremacists and has no problem being associated with quotes by Fascist dictators, be winning presidential primaries?!?

This is in addition to his vile misogyny towards Fox News reporter Megan Kelly, his mocking of a man with disabilities, his racist characterization of Mexican immigrants and Latin American refugees, and all kinds of other manifestations of demagoguery and fear-mongering.

In her 2012 book Christianity After Religion, author Diana Butler Bass nicely summed up how eras of awakening and progress can swing culture in two different directions; in one direction, those who are trying to move into the future and in the other, a counter-awakening backlash of people who are very afraid and are trying to reinstate what they knew in the past.

“The world is currently in the throes an awakening; a larger cultural event where the whole of a society or group of people become changed, transformed, reoriented toward something new. 

For an awakening to happen, old institutions have to go away. I think you can look at the first decade of the 21st century and see that there has been a massive failure of religious, social and governmental institutions. 

When you have this kind of institutional collapse and large groups of people who are demanding a different kind of society and moving out, taking risks toward an unknown future—that’s actually going to terrify a large number of people who are happy with the way things have been. 

On one hand, you get movement toward the future, with people taking risks; you get people who are willing to engage new ideas. On the other hand, you get a counter-awakening movement; you get people who are very afraid and are trying to reinstate what they knew in the past. 

I think that both of these parts of the pattern of awakening are clearly visible in our culture. When I see people stepping outside of the accepted boundaries, and then I see the people, who are what I would call “the old lights,” I think, ‘Well, that’s a pretty typical pattern in the midst of cultural change.’ It helps me to say, ‘Okay, this is really where we are. We can expect this kind of counter-movement.’ 

There’s a reason for the phrase, ‘It’s darkest before the dawn.’ So often in American history the greatest movements toward social justice and greater democracy only happened in the wake of the very dark chapters in history that preceded them. 

In American history you get, at the very same time, the unfolding of the progressive movement and the strongest expression of the Ku Klux Klan at the beginning of the 20th century. What we know 100 years later is that the progressive movement actually won in that era. People turned around and said, ‘We don’t want to go there. That’s really bad.’ Sure enough, counter-movements ebbed away and [Progressivism] became the dominant story of American culture.

I’m hoping we’re in a moment of that kind, and I hope we get there quickly, because I don’t like it when people get hurt. That’s what happens with these backlash movements. They can express themselves in violence. And that kind of violence also does harm to the people who are in the mode of the fearful—it’s a devastating cultural moment."

Bernie's Ideas Are Actually Quite Normal - Benjamin L Corey at Patheos

I believe a solid portion of the population is waking up to the reality that the hyper-individualistic system we were born into is actually what’s dangerous and extreme.

I can’t help but comment on the phenomenon of Bernie Sanders in American culture.

Some people love him, and others appear outright frightened by his ideas.

I think what most interests me however, is the misconception that Bernie Sanders and his ideas are somehow radical or extreme. There’s nothing radical or extreme about these kinds of ideas in America today.

A wide range of Americans share Bernie Sanders’ concerns and his ideas, without finding them radical or extreme. In fact, I believe a solid portion of the population is waking up to the reality that the hyper-individualistic system we were born into is actually what’s dangerous and extreme.

And more than being dangerous and extreme, I believe the average person is beginning to view the current system as being fundamentally unfair.

When I listen to the ideas of Senator Sanders, I find less and less of his ideas to be radical. Instead, his ideas seem to represent the hopes and concerns of most of the people I know in real life.

The full article is available here

Fact Check: 'New American Way Of Life' Meme - Snopes

As is often the case with e-mail polemics focused on purported welfare abuse and taxpayer outrage, the "New American Way of Life" offers an implausible, far-fetched scenario to condemn those who use public assistance to make ends meet.

A "New American Way of Life" scamming scheme that laments a generous welfare state in America is largely off-base.

While this trope asserts that the complex welfare hustling plan described here is "perfectly legal," several aspects of it involve defrauding the system in an expressly prohibited (and largely criminal) fashion.

Were any family to hide assets or lie about household income on application forms, they would be subject to severe penalties and prosecution should their perfidy be unraveled. The scheme also rests upon the (fallacious) notion that access to assistance programs is easy to both maintain and retain.

As is often the case with e-mail polemics focused on purported welfare abuse and taxpayeroutrage, the "New American Way of Life" offers an implausible, far-fetched scenario to condemn those who use public assistance to make ends meet.

The full article is available here

Flint Water Tragedy: Running Government Like Business & Austerity - Jeremy Mohler in Common Dreams

The tragedy in Flint is a symptom of a larger shift in American political economy. Today, it is normal to blame government deficits for society’s problems, and to scoff at raising government revenues to fund much-needed investments in critical infrastructure and social programs.

In February 2015, almost a full year before the news of widespread lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, gained headlines, the world’s largest private water corporation, Veolia, deemed Flint’s water safe.

They were hired by the city to assess the discolored water that many residents had been complaining about—a General Motors plant had even stopped using Flint’s water because it was rusting car parts.

Running government like a business is to blame. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is a former corporate executive and venture capitalist with little government experience prior to being governor. Snyder talks about “outcomes” and “deliverables,” calls residents “customers,” and has sought to “reinvent” Michigan to make it business-friendly.

The ethos of austerity is also to blame. The tragedy in Flint is a symptom of a larger shift in American political economy. Today, it is normal to blame government deficits for society’s problems, and to scoff at raising government revenues (taxes) to fund much-needed investments in critical infrastructure and social programs.

The resulting philosophy is: markets good; government spending bad. Which really means: market competition, which favors the already powerful, good; democracy, which has the potential to help everyone, bad.

The full article is available here

Background Checks - Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence

The problem isn’t that background checks don’t thwart bad guys — in fact, they’ve stopped 2.4 million gun purchases by prohibited persons so far. It’s that loopholes in the system make it easy for criminals to acquire firearms through unregulated transactions. #ENOUGH

Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

The Tragedy of Trumped-Up Solutions - Marcia Pally

It’s exactly when the problems are complex and daunting that quick fixes have their special lure.

People don’t like feeling daunted. They want to feel effective. But the average U.S. citizen has had a rough go of it since 1980, thanks to economic policy that has cut the legs out from the middle class. Additionally, we were led into two unwinnable, intractable wars that didn't lead to the triumph promised by those who started them.

It’s exactly when the problems are complex and daunting that quick fixes have their special lure.

Predictably, the demagogues who hawk these quick fixes targets people that are already a bit illicit, “other” and alien. The usual “usual suspects”: those of different religion, race or sexuality — the Jews, blacks, immigrants, homosexuals. People who aren’t “people like us.” We “sense” they’re trouble.

So when we’re told that they are the source of present troubles, it “clicks.” It feels right. Throw the bastards out.

Trouble is, quick fixes don’t solve complex problems. Banning Muslims from America or indulging in religious vigilantism won’t address whatever is pushing people to terrorism. But it just might recruit a few more to ISIS’ cause.

Hidden Costs Of Hunger We All Pay - Bread For The World

Consistently high levels of hunger and food insecurity have cost the U.S. healthcare system close to a $1 trillion since 2008 alone.

The real costs of hunger are hidden. One major hiding place is the healthcare system. Bread for the World Institute’s 2016 Hunger Report, The Nourishing Effect: Ending Hunger, Improving Health, Reducing Inequality—which was released November 23—shows that in 2014 alone, using very conservative figures, hunger and food insecurity added $160 billion to our national healthcare costs.

The old adage “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” has never been more on the money.

America’s food-insecurity levels are shockingly high. Each year since 2008, the number of food-insecure people has been stuck between 48 and 50 million. Such consistently high levels of hunger and food insecurity have cost the U.S. healthcare system close to a $1 trillion since 2008 alone.

Food insecurity is associated with higher rates of asthma, depression, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and other physical and mental health problems. People who are food-insecure are more likely to be in poor health, and, in a vicious cycle, poor health increases the risk of being food-insecure.

Food insecurity in childhood is a predictor of chronic illness in adulthood. It’s also an inter-generational problem, since parents in poor health may not be able to earn enough income to provide the nutritious food their growing children need.

The full article is available here

Armistice Day - Veterans For Peace

War On Terrorism? Howard Zinn

Democratic National Committee Reverses Ban On Corporate Cash To Fund Convention - Deidre Fulton at Common Dreams

The Democratic National Committee is luring corporate lobbyists with VIP rewards.

Reversing a previous position that sought to limit corporate influence in politics, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is sweetening the pot for lobbyists and political action committees (PACs) that donate toward next year's nominating convention in Philadelphia.

According to documents seen by The Hill, those who give donations and bundled cash could see returns ranging from "preferred booking in a premiere hotel" to a photo-op at the official convention podium to VIP access to "the official Host Committee celebration, featuring celebrities and other luminaries, live music, and catering by Philadelphia's most recognized chefs."

People present at the meeting reported spotting representatives from firms that lobby for the energy, banking, and insurance industries—and critics were quick to lambaste the latest evidence of cozy ties between the Democratic Party and K Street.

The Committee announced this summer that it would lift the ban on donations from PACs and lobbyists for it convention fundraising but would "continue its policy of not accepting donations from political action committees and lobbyists for its general fundraising operations"—at least for now.

Welfare Myths Debunked - Manny Schewitz

If we are going to place the blame for the increasing need for public assistance on anyone, let us place it where it rightfully belongs; on the corporations who rely on low wages and public subsidies – and the politicians they have in their pockets.

Despite food stamps and other assistance programs being a relatively small part of the federal budget, welfare recipients are a favorite target for many GOP and far-right politicians. Over the years since Reagan painted the racial stereotype of the Welfare Queen, they’ve used this repeatedly to convince far too many voters that if you’re poor, you deserve it because you’re lazy, or a minority.

Myth #1 - "Illegal immigrants receive food stamps"
If you’re an undocumented immigrant, you do not qualify for food stamps, plain and simple. If you are a documented immigrant, you still have to wait 5 years before you qualify.

Myth #2 - The "Welfare Queen"
This is a not-so-subtle racial card played repeatedly to convince poor whites - who receive government assistance - to vote against their own best interests. It paints a stereotypical image of a single, black woman with multiple children, an iPhone, and an EBT card loading up the back of an Escalade with fancy cuts of meat and cases of soda – allegedly purchased on your hard-earned tax dollars. The fact is that when you break down welfare statistics, the number of whites versus blacks who receive public assistance is almost equal.

Myth #3 - Obama Is The "Food Stamp President"
It’s a trend that started before he took office due to a combination of the recession, the fact that corporations continue to avoid hiring despite record profits, and that the minimum wage hasn’t kept up to the rate of inflation. In other words, it’s a cheap, easy accusation that flies well with those who hated the guy to begin with – and have no idea how the economy works.

Myth #4 - "Only Lazy People Get Welfare"
Almost $104 million dollars worth of food stamps were used at military commissaries in 2013. These are some of the hardest working people in the United States, and they still need food stamps to get by. In addition, nearly 1 million veterans receive food stamps as well. While there are certainly some who spend a lifetime on public assistance, they are the exception, not the rule.

Myth #5 - "Welfare Is Too Expensive"
The average SNAP benefit is slightly less than $134 per person monthly and if you are an able-bodied adult, you only get to be on it for 3 months. Meanwhile those who use these purposefully misleading talking points defend wasteful military spending and corporate welfare that dwarf what is spent on public assistance.

If we are going to place the blame for the increasing need for public assistance on anyone, let us place it where it rightfully belongs. It isn’t on welfare recipients, but it is firmly on the corporations who rely on low wages and public subsidies – and the politicians they have in their pockets.

The full article is available here

The Secrets Are Out on Drones - Amnesty International

According to the documents, during one five-month stretch, 90% of those whom the U.S. government killed by drone strike were unintended targets.

Today, The Intercept published a series of articles allegedly based on leaked documents that expose the inner workings of the lethal drone program. While we are not in a position to independently verify them, they underscore the Obama administration’s long-standing failure to bring transparency to the drones program.

1. There's new evidence that aspects of drone program may be unlawful. International law requires that lethal force be used outside of specific recognized zones of armed conflict only when it is strictly unavoidable to prevent an imminent threat to life. The leaks show that after strikes are approved, there is a 60-day window for them to be carried out. It is difficult to imagine a truly imminent threat that lasts for two months.

2. There's now even more cause for concern about identity of those killed in strikes. If confirmed, the Intercept’s revelations paint an alarming picture. According to the documents, during one five-month stretch, 90 percent of those whom the U.S. government killed by drone strike were unintended targets.

The documents also show that those killed by strikes are considered an “enemy killed in action” even if they were not the intended target, unless evidence emerges after their death to prove otherwise. This is completely inconsistent with the administration’s policy guidelines, announced in May 2013, stating that drone strikes will only occur with “near certainty” that there will be no civilian casualties.

3. This sort of info is the type of transparency Obama says he supports.  The Obama administration must own what that the article reveals: a lethal drone program responsible for apparently unintended killings, and which appears to operate outside the established international legal norms.

Today’s articles show that the “global war on terror” did not end with the George W. Bush administration. Instead, under the auspices of the wide-ranging 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the Obama administration continues in many ways to to operate as if the entire world is a battlefield. An endless war paradigm persists, and drones are its new soldiers.

The full article is available here

SWAT & Combat Veterans Debunk NRA's "Good Guys With Guns" - Travis Gettys

“I think there’s this fantasy world of gunplay in the movies, but it doesn’t really happen that way,” said retired Army Sgt. Rafael Noboa y Rivera.

The NRA’s chief spokesman, Wayne LaPierre, infamously claimed following the Sandy Hook child massacre that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” — but many combat vets say that’s ridiculous.

Attempts by improperly trained civilians become even more dangerous when guns are introduced — as recent cases in Michigan, where a woman opened fire on suspected shoplifters, and Texas, where a passerby accidentally shot the carjacking victim he was trying to help.

The essential lie embedded in LaPierre’s claim — which many gun owners have swallowed whole — is that intentions make any difference whatsoever in a gun battle.

Experts say that’s just not enough to teach gun owners when to shoot and when to hold their fire, how to overcome tunnel vision, and how to determine which combatants are “good guys.”

“The notion that you have a seal of approval just because you’re not a criminal — that you walk into a gun store and you’re ready for game day — is ridiculous,” said David Chipman, an agent and former SWAT team member with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“Despite what we see on TV, the presence of a firearm is a greater risk, especially in the hands of an untrained person," said Chipman.

The full article is available here

Myth Of The Good Guy With A Gun - Matt Valentine

A predictable gun lobby talking point in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting is that "mass shootings occur where guns are banned" and that "if someone had a gun they could have prevented the shooting." In fact, Umpqua Community College (where the most recent mass shooting took place) itself wasn’t a gun-free zone.  John Parker Jr., an Umpqua student and Air Force veteran, told multiple media outlets that he was armed and on campus at the time of the attack last week.  

It’s an intuitive and appealing idea—that a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun. We can imagine it. We see it in movies. And yet it rarely plays out as envisioned.

A predictable gun lobby talking point in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting is that "mass shootings occur where guns are banned" and that "if someone had a gun they could have prevented the shooting."

However, the FBI tells us that active-shooter scenarios occur in all sorts of environments where guns are allowed—homes, businesses, outdoor spaces.

The canard of the armed civilian mass-shooting hero is perpetuated by exaggerations and half-truths.  Since many of these shooters intend to die, either by their own hand or by police, armed security does not seem to be a deterrent.  There was an armed guard at Columbine.  There were armed campus police at Virginia Tech.

In fact, Umpqua Community College (where the most recent mass shooting took place) itself wasn’t a gun-free zone. Oregon is one of seven states that allow guns on college campuses—the consequence of a 2011 court decision that overturned a longstanding ban.

John Parker Jr., an Umpqua student and Air Force veteran, told multiple media outlets that he was armed and on campus at the time of the attack last week.

Other factors besides the presence of guns may factor into targets that mass shooters select.  Places like schools, theaters and churches are place where a lot of people gather in a small space with limited means of exit/escape.

The full article is available here

The Right's 2nd Amendment Misinterpretation - Robert Parry in Common Dreams

President George Washington,
as Commander-in-Chief,
leading a combined force of
state militias against the
Whiskey Rebellion in 1794.

The Right promotes a false historical narrative that postulates that Washington, Madison and other Framers would have wanted a highly armed population to commit what the Constitution defined as treason against the United States.

Right-wing resistance to meaningful gun control is driven, in part, by a false notion that America’s Founders adopted the Second Amendment because they wanted an armed population that could battle the U.S. government. The opposite is the truth, but many Americans seem to have embraced this absurd, anti-historical narrative.

The reality was that the Framers wrote the Constitution and added the Second Amendment with the goal of creating a strong central government with a citizens-based military force capable of putting down insurrections, not to enable or encourage uprisings. The key Framers, after all, were mostly men of means with a huge stake in an orderly society, the likes of George Washington and James Madison.

Right-wing gun advocates have evaded that obvious reality by postulating that Washington, Madison and other Framers would have wanted a highly armed population to commit what the Constitution defined as treason against the United States.

The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 weren’t precursors to France’s Robespierre or Russia’s Leon Trotsky, believers in perpetual revolutions. In fact, their work on the Constitution was influenced by the experience of Shays’ Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786, a populist uprising that the weak federal government, under the Articles of Confederation, lacked an army to defeat.

The Second Amendment reads: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Contrary to some current right-wing fantasies about the Framers wanting to encourage popular uprisings over grievances, the language of the amendment is clearly aimed at maintaining order within the country.

It would be counter-intuitive – as well as anti-historical – to believe that Madison and Washington wanted to arm the population so the discontented could resist the constitutionally elected government. In reality, the Framers wanted to arm the people – at least the white males – so uprisings, whether economic clashes like Shays’ Rebellion, anti-tax protests like the Whiskey Rebellion, attacks by Native Americans or slave revolts, could be repulsed.

The full article is available here

Hundreds Gather At Louisville Mosque To Paint Over Hateful Graffiti - Antonia Blumberg in Huff Po

"Everyone is working together and in unison and that's the true spirit of the city and its residents."

Nearly 1,000 people showed up at the Islamic Center of Louisville, Kentucky, on Friday to paint over anti-Muslim graffiti that appeared Wednesday night, according to a center director.

Representatives from all major faith groups and congregations were there to show support, along with students from private, public and Catholic schools, Ozair Shariff, a board of directors member, told The Huffington Post.

"I think it's very apparent that whatever the intended message the perpetrator had, it certainly backfired," Shariff said. "Everyone is working together and in unison and that's the true spirit of the city and its residents."

After Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, the mosque president and other faith and community leaders made brief comments, volunteers took turns painting brush strokes over the messages that read, "this is for France" and "Moslems leave the Jews alone." Supplies for the painting were donated by local residents and organizations, Shariff said.

Matt Goldberg, development director of the Jewish Community of Louisville, joined the cleanup crew, along with more than 100 volunteers from the Jewish community.

The full article is available here

Exxon Knew Fossil Fuel's Role in Global Warming in 1977 - Climate News

It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.

At a meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.

"In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxon's Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.

It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.

Exxon responded swiftly. Within months the company launched its own extraordinary research into carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and its impact on the earth. Exxon's ambitious program included both empirical CO2 sampling and rigorous climate modeling. It assembled a brain trust that would spend more than a decade deepening the company's understanding of an environmental problem that posed an existential threat to the oil business.

Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day.

The full article is available here

Donald Trump and the Ghost of Totalitarianism - Rabbi Michael Lerner in Tikkun Magazine

Identifying Trump as a fascist is accurate, but not enough. What is necessary are analyses in which the seeds of totalitarianism are made visible in Trump’s discourse and policy measures.

In the current historical moment in the United States, the emptying out of language is nourished by the assault on the civic imagination.

A resurrection of historical memory in this moment could provide important lessons regarding the present crisis, particularly the long tradition of racism, white supremacy, exceptionalism, war mongering, and the extended wars on youth, women, and immigrants.

Identifying Trump as a fascist is accurate, but not enough. What is necessary are analyses in which the seeds of totalitarianism are made visible in Trump’s discourse and policy measures.

A new thoughtlessness drapes the U.S. public in the abyss of ignorance, infantilism, consumerism, militarism, and environmental stupidity.  Against this, there is a need to create those pedagogical spaces in which shared faith in justice replaces the shared fears of precarity, hatred of the other, and a fear of the demands of justice.

Against the savage brutalism of the new totalitarianism, there is a need to develop new discourses, vocabularies, values, desires, and a sense of spirituality that brings people together around a need for critique, passion for justice, and a desire for new modes of collective resistance and struggle.

We may be in the midst of “dark times” but the light of hope is never far off and while it offers no guarantees, it posits the possibility of a future that will not mimic the horrors of the past and present.

The full article is available here

The Opposite of Poverty - Bryan Stevenson

Drone Victim Family to Obama: "What's The Value of Innocent Life?" - Common Dreams

Seeking official apology, Faisal bin Ali Jaber says, 'Imagine that your loved one was wrongly killed by the U.S. government. Imagine they would not even admit their role in the death of your family members.'

The family of two U.S. drone victims is refusing to keep their pain silent as they seek an official apology by U.S. President Barack Obama for the deaths of their kin.

In a CNN op-ed published on Friday, Faisal bin Ali Jaber, a Yemeni civil engineer, issued a public challenge to the U.S. leader—who recently made public statements about the deaths of two westerners killed by U.S. drone strikes, but has refused to acknowledge Yemeni civilian casualties.

"What is the value of a human life?" Jaber asks.

In the column, Jaber describes how following the August 2012 strike that killed Waleed and Salem bin Ali Jaber, the family had to identify them "from their clothes and scraps of matted hair."

And how in the wake of the strike, while the family awaited an official apology, they were instead presented with "$100,000 in sequentially-marked U.S. dollars in a plastic bag."

Jaber writes: "A Yemeni security service official was given the unpleasant task of handing this over. I looked him in the eye and asked how this was acceptable, and whether he would admit the money came from America. He shrugged and said: 'Can't tell you. Take the money.'"

"The secret payment to my family represents a fraction of the cost of the operation that killed them," he continues. "This seems to be the Obama administration's cold calculation: Yemeni lives are cheap. They cost the President no political or moral capital."
The full article is available here

Pope Francis: Financialized Economy Is Main Cause of Poverty

Why Is TPP So Hard For Obama To Sell? Stan Sorscher in Common Dreams

We have accumulated over $10 trillion in goods trade deficits since NAFTA. Our lived experience tells us the 99% are getting burned by our trade policy, while global companies are doing great.

Barack Obama is cool and personable -- no-drama Obama. Then suddenly, he scolds critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his NAFTA-style trade deal. He accuses them of being "wrong," unable to look at the facts, fighting the last war and confusing this new improved trade deal with NAFTA.

The Trans Pacific Partnership critics are right. They are looking straight at the facts. The critics know exactly what a good trade policy would look like, and it's nothing like NAFTA or TPP.

So what's wrong with TPP?

Will TPP create jobs?   No. Economic models predict a tiny increase in GDP from TPP. Globally, tariffs are already low. That deal is done. In the past, these same models have been wildly optimistic, so when they predict "no gain," that says a lot.

We can't walk away from trade.   We are told that 95 percent of the consumers in the world are outside the US. That's a big scary number. On the other hand, that number for Belgium is 99.8 percent, and Belgium is still OK.

Is TPP a secret?  President Obama says TPP is not a secret. Any member of Congress can look at it. .... as long as they don't take notes -- no pictures, no copies and they can't discuss what they see. However, if Senator Elizabeth Warren tells her constituents about TPP's language protecting corporations, she would be violating national security secrecy laws!  Ridiculous.

Exports go up.  Exports go up. Of course, imports go up faster.

What have we learned from NAFTA?  The labor and environmental standards are so ineffective that a country as violent as Colombia can get a trade deal with favorable access to our country, while hundreds of labor activists are killed for speaking up for workers. Our US Trade Representative is struggling to decide if murders are a violation of the labor protections in previous agreements.

Will TPP set higher new standards?  Not the way we might hope. Hundreds of corporate lobbyists are actively involved in the negotiating process. TPP will produce very favorable terms for global investors and global companies.

We have accumulated over $10 trillion in goods trade deficits since NAFTA. Our lived experience tells us the 99% are getting burned by our trade policy, while global companies are doing great.

The full article is available here

Happy Radical Mother's Day - Diana Butler Bass

Mother's Day honors a progressive feminist, inclusive, non-violent vision for world community.

At first glance, Mother's Day appears a quaint holiday, a sort of greeting card moment, honoring 1950s values, a historical throw back to old-fashioned notions of hearth and home.  However the story of it's founding is decidedly less Hallmark.

Beginning the late 1800's, radical Protestant women had been agitating for a national Mother's Day hoping that it would further a progressive political agenda that favored issues related to women's lives.

The original Mother’s Day Proclamation was made in 1870. Written by Julia Ward Howe, it was an impassioned call for peace and disarmament.

In May 1907, Anna Jarvis, a member of a Methodist congregation in Grafton, West Virginia, passed out 500 white carnations in church to commemorate the life of her mother -  Anna Reeves Jarvis, who had died in 1905. Although now largely forgotten, Anna Reeves Jarvis was a social activist and community organizer

In 1858, she had organized poor women in Virginia into "Mothers' Work Day Clubs" to raise the issue of clean water and sanitation in relation to the lives of women and children. She also worked for universal access to medicine for the poor. Reeves Jarvis was also a pacifist who served both sides in the Civil War by working for camp sanitation and medical care for soldiers of the North and the South.

In the early 1900's, many progressive and liberal Christian organizations -- like the YMCA and the World Sunday School Association -- picked up the cause and lobbied Congress to make Mother's Day a national holiday.

Although I've never seen it on a pastel flowered greeting card, Mother's Day honors a progressive feminist, inclusive, non-violent vision for world community.

The full article is available here

Agency Overseeing Obama Trade Deal Filled With Former Trade Lobbyists

 

#notpp There's no such thing as free trade. Corporations go around bottom feeding at the expense of the working class. Another sad example of the lobbyist revolving door

CD Review: Before We Get Buried - Emergency Broadcast

Based on the six tunes on Emergency Broadcast, the future certainly looks bright for Before We Get Buried. 

Hailing from Austria, Before We Get Buried plays intricate yet accessible metal core reminiscent of bands like Shai Hulud, As I Lay Dying and Zao. Though their influences are recognizeable, these Austrian gents aren't derivative. Their songs are well-constructed, creative and adeptly arranged.

 Their latest EP, Emergency Broadcast, is now available on Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify and Deezer. It features 6 songs that flawlessly navigate the transitions between sung and screamed vocals. While countless mediocre metal core bands do one or either ok but the other poorly, Before We Get Buried are clearly songwriters, not clumsy song section compilers.

Further, vocalist Stefan Jakober is not a one-trick pony on the screamed vocals; showing terrific range from guttural lows to piercing highs that perfectly suit the song's needs. Lyrically, Before We Get Buried deal with themes like the quest for truth and meaning, the frustrations of imperfect relationships and stubborn hope in the midst of dark times.

The opening track Epiphany is a great choice to get things started. It features guest vocals by Ricky Amellino. The two singers weave their parts together well while the band alternately rocks and pummels. Next up is Truth and Other Rumors, which begins methodically with some nice guitar interplay.

The workman-like chugging continues on A Southern Cry. Dining on Ashes features another guest singer, Richard Sjunnesson, whose vocals also nicely compliment Jakober's. It begins at break neck speed, then instantly jolts into thunderous riffing. It finishes off with a nice acoustic picking part.  

The 5th track Burnt and Built (see embedded Soundcloud player below) is my personal favorite from the EP. It features some tasty dissonant riffing with complementary climbing and falling lead guitar. Midway through, the band hammers you over the head with an intense breakdown while Jakober howls, "I am my own god and I hate it. I am my own god, it makes me so sick." That section is sure to inspire pile-ons and mosh mania when played live.

The closing track Copenhagen is the heaviest on the EP, seething with down tuned muscle and bristling with righteous fury. The tune shows Before We Get Buried exploring new sonic territory and is a sign of good things to come.

Based on the six tunes on Emergency Broadcast, the future certainly looks bright for Before We Get Buried. On their own, they've produced a stand out EP that I found myself giving repeated listens, which for me is always the litmus test for new music.

You can follow the band on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/BeforeWeGetBuried) and find them online at http://www.beforewegetburied.com.

Reforming Money and Banking: Keys to Debt and Jubilee - Tikkun Magazine

A moral component is currently lacking in all platforms in high-frequency trading, derivatives, and dark pools in today’s electronic global financial casino.

The structural instabilities of laissez-faire, market-dominated societies became abundantly apparent during the widespread financial crises and debt-driven credit meltdown on Wall Street in 2008. Instead of addressing these instabilities at their root, however, many governments shredded safety nets, cut jobs, and imposed misguided “austerity” programs.

Clearly we need to explore new options. The movement for Jubilee is pragmatic since history proves that as borrowed money flows upward to the lenders, debts become unrepayable.

As in the game of monopoly, the upward accumulation of money, power, and information inevitably ends in “game over.” The calls for Jubilee are a way to restart the game. They also reintroduce the moral component missing from economic textbooks and mathematical models, which have been raised to dangerous levels of abstraction in artificial intelligence and computerized, algorithm-based trading.

A moral component is currently lacking in all platforms in high-frequency trading, derivatives, and dark pools in today’s electronic global financial casino. Ironically, these new platforms were all made possible by taxpayers through their subsidization of communications technologies, satellites, the internet, and financial infrastructure, as documented in The Entrepreneurial State (2013).

The full article is available here

13 Year Old Yemen Boy Who Feared Drones Killed in CIA Strike - Common Dreams

"In their eyes, we don’t deserve to live like people in the rest of the world,' said the victim ahead of his ultimate death, 'and we don’t have feelings or emotions or cry or feel pain like all the other humans around the world."

Just weeks after speaking with western journalists about his pervasive fear of the U.S. drones flying overhead in his home country of Yemen, 13-year-old Mohammed Tuaiman was reportedly killed in a CIA-directed bombing on January 26.

His family vows that it will demand justice for Mohammed and insists, "He wasn’t a member of al-Qaida. He was a kid."

When the Guardian interviewed Mohammed last September, he spoke of his anger towards the U.S. government for killing his father. "They tell us that these drones come from bases in Saudi Arabia and also from bases in the Yemeni seas and America sends them to kill terrorists, but they always kill innocent people. But we don’t know why they are killing us."

"In their eyes, we don’t deserve to live like people in the rest of the world,' said the victim ahead of his ultimate death, 'and we don’t have feelings or emotions or cry or feel pain like all the other humans around the world."

The full article is available here

Was Obama Right About Crusades & Islamic Extremism? Jay Michaelson at Religion News Service

Crusaders massacering Jews in Rhineland

Christians should not be insulted by the facts of history. All people of faith should be inspired by them to recognize the dangers of extremism — wherever they lie.

In his recent speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama said that Christians, as well as Muslims, have at times committed atrocities.  This would seem to be Religious History 101, but it was nonetheless met with shock and awe by right wing pundits.

Yes the Crusades were a thousand years ago, the Inquisition ended 200 years ago and Jim Crow legally ended in the 1960s. But the president specifically noted that “humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history.”

1. The Crusades
Tens of thousands of people (both soldiers and civilians) were killed in the conquest of Jerusalem. The Crusaders themselves suffered; historians estimate that only one in 20 survived to even reach the Holy Land. It is estimated that 1.7 million people died in total.

Along the way, the Crusaders massacred. To take but one example, the Rhineland Massacres of 1096 are remembered to this day as some of the most horrific examples of anti-Semitic violence prior to the Holocaust. (Why go to the Holy Land to fight nonbelievers, many wondered, when they live right among us?) The Jewish communities of Cologne, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz were decimated. There were more than 5,000 victims.

And this is all at a time in which the world population was approximately 300 million — less than 5 percent its current total. Muslim extremists would have to kill 34 million people (Muslim and non-Muslim alike) to equal that death toll today. As horrific as the Islamic State’s brutal reign of terror has been, its death toll is estimated at around 20,000.

2. The Inquisition
The Inquisition refers to a set of institutions within the Roman Catholic Church that operated from the mid-13th century until the 19th century.

It saw the execution and torture thousands of suspected witches, converts from Judaism (many of whom had been forced to convert), Protestants, and all manner of suspected heretics, particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries. Historians estimate that 150,000 people were put on trial by the Inquisition, with 3,000 executed.

Arguably, the Islamic State’s methods of execution — including crucifixion, beheading, and, most recently, burning a prisoner alive — are as gruesome as the Inquistion’s, with its infamous hangings and burnings at the stake. ISIS is also committing systematic rape, which the Inquisition did not, and enslaving children.

As for torture, however, it’s hard to do worse than the Inquisition, which used torture as a method of extracting confessions. Methods included starvation, burning victims’ bodies with hot coals, forced over-consumption of water, hanging by straps, thumbscrews, metal pincers, and of course, the rack.

3. Slavery and Jim Crow
More recently, though the vast majority of Christians abhor it, the Ku Klux Klan, to the present day, still insists that it is a “Christian organization.” There’s a reason the Klan burned crosses alongside its lynchings and acts of arson, after all.

Of course, there was also organized Christian opposition to slavery and to Jim Crow, and Christianity is at least as much the property of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., as of the segregationists and slaveholders of the Old South.

There are two narratives about radical Islamists, and indeed about enemies of any sort, that coexist in American culture. According to one, they are different from us — Muslims, Palestinians, Israelis, Communists, you name it. Thus, in the battle against Islamic extremism, Islam is, in part at least, the enemy.

The other narrative is that all peoples, all creeds, all nations contain elements of moderation and extremism. Thankfully, racist Christian extremists are today a tiny minority within American Christianity. But only 100 years ago, they were as popular among American Christians as the Islamic State is among Muslims today. Thus, in the battle against Islamic extremism, it is extremism that is the enemy.

Hysterical commentary notwithstanding, no one is suggesting that Christians are just like the Islamic State. But Obama did suggest that Christianity is like Islam; both faiths have the capacity to be exploited by extremists.

Christians should not be insulted by the facts of history. All people of faith should be inspired by them to recognize the dangers of extremism — wherever they lie.

The full article is available here

Media Coverage of 2 Different Drone Scenarios

Subsidizing Contractor Misconduct: Government Contracts Despite Egregious Labor Violations - Chris Thompson in Corpwatch

In effect, the federal government has been subsidizing contractor misconduct with our tax dollars.

Rodney Bridgett was killed when a piece of Tyson Foods’ heavy equipment crushed him. Calvin Bryant was crippled in a Imperial Sugar plant explosion in Georgia that also killed 14 of his co-workers. When Alma Aranda tried to exercise her legal right to take unpaid time off to care for her dying mother, Verizon harassed her with so much paperwork that her hair fell out in clumps.

What do these 3 cases have in common? The federal government handed out tens of millions of dollars in contracts to these companies, without regard to how they treated their workers. 

In effect, the federal government has been subsidizing contractor misconduct with our tax dollars. As long as federal contractors have known that their lawbreaking would not jeopardize the next contract, they have had little financial incentive to stop mistreating their workers.

Government rules that require it to contract only with companies that have a “satisfactory record of performance, integrity, and business ethics.” In practice, the contracting system does not effectively review companies’ records for responsibility, nor does it ensure—before awarding contracts—that violators reform their practices.

As a result companies have continued to receive billions of dollars, despite long records of violating workplace laws. They may neglect legally required safety standards and maim a worker on the job, systematically engage in age or gender discrimination, refuse to pay overtime in violation of the law, or ignore the Americans with Disabilities Act and demote or fire disabled employees.

The full article is available here

2 New Studys: 4 Ways We're Pushing Earth Past Limits - Oliver Milman

All of these changes are shifting Earth into a "new state" that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

Humans are "eating away at our own life support systems" at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.

Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.

Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded "safe" levels: human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change, and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertilizer use.

Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis.

They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilization has advanced significantly.

All of these changes are shifting Earth into a "new state" that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.

The full article is available here

13 Year Afghan War "Over" - Dierdre Fulton in Common Dreams

2 Trillion dollars later and hundreds of thousands dead or displaced, the world is predictably less safe for the west than it was - and jihadism is much more entrenched.

With little fanfare, the United States and NATO formally ended the longest war in U.S. history with a ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving observers to wonder what—if anything—was achieved.

Over 13 years, U.S.-led war in Afghanistan claimed the lives of about 3,500 foreign troops (at least 2,224 of them American soldiers) and an estimated 21,000 Afghan civilians; most experts agree that the country is as violent as ever and that the death toll will continue to rise. Many say the war is over in name only.

In late September, the U.S. and Afghanistan signed a controversial Bilateral Security Agreement that allows for U.S. training, funding, and arming of the Afghan military; establishes long-term U.S. military presence in Afghanistan with access to numerous bases and installations in the country; and extends immunity to U.S. service members under Afghan law.

There will still be roughly 11,000 American troops in Afghanistan next year as part of the Resolute Support mission to train, advise and assist Afghanistan’s roughly 350,000 security forces. 

Writing for The Guardian, Will Hutton argues: "At a meta strategic level, the U.S. was wrong. The war against terrorism developed by George W Bush after 09/11 is a great failure. The reflex reaction to a heinous act of mass terror was not to outsmart, out-think and marginalize a new enemy - it was to get even by being even more violent, lawless and vicious. This lead NATO into the Afghanistan quagmire and a coalition into the other quagmire; Iraq. 

2 Trillion dollars later and hundreds of thousands dead or displaced, the world is predictably less safe for the west than it was - and jihadism is much more entrenched.

The full article is available here

Drones & Discrimination - Kathy Kelly in Tikkun

The U.S. is the undisputed world leader in incarceration, as it is the world leader in military dominance. 

On December 10 - International Human Rights Day, federal Magistrate Matt Whitworth sentenced me to 3 months in prison for having crossed the line at a military base that wages drone warfare. The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped by prisons and impoverishment here in the U.S.

The trial was based on a trespass charge incurred on June 1, 2014.  We carried a loaf of bread and a letter for Brig Gen. Glen D. Van Herck. In court, we testified that we hadn’t acted with criminal intent but had, rather, exercised our First Amendment right (and responsibility) to assemble peaceably for redress of grievance.

A group of Afghan friends had entrusted me with a simple message, their grievance, which they couldn’t personally deliver: please stop killing us.

It’s one thing to read about the shameful racism and discrimination of the U.S. criminal justice system. It’s quite another to sit next to a woman who is facing ten or more years in prison, isolated from children she has not held in years, and to learn from her about the circumstances that led to her imprisonment.  Many women prisoners, unable to find decent jobs in the regular economy, turn to the underground economy.

The U.S. is the undisputed world leader in incarceration, as it is the world leader in military dominance. Each time I’ve left a U.S. prison, I’ve felt as though I was leaving the scene of a crime. When I return to the U.S. from sites of our war making, abroad, I feel the same way.

Emerging back into the regular world seems tantamount to accepting a contract, pledging to forget the punishments we visit on impoverished people. I’m invited to forget about the people still trapped inside nightmare worlds we have made for them.

The full article is available here